News & Events

Are you a PhD student or Junior Researcher doing research on Africa, and are you based at a university in the Netherlands or Belgium? If so, register for the LeidenASA (Leiden African Studies Assembly) PhD Meeting on 27 October! Learn about research valorization and locating research for the benefit of policy. Get to know the ins and outs of everything Leiden University, the African Studies Centre Leiden and the ASCL Library have to offer. Pick the brain of a specialist (some of the topics on offer: ICTs and mobility in Africa, Law, Governance and Development, International Trade and Economic Development), join the Intervision Meeting and learn from other PhD students. Or get in depth knowledge on publishing articles and choosing the right journal. And, last but not least, get to know more people during the informal drinks and networking.

Why did so many people emigrate from the Netherlands in the fifties? Why did hundreds of them choose to settle in what was then called Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe? And why did so many of them stay after 1965, when the country was led by a white-minority regime, faced an international boycott and was engulfed in a bloody guerrilla war? Journalist Marnix de Bruyne will address these questions in the seminar on 24 November, that is loosely connected to his book We moeten gaan. Nederlandse boeren in Zimbabwe.

ASCL senior researcher Marcel Rutten will deliver the keynote at the 7th Annual CELEP meeting to be held in London 5-7 October. Title: “The Land-Water Nexus in Semi-Arid Kenya – How Kenya’s pastoralists lose land and see their water resources depleted as a result of horticulture, biofuel and conservation initiatives". CELEP is the Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism, of which the African Studies Centre Leiden is a member. 

On Thursday 29 September, Britta Frede from the Freie Universität Berlin, currently a visiting fellow at the ASCL, will shed light on the place of women within the realm of Islamic knowledge production in Nouakchott, Mauritania. She will trace Muslim women teachers’ writings and their teaching activities from a historical perspective. You are all very welcome!