News & Events

Annual meeting of the Leiden African Studies Assembly (LeidenASA). Keynote speaker Amanda Hammar (Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen) will talk about the production of knowledge in and about Africa. The programme also includes the award ceremony for the winner of the Africa Thesis Aaward 2018, Cynthia Olufade (University of Ibadan, Nigeria). All welcome!

People categorise the entities and properties that make up the terrain and water worlds which humans live in and exploit differently. In this presentation, Mercy Klugah explores the vocabulary used in the categorisation of the physical environment in Asᴐgli Ewe. She also examines how the different geographical entities are named more generally as well as locally.

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2018 is Cynthia Aghunotse Olufade for her thesis Oath taking and the transnationalism of silence among Edo female sex workers in Italy. Cynthia Olufade completed an MA in African Studies (Diaspora and Transnational Studies) at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan (Nigeria) in March 2018. The prize will be presented to Ms Olufade at the LeidenASA Annual Meeting on 13 December 2018 at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.

In this ASCL Seminar Prof. Karim Sadr (University of the Witwatersrand) will elaborate on the pre-colonial city he has discovered in the Suikerbosrand massif, some 30 km south of Johannesburg. The hundreds of Molokwane-style homesteads, large livestock enclosures, monumental ash heaps, stone towers, and other impressive architectural features attest to the economic wealth and political importance of this city during its classic phase of occupation. 

The Africa Yearbook covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa – all related to developments in one calendar year. The Yearbook is mainly oriented to the requirements of a large range of target groups: students, politicians, diplomats, administrators, journalists, teachers, practitioners in the field of development aid as well as business people.

The library will undergo major maintenance, and will be temporarily relocated to the neighbouring Library of Social Sciences. The ASCL Library will return to its own location at FSW at the beginning of March. Another relocation the ASCL Library has faced is the temporary move of some 30,000 books from the ASCL collection to the Leiden University Libraries at the Witte Singel 27. All books can be requested and picked up at the ASCL Library (2-day service) or at the Witte Singel (1-hour service).

This presentation explores the role of service-learning in enhancing students’ employability skills. In service-learning, students engage in voluntary community service activities with the aim of learning from the experience while providing service to help the recipients.