News & Events

During a joint lunch seminar on 13 May, organized by the ASC and the International Institute for Asian Studies, the relationship forged between states who follow a liberal economic model (mainly France, Japan and the US) and states directly involved in the investment of capital across their traditional borders (mainly China, Dubai and Malaysia) will be traced. Speaker is Samson A. Bezabeh, Visiting Fellow of the ASC and IIAS.

During the last months of 2014, Google Scholar approached the African Studies Centre and got permission to index the AfricaBib database and use the metadata in Google Scholar. This means in practice that the more than 216,000 records in AfricaBib will be more visible to scholars and other interested persons, and that more scholarly publications about and from Africa will receive the attention they deserve. More news about AfricaBib: as of January 2015, it is possible to search through all records simultaneously in a one-stop search.

The ASC is to perform an evaluation of the 'epicentre programme' of The Hunger Project (THP) Benin. The ASC will assess how THPs strategy has contributed to development processes in Benin. THP Benin is part of the international NGO The Hunger Project. THP works with so-called ‘epicentres’: clusters of villages, or 'dynamic centres where communities are mobilized for action to meet their basic needs'. The ASC will perform an external, qualitative evaluation using the PADev approach. PADev is a participatory and holistic methodology for evaluating development interventions.

The plot of The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, a new novel by Tendai Huchu (born 1982 in Bindura, Zimbabwe) revolves around the lives of three Zimbabwean expatriates: three different men who struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love. Set in Scotland, where Tendai Huchu also happens to live at present, the book zooms into the life of the expatriate but also provides some valuable insight into the political and economic landscape, the shaky opposition and the corruption which are set into the fabric of Zimbabwