News & Events

Burkina Faso is a young but prolific terrain for industrial gold mining projects, with ten mines built in the last ten years. Gold mines are built in the vicinity of local populations that must organize their livelihoods under difficult ecological circumstances. Only now are the effects of industrial gold mining becoming clear to local administrators and populations. Resistance is growing rapidly. During the ASC seminar on 24 September, anthropologist Sabine Luning (Leiden University) will explore the company-community engagements and relations between mining companies. 

The African Studies Centre's Annual Report for 2014 is out now! In addition to an excellent list of publications by our researchers, you will find other highlights such as the Africa Works! conference in October and the ASC's Annual Event by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers in December. You can read the Annual Report online or order a copy.

The ASC congratulates Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata as the newly elected president of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa). Prof. Tsikata holds a PhD in Social Science from Leiden University and was visiting fellow at the ASC in 2002. Prof. Tsikata is the Director of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) and Associate Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana.

This seminar, which accompanies the new exhibition at the ASC of photographs taken by Akintunde Akinleye, maps the conversion of Nigeria’s former capital, Lagos (often described as an ‘apocalyptic megacity’) into a Prayer City. Since the late 1980s, numerous Christian and Muslim prayer camps have sprung up along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Subsequently, this highway has grown into a stage for the performance of public religiosity, earning it the moniker, the ‘Spiritual Highway’. Speaker: Dr Marloes Janson, SOAS (London).

Margot Leegwater will defend her PhD thesis 'Sharing Scarcity: Land Access and Social Relations in Southeast Rwanda' at the VU University Amsterdam on 16 September in the afternoon. Her study examines the effects of land policies on local community relations, including ethnicity, and land conflicts in post-conflict rural Rwanda. Promotor: Prof. Jan Abbink. In the morning, Leegwater will organize a seminar, also at the VU, where internationally renowned scholars will discuss post-genocide recovery, social relations, transitional justice, land scarcity, and violence in Rwanda.

Information Specialist Heleen Smits (ASC Library) gave a lecture at the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum (Sudan). The subject was in line with the research she conducts on the grammar of the Lumun language, which is her PhD subject at Leiden University. Heleen also purchased some 25 books at the Khartoum university's bookshop for the ASC Library.

In recognition of the Month of the Exciting Book (a theme month organized by the Dutch Book Promotion Foundation), the ASC Library has purchased a new set of African crime novels covering contemporary African crime writers from across the continent, such as Malla Nunn, Michael Stanley (the duo of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) and Kwei Quartey. Among these recently acquired novels are Blood Rose by Margie Orford and Zulu by Caryl Férey. They form the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight!

South African photographer Pieter Hugo was guest editor of the latest issue of the 'De Luxe' magazine of Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad (Magazine #24, Juni 2015). In this magazine, pictures were shown from books by Pieter Hugo and other South African photographers. Many of these books can be borrowed from the ASC Library.

On 28 May, the Dutch parliamentarian Martin Bosma published a book entitled Minderheid in eigen land: Hoe progressieve strijd ontaardt in genocide en ANC-apartheid (Bibliotheca Africana Formicae, Amsterdam). Mr Bosma’s book draws heavily on work by senior researcher Prof. Stephen Ellis of the African Studies Centre, including his prize-winning 2012 book External Mission: The ANC in exile, 1960-1990 (C. Hurst & Co., London). Prof. Ellis says many of these references are bizarre and some invented. Ellis: ‘More than once Martin Bosma attributes to me the statement that “het ANC is een criminele organisatie” (in English: “the ANC is a criminal organisation”), which I am said to have made at a meeting in January 2013. In fact I have never made such a statement and it is not my opinion. Anyone who wants to know my views on the ANC should read my book’, Prof. Ellis says.

In 2013, one of Lampedusa's beaches was rated the most beautiful in the world. It is also the place where more than 500 Eritreans drowned. The island's link to migration from Africa reflects African and European political decisions; media consistently link the island with tragedy. Local people launch new tourism ventures. During the ASC seminar on 2 July, Anna Arnone (SOAS, London) will reveal that the encounter of different types of movement creates new openings for solidarity between people.