News & Events

On the occasion of the retirement of Robert Ross, Professor in African History at Leiden University, his successor and former student Jan-Bart Gewald wrote a valedictory note. Robert has been in Leiden since 1976, first as coordinator and (later) professor in African History. He has taught in the BA degree course Languages and Cultures of Africa, and the MAs (including the Research MA) on African Studies. Most of all, Robert has been a long-standing friend of the ASC!

Unions have played multiple roles throughout Africa’s history. In order to shed light on the diverse and complex nature of organised labour in Africa, the ASC's research group ‘Trade Unions and Labour Issues in Africa’ and the International Institute of Social History (IISH) are organising a Round Table on 10 September about the multiple roles of trade unions in Africa today. The Round Table will bring together academics, practitioners and policy-makers.

The African Studies Centre and the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden offer a joint fellowship of (maximum) 6 months. The fellowship is intended for researchers specialising in Asian-African interactions. We are particularly interested in proposals that go beyond a mere analysis of current issues associated with African-Asian comparative economic developments or Chinese investments in Africa - although these themes will not be excluded. Deadline for application: 15 September!

ASC researcher Wijnand Klaver contributed to an article in Chronica Horticulturae, coinciding with the XXIX International Horticultural Congress in Brisbane. While a healthy diet is based on a diversity of foods, in Africa many people rely on monotonous diets. As a consequence, more people suffer from ‘hidden hunger’ than from overt starvation. This article proposes for tropical Africa a doubling of the present intake of about 100 g of vegetables as a long-term realistic target.

On 23 September, Iva Peša will defend her PhD thesis Moving along the roadside: A social history of Mwinilunga District, 1870s-1970s, at Leiden University. This thesis aims to understand how the process of social change has been negotiated in the area of Mwinilunga, a district in the north-west of Zambia, between the 1870s and the 1970s. It looks at the process of social change by tackling four aspects in detail: production, mobility, consumption and social relationships.

Jo Jordan describes herself as one of those who would rather “hear the flatulence of camels than the prayers of the fishes”. This perfectly sets the tone of the book she writes about her life and the adventures she has travelling through Africa’s vast geography and cultures. Inspired by a grainy black and white film of an overland journey across the Sahara to Nigeria and stumbling across a small ad in the Observer announcing an 18-week overland trip to South Africa, the author left 'swinging sixties' London behind and never looked back.

The South African writer Nadine Gordimer has died on 13 July, in Johannesburg, at the age of 90. Nadine Gordimer was born on 20 November 1923 in the small East Rand mining town of Springs, the daughter of Jewish immigrants. She published her first story - Come Again Tomorrow - in a Johannesburg magazine at just 15 years of age. She continued to write more than 30 books. In 1974 Gordimer won the Booker Prize for The Conservationist and she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. The Nobel committee honoured Gordimer for her "great, epic writings centering on the effects of race relations in her country", which had been "of very great benefit to humanity".

The African Studies Centre's Annual Report for 2013 is out now! In addition to an excellent list of publications by our researchers and our well-attended seminars, you will find other highlights such as the launch of LeidenGlobal in November and the ASC's Annual Lecture by Morten Jerven. Read the Annual Report online or order a hard copy.

The ASC Library has been given valuable archival material from the estate of the Dutch anthropologist Sjoerd Hofstra (1898-1983), appointed Professor of African Anthropology at the University of Leiden in 1947. Between 1934 and 1936 Hofstra did research among the Mende in Sierra Leone, but he never fully wrote up his study of the Mende community. The ASC selected 67 publications from his archives; these have been incorporated into the library collection. The remaining boxes contain fieldwork notes that are handwritten (mostly in English) and cover e.g. the social organization of the Mende, but also interviews with local people. The Hofstra archives are the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight.

The Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa is one of the joint multidisciplinary centres of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam. It investigates how frugal innovation can contribute to inclusive growth and transformation in Africa. Frugal innovation is usually defined as stripping down and re-engineering products to offer quality goods at very low prices to poorer consumers. André Leliveld of the African Studies Centre (Leiden), Peter Knorringa (Erasmus) and Cees van Beers (Delft) are the three principal researchers.