Akinyinka Akinyoade is a Hydrologist turned Demographer. He obtained a Doctoral degree in Development Studies with emphasis on Population and Rural Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague. Akinyinka’s research activities are on population health and development, with special attention on fertility dynamics and family planning in West Africa; migration (human trafficking and forced labour in Nigeria); decentralisation (public service delivery in education and health sectors of Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania and Indonesia).

His work experience spans Nigeria (Population Statistician at the National Population Commission); Ghana (Lectured at the Department of Sociology, University of Cape Coast, and provided professional assistance as an Editor in the 5-year multi-round survey of the Demography Unit of the UCC); and Country Coordinator Nigeria for the Tracking Development project that compared development trajectories of Nigeria and Indonesia.

A Senior Researcher at the ASCL, Akinyinka gives lectures on Quantitative Research Methodology; his latest research activities are on migration, food and water security (scenarios for Africa 2020-2050), and agricultural value chains. He is a member of the collaborative research group Governance, entrepreneurship and inclusive development, and the convenor of the collaborative research group Pioneering futures of health and well-being: actors, technologies and social engineering.

Dr Akinyoade is the Chair of the Researchers' Assembly of the African Studies Centre Leiden.

Keywords: Africa, demographics, population health, fertility dynamics in West Africa, migration, decentralization, food security, water security, agricultural value chains.

Ton Dietz is Professor Emeritus of the Study of African Development at Leiden University. He was director of the African Studies Centre Leiden until September 2017. He was co-chair of the Leiden African Studies Assembly (LeidenASA) until March 2021.

Before coming to Leiden Ton Dietz was a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Amsterdam (1995-2010; he still is a Guest Professor at the UvA), and Scientific Director of the National Research School for Resource Studies for Development, CERES, and a Professor at Utrecht University (2002-2007; half time).

Ton Dietz studied human geography in Nijmegen (1969-1976), and defended his PhD at the University of Amsterdam (in 1987). He became Doctor of Science Honoris Causa at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, in 2007, and he received a Laureat d’Honneur from the International Geographical Union in Kyoto in 2013.

Keywords: Human geography, political environmental geography, geography and developing countries, political geography of Africa, poverty analysis, rural development, food security and agrohubs, pastoralism, land and water conflicts, dry-land development, impact of climate change, political ecology of forest areas, development aid, participatory assessment of development and change, participatory evaluation of development assistance, civil society, NGOs, Africa and the multi-polar world, geopolitics, migration.

CV Ton Dietz (pdf)

Read Ton Dietz's blog

Rijk van Dijk is an anthropologist. He is an expert on Pentecostalism, globalization 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

Michel Doortmont, a historian, is seconded (part-time) to the ASCL from his position as Reader in International Relations and African Studies at the University of Groningen for the period 2015-2019.

At the ASCL he manages the research programme Society and Change in Northern Ghana: Dagomba, Gonja, and the Regional Perspective on Ghanaian History. In this programme the ASCL collaborates with the University of Ghana at Legon and the University for Development Studies in Tamale and Wa, Ghana, as well as the University of Groningen, in the development of new research and capacity building in the field of regional history. The programme also includes a photographic documentation project, developed in cooperation with Noorderlicht Photography.

Michel Doortmont is a scholar of West African history and politics, with a focus on the Anglophone areas, and of Dutch-Ghanaian historical and cultural relations, African historiography, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Diaspora of the Black Atlantic. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is co-editor of History in Africa: A Journal of Method, and of the book series African Sources for African History and Sources for African History, published by Brill. He manages the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 programme EU-SATURN, promoting and facilitating mobility of students and scholars from South Africa to the European Union (www. eu-saturn.eu), and is a member of the NWO Rubicon Scholarships selection committee. Formerly he held – inter alia – positions as member of the Policy Advisory Board of NWO-WOTRO, chair of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Afrika Studies, chair of the NUFFIC Huygens PhD Scholarship Committee, and member of the NWO Mosaic Scholarship Committee.

He is the (co-) author and/or editor of The pen-pictures of modern Africans and African celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison. A collective biography of elite society in the Gold Coast Colony (Brill, 2004); The castles of Ghana: Axim, Butre, Anomabu. Historical and architectural research on three Ghana forts (Ricerca e Cooperazione etc., 2006), with Benedetta Savoldi; Sources for the mutual history of Ghana and the Netherlands. An annotated guide to the Dutch archives relating to Ghana and West Africa in the Nationaal Archief, 1593-1960s (Brill, 2007), with Jinna Smit; Trans-Atlantic slave trade: Landmarks, legacies, expectations (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2007), with J.R. Anquandah and N.J. Opoku-Agyemang; The Ankobra Gold Route Project: Studies in the Historical Relationship between Western Ghana and the Dutch (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2013).

