News & Events

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.

On 14 September 1924, Sierra Leone Creole academic, diplomat, physician, writer and poet Davidson Sylvester Hector Willoughby Nicol CMG, pen named Abioseh Nicol, was born in Freetown. He obtained degrees in the arts, science and commercial disciplines. Nicol also contributed to medical science when he was the first to analyse the breakdown of insulin in the human body, a discovery which was a breakthrough for the treatment of diabetes.

On the occasion of the workshop Global and Local Political Debates over Women’s Rights, and Everyday Life in Muslim Africa, on 20 and 21 September, the ASCL Library has compiled a web dossier on Women in Muslim Africa.

We are thrilled that the Stephen Ellis Annual Lecture 2023 will be given by Dr Mercy Iroaganachi, University Librarian of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her lecture on 7 December deals with the place of archives in modern African Studies and puts a searchlight on the patronage of the National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan.

The ASCL proudly presents the kick-off of the iAfrica Film Festival 2023. On Thursday 12 October the film Money, Freedom, a Story of the CFA Franc (2022), by Katy Léna Ndiaye, will be screened in Leiden.