Rijk van Dijk is an anthropologist. He is an expert on Pentecostalism, globalisation and transnationalism, migration, youth and healing. He has been appointed Professor of Religion in Contemporary Africa and its Diaspora at the ASCL, University of Leiden, as of 1 September 2017. He is also Head of the Graduate Programme African Studies.

Rijk van Dijk has done extensive research on the rise of Pentecostal movements in the urban areas of Malawi, Ghana and Botswana. He is the author of Young Malawian Puritans (Utrecht, ISOR Press, 1993) and has co-edited nine other books including The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma (Oxford, James Currey 2000) with Ria Reis and Marja Spierenburg, and Religion and AIDS Treatment in Africa. Saving Souls, Prolonging Lives (London, Ashgate Publ. 2014) with Hansjoerg Dilger, Marian Burchardt and Thera Rasing. His current research deals with religious, in particular Pentecostal, engagement with the domains of relationships and sexuality in Botswana. A recently published article, entitled ‘The Tent versus Lobola; marriage, monetary intimacies and the new face of responsibility in Botswana’ (2017) deals with insights gained from his ongoing research.
He is also the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of the journal African Diaspora. A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World (published by Brill).

Rijk van Dijk is a guest professor of the Centre of Excellence and the Ethnology-programme at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Here he is engaging with the study of Life Skills, Counselling and the Ethics of Responsibility by contributing his research on 'The Social Life of Responsibilization. Marriage as a "Life-Project" in Botswana'. 

Keywords: African diaspora, pentecostalism, religion and youth, religion, sexuality and relationships in Africa

Jan-Bart Gewald is a socio-cultural historian of southern Africa and professor of African History at Leiden University.  He grew up and was educated at a variety of schools in several southern African countries. He began studying towards a BSc in Geology and Physics but graduated with a BA in African History and African Political Studies at Rhodes University in Makhanda (Grahamstown) South Africa. He subsequently completed an MA in history at Leiden University, with stints as an exchange student at Cologne University and the University of Ghana, Legon. He conducted extensive fieldwork and archival research in southern Africa and Europe and completed a PhD in History at Leiden University in 1996. Following postdoc positions in Germany (SFB 389) and Amsterdam (IISG), and residences in Niger, Eritrea, and Botswana, he was appointed as a full-time researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. In Leiden he acquired significant external research funding and was appointed Professor of Southern African History at Leiden University in 2013. He became Professor of African History in 2017 and was Director of the African Studies Centre from 2017-2021. He is currently working on a multi-species history of diamond mining in Kimberley, South Africa, 1870-1920.  In 2022 Jan-Bart Gewald was a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS) in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Keywords: African cultural and social history, relationship technology and society, Southern African history, Ghanaian history, African socio-political history, global and imperial history, history of anthropology, contemporary African developments, history of technology in Africa, genocide studies.

CV Jan-Bart Gewald (.pdf)