Jan-Bart Gewald is a historian specialized in the social history of Africa. He is Professor of African History at Leiden University and former director of the African Studies Centre Leiden.

His research has ranged from the ramifications of genocide in Rwanda and Namibia, through to the socio-cultural parameters of trans-desert trade in Africa. In addition, he has conducted research on pan-Africanism in Ghana, spirit possession in the Republic of Niger, Dutch development cooperation, Africa in the context of globalisation, and social history in Eritrea. For the past 15 years his prime research focus has been on the socio-cultural history of central Africa. Of late he has become interested in the “Animal Turn” in history, and is seeking to apply this in his research and supervision. Furthermore he has a particular interest in archaeology, and has participated in archaeological research in southern Africa.

Jan-Bart Gewald has acquired research funding from a wide variety of sources and was awarded research funding by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for research programmes within the social sciences and humanities that dealt with the role of technology and consumption in African societies.

On a personal note, Jan-Bart grew up in Africa and has lived in Botswana, Congo Kinshasa, Eritrea, Ghana, Namibia, Niger, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

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)

Ineke van Kessel is a historian who focuses mainly on contemporary issues in South Africa. Her research includes social and political developments and various aspects of the democratization process, with a special interest in social movements and mass media. In addition, she is interested in West African history, notably the Gold Coast in the 19th century, and has published a book on the history of African soldiers recruited in the Gold Coast region for the Dutch colonial army in the East Indies. She also works as a freelance journalist specializing in current events in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Although she retired in June 2013, Ineke van Kessel continues her involvement with the African Studies Centre Leiden.

Dr Maya Turolla is a social and political scientist, specialised in youth employment and entrepreneurship in Africa. She is passionate about putting science at the service of inclusive and sustainable development, by promoting evidence-based decision and policy making.

After completing a Master in Anthropology and Development Studies (2012) she explored further fields of study in Public Administration and Conflict Studies, before settling her focus on Development Studies. In 2015, she embarked on a joint PhD trajectory in Political Studies between the University of Bologna and the Radboud University Nijmegen. Through this study, and particularly the extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda, Maya strengthened her expertise in rural development and youth agripreneurship. In a post-doc research in Ghana, Maya further explored youth's rural to urban migration.

As a Knowledge Manager at INCLUDE, Maya is responsible for creating and sustaining synergies between policy makers, civil society, scientists and experts to improve youth employment in Africa, within the joint initiative with IDRC and ILO ‘Boosting Decent Employment for Africa’s Youth’. 

Professor Chibuike Uche is the chairholder of the Stephen Ellis Chair for the Governance of Finance and Integrity in Africa. 

Chibuike Uche has extensive research experience in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone in the fields of political economy, business and financial history, financial institutions regulation and regional integration. His current research interest is foreign business operations in Africa. He leads the research consortium Dutch Multinational Businesses, Dutch Government and the Promotion of Productive Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is part of the research agenda of INCLUDE and NWO-WOTRO.

Prior to joining the ASCL, he was Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the University of Nigeria and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He has a PhD in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics. His thesis, entitled ‘Banking Developments in Pre-Independence Nigeria: A Study in Regulation, Control and Politics’, was awarded the International Economic History Association Prize for the Best Doctoral Thesis completed between 1997 and 2000 for the Post World War I Period. In addition to his academic qualifications, he is also a chartered accountant. He trained at Coopers and Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) in Nigeria.

Uche was a Carlo and Irene Brunner Scholar (1993-1994), a Commonwealth Scholar (1995-1997), a World Bank Robert S. McNamara Fellow (1999), an Association of Commonwealth Universities UK Titular (Worshipful Company of Chartered Accountants) Fellow (2001), a Leventis Visiting Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2000), an Academic Visitor in the Departments of Accounting and Finance and Economic History at the London School of Economics (2000-2001), a Visiting Fellow at the African Studies Centre in Leiden (2004, 2010), a Visiting Professor at the IILM Institute for Higher Education Gurgaon India (September 2008), an Alexander von Humboldt Georg Forster Fellow (for experienced researchers) and a Guest Professor at the Humboldt University Berlin (2008-2009), a Visiting Scholar, Discipline of Accounting, at the University of Sydney (October 2009), an Alexander von Humboldt Return Fellow (2010-2011) and a Guest Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute Uppsala Sweden (2011).

Keywords: Africa, political economy; financial history; financial institutions; governance; integrity; regulation; foreign businesses in Africa; Dutch multinationals in Africa; banking.