News & Events

The Africa Knows! conference (2 December 2020-25 February 2021) has come to an end. It straddled many boundaries: geographical (if only for its virtual character), disciplinary, but also between academia and practitioners. In their reflections, the organisers look back as well as forward: on the ‘lessons learnt’ in terms of decolonising academic minds and practices, and on five layers of impact of the conference.

Since the late 1970s, education-based migration from Madagascar to France has been joined by another form of migration: that of Malagasy women who largely come from the coastal regions of Madagascar and have migrated to France in the context of marriage. Prof. Jennifer Cole (University of Chicago) will talk about how these women find French husbands and get to France during the online ASCL Seminar on 22 April. 

Unlike what late Jan Vansina took as the point of departure for his magisterial work Paths in the Rainforest (1990), the life of the peoples in the Congo rainforest was not shaped by the continuity of a common tradition over four millennia. Discontinuities in the population history of Central-African Bantu speech communities urge scholars of ancient African history to rethink how to extract the past from the present, as Koen Bostoen (Ghent University) will explain during this online seminar on 17 June.

On Tuesday 30 March at 1.45 p.m., ASCL PhD candidate Gerda Hooghordel will defend her dissertation Reeds in the wind of change. Zulu sangomas in transition, at Leiden University. Reeds in the wind of change investigates the changing healing practice of Zulu sangomas in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Indigenous healing in South Africa is currently at a crossroads. While the latest healthcare legislation accepts the traditional healthcare system as equal to cosmopolitan healthcare, the accompanying institutional developments present obligations and challenges for indigenous healers. You can watch the PhD defence via livestream.

In January, the Zambian Government bought back two of the country’s copper mines which were privatised in 2000. The greatest impact of the mines on the daily lives of local residents is their impact on the local environment: air pollution and water contamination. The government’s decision to purchase the mines raises local expectations regarding its ability to ‘end’ pollution, Duncan Money and Jennifer Chansa write in their contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog.

This online seminar by Blessing-Miles Tendi, Associate Professor in the Politics of Africa at the University of Oxford, focuses on the life of Solomon Mujuru, an illustrious African liberation fighter in the 1970s and, until his assassination in 2011, an important figure in Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party in Zimbabwe. Tendi's biography of Mujuru throws light onto the opaque elite politics of the 1970s liberation struggle, post-independence army - Mujuru was the first black commander of independent Zimbabwe's national army - and ZANU PF. 

The ASCL is deeply saddened by the news that Dr Bernard Berendsen died on 11 February. Bernard has been very important to the African Studies Centre Leiden, for a very long time. Bernard worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Head of the Africa Desk and Ambassador for the Netherlands in Tanzania (among other functions). He was a member of the ASC's Advisory Council and later of its Curatorium. He supported the integration of the African Studies Centre in Leiden University in 2016, after which he became the Chair of the new Advisory Board of the African Studies Centre Foundation. The ASCL will remember Bernard’s commitment, his wise advice, his kindness and his foresight.