News & Events

ASC researcher Jon Abbink published an article in Cahiers d’Études Africaines in the field of sexual and reproductive rights. Among the Suri agro-pastoralists, a relatively self-sufficient people in the southwest of Ethiopia, adolescent girls often assert that they menstruate together and regulate their own menstrual cycle, relating it to the phases of the moon. “Menstrual synchrony” is a much debated phenomenon in the scientific literature. Abbink claims that the young, unmarried Suri girls follow a cultural script of sexuality and aim to fit physiological facts into a preferred socio-cultural mould. 

The ASC just published a new book: Liberia: from the love of liberty to paradise lost, by Fred van der Kraaij. In the 1970s the author left the Netherlands for the West-African country Liberia. He lectured at the University of Liberia where his students included future ministers. One later emerged as a feared warlord, while one of his colleagues became the country's president. The author travelled to every corner of the country, visited rubber plantations and spoke to managers and workers. Forty years later, Van der Kraaij looks back on the country he has grown to love. 

The European Conference on African Studies ECAS 2015 took place 8-10 July at the Sorbonne in Paris. The principal theme of ECAS 6 was Collective Mobilisations in Africa: Contestation, Resistance, Revolt. Many ASC researchers organized a panel, participated in round table discussions or presented a new book. Take a look at the photo impression!

The ASC and Karthala (Paris) have published a new book by Mayke Kaag a.o.: État, sociétés et Islam au Sénégal: un air de nouveau temps? (State, societies and Islam in Senegal: new times?). The book was born out of collaboration between diplomats and scholars. In the post-9/11 era, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs felt that they needed more knowledge about Islam and Muslims in the countries with which they were working. ASC researcher Mayke Kaag coordinated the programme on Islam in Senegal. The book was launched during ECAS on Friday 10 July.

Watch the short interview with Anna Arnone (SOAS, University of London), who was our speaker during the ASC seminar 'Africa-Europe Migration: Lampedusa caught between shipwreck and tourism' on 2 July. She talks about the 'impossible encounters' between the island's inhabitants, the (mostly Eritrean) migrants and the tourists. 

The African Studies Centre in Leiden and the Beijing Foreign Studies University signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Monday 29 June in Leiden. In the MoU the ASC and BFSU declare that they want to cooperate in order to enhance the quality and relevance of African Studies in Leiden and Beijing, and to support African Studies in Africa and elsewhere. Beijing Foreign Studies University (established in 1941) is regarded as the cradle of diplomats in China and is renowned for its cultural and foreign languages studies.

A document has been discovered in a Russian archive proving that Nelson Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party in the early 1960s. The document was brought to light by Russian historian Irina Filatova, who has written an article about it on the South African site Politicsweb. It confirms the evidence of Mandela’s Party membership that was published by ASC senior researcher Stephen Ellis in 2011 and in his subsequent book, External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990.  

In this ASC Infosheet, Anika Altaf and Ton Dietz write that if NGOs want to include the ultra-poor in economic programmes, they need to emphasize social protection and human rights approaches that go beyond those programmes. The Dutch faith-based NGO Woord&Daad asked PhD candidate Anika Altaf to carry out research in places where Woord&Daad thought that their partner organisations were making genuine efforts to reach the ultra-poor. This led to four case studies in three countries: one in Bangladesh, one in Benin and two in Ethiopia.