News & Events

The African Studies Centre Leiden wishes you a happy, healthy and well-informed New Year! Visit our Country Portal, the data base that offers the latest news, twitter feeds, statistics, publications, country experts and much much more information about all 54 countries in Africa.

The Stephen Ellis Annual Lecture by Howard French on 10 December was a huge succes. His lecture, 'How today's China-Africa encounter came about and what it means for the world', was registered on video. If you missed it, take a look at the video.

The Dogon of Mali form one of the visual highlights of West Africa. With the spectacular setting of their villages against the Bandiagara cliff, their iconic mask performances and their ethnographic fame, they form a core attraction in West African culture tourism. But also Dogon daily life is well worth capturing on camera. This exhibition at the ASCL consists of photos made by senior researcher Wouter van Beek, on the occasion of his retirement at Tilburg University.

Over a hundred Africa scholars of Leiden University and the African Studies Centre Leiden met on Tuesday 8 December for the first ‘Leiden African Studies Assembly’ Meeting. It appeared a very encouraging assembly for the new Africa strategy that Leiden University is developing alongside the integration of the African Studies Centre into the University as of 1 January 2016. Leiden University wants to make Africa a more prominent part of its profile. The University’s leadership has decided to stimulate the integration of the ASCL and UL by starting a Leiden African Studies Integration Fund.

The African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) has become part of Leiden University as of 1 January 2016. After many years of working closely together, for example in the jointly offered Research Masters in African Studies, the unofficial ties between the two institutions have now become formal. Leiden University wants to make Africa a more prominent element of its curriculum. The ASCL has become an interfaculty institute.

According to the editors of Le Mali contemporain, the lack of information on the socio-political, economic and demographic changes that Mali has seen since its independence (1960) has diminished an understanding of what is actually happening in Mali considerably. This work, with contributions by Malian and European researchers in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities, (the outcome of a conference in 2013), aims to remedy this knowledge deficit by describing contemporary Malian society, just before the crisis broke out. Le Mali Contemporain is the subject of our latest Library Highlight.