News & Events

How much influence does the ambassador of the Netherlands in Mali have? How does he keep contact with a government that is constantly burdened by coups? On 21 September 2021 Amsterdam debating centre De Balie invited Marchel Gerrmann, Netherlands ambassador to Mali, and Mirjam de Bruijn, ASCL researcher and Mali expert, to reflect on current and future developments in the country. You can now watch the video.

In the year when the world became familiar with ‘zoonotic diseases’, and a photo of the locusts invasion in East Africa won a prize in the World Press Photo contest, the ‘animal turn’ in the social sciences is here to stay. Catering for this relatively new research theme, the ASCL Library does not need to revise its collection profile drastically, but it needs to address a potential information need, and direct students to relatively new research areas. Find out more in our latest Library Highlight!

The authors of this article, published open access in Health Systems & Reform, use three years of household panel data to analyse the effects of ill-health on household economic outcomes in rural Ethiopia. They examine the immediate effects of various ill-health measures on health expenditure and labour supply, the subsequent coping responses, and finally the effect on income and consumption. The need for health financing reforms and safety nets that reduce the financial consequences of ill-health is underlined.