News & Events

ASC researcher Rijk van Dijk (1959) has been appointed Professor at the University of Amsterdam as of 1 October. He is appointed Professor by special appointment of Religion and Sexuality in Africa. The Chair was established on behalf of the African Studies Centre. He will be affiliated to the research group Health, Care and the Body of the Amsterdam International School of Social Science Research (AISSR).

Anthropologist Janneke Verheijen will defend her PhD 1 October at the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation, published by the ASC, is noteworthy for two reasons. Her findings are contrary to the common assumption that poverty pushes women in Sub-Saharan Africa to exchange sex for material support, one of the explanations for the spread of HIV. And she will make all her raw data accessible online.

Ghanaian poet, writer and academic Kofi Awoonor was among those killed Saturday September 21st in the attack at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Awoonor was in Kenya for the 2013 Storymoja Hay Festival. Kofi Awoonor’s literary work expresses the influence of Ewe poetic forms. He published several books of poetry, such as Rediscovery (1964) and Until the Morning After: Collected Poems (1987), novels, plays and political essays. Kofi Awoonor gained his PhD in English and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York. He was appointed as Ambassador of Ghana to the United Nations from 1990 to 1994, and as President of the African Literature Association from 1998 to 1999.