News & Events

On 27 June 2011, Mozambican writer, journalist and political activist Lina Júlia Francisco Magaia died in Maputo. While still at school she joined the Mozambican Liberation Front and was imprisoned for three months for political activities. Read the Library Weekly!

We are saddened by the news that fellow Africanist Paul Hebinck passed away on 21 June. Paul worked at Wageningen University until his formal retirement three years ago. He was involved in the ASCL as a teacher in the Research Master African Studies, in various conferences, and as a Community member.

On 20 June 1920, Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta. When Amos was seven years old, he became a servant for F. O. Monu, an Igbo man, who sent him to the Salvation Army primary school in lieu of wages. Read the Library Weekly!

The ASCL calls for applications for its Visiting Fellowship Programme in 2024. Visiting fellows use their time in Leiden for data analysis and/or writing, often on a joint project with one or more ASCL staff members. Applicants must indicate the Collaborative Research Group they want to be linked with. Application deadline: 21 May 2023.

Azeb Amha will be a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh in June and July 2022. Dr Amha is a grantee of IASH’s 2021 European Fellow Programme. She will work on her research on the language-culture nexus in the Omotic language family of Ethiopia.

On 14 June 1995, Congolese novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and poet Sony Labou Tansi, born Marcel Ntsoni, died at the age of 47 in Brazzaville. Tansi was born on 5 July 1947, in the village of Kimwaanza, just south of Kinshasa in modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read the Library Weekly!