News & Events

The Many Hidden Faces of Extreme Poverty by Anika Altaf addresses the challenge to include the poorest people. It provides deeper understanding of the mechanisms of in- and exclusion of extremely poor people, the structural causes of extreme poverty and the desirability of a univocal definition of extreme poverty. Altaf will give a presentation followed by a panel discussion with Jan Pronk (former Minister), David Lawson (NAI), and Marleen Dekker (ASCL).

The ASCL is thrilled that South African professor Lungisile Ntsebeza will receive an honorary doctorate on the Foundation Day of Leiden University, 7 February. Ntsebeza is an authority in the democratisation of rural South Africa and poverty reduction. Ntsebeza has been Professor of Sociology and African Studies at the University of Cape Town since 2008, where he is also Director of the Centre of African Studies. Ntsebeza was imprisoned for five years during apartheid. While imprisoned, he obtained, by correspondence, his degree in Political Science and Philosophy. We congratulate Prof. Ntsebeza, his family and colleagues!

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2019 is Nsima Udo for his thesis Visualising the body: photographic clues and the cultural fluidity of Mbopo institution, 1914 – 2014. Nsima Udo graduated cum laude for the MA in History at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His thesis unpacks the history of mbopo, a form of female initiation in Southern Nigeria: how it emerges historically, is discredited in the 1990s as a form of female mutilation and is re-appreciated in recent reality TV shows.

Tikam Sall and Bernardo Tiberi are two of our new Research Master students in African Studies, Alma Ionescu and Melat Pusch are two of our new Master students. Curious about their background, their motivation to do African Studies and their career expectations for the future? Read the interviews we did with them to get to know them better!

This conference will bring together some of today’s most influential thinkers on African affairs. Independence from colonial rule, to many, was a turning point in African history, but what has changed, and what has persisted? Confirmed speakers: Lungisile Ntsebeza (African Studies, University of Cape Town), Birgit Meyer (Religious Studies, Utrecht University), Carolyn Hamilton (Archive and Public Culture, UCT) and Jan Abbink (ASCL, Leiden University).