News & Events

On 30 September 2012, Somali poet and political activist, Mohamed Hashi Dhamac, better known as Gaarriye, died at a hospital in Norway. He is regarded as one of the most important Somali poets of the twentieth century.

On 20 September 1967, Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.

Aqeeqa is a play written by Assad Bhuglah, an economist who served as a trade expert for the government of Mauritius from 1981-2016. He produced several books on historical figures as well as fictional works. Aqeeqa is his first work with an explicit religious theme. It deals with the Islamic birth ritual consisting of naming, hair shaving and animal sacrifice.

John Kegel has been awarded a Kiem seed grant from Leiden University for the project 'The re-enchantment of infrastructure in Africa: Comparing Colonial and Contemporary Coastal Corridors'. The Kiem grant is an initiative from the university to stimulate new interdisciplinary, interfaculty research partnerships and encounters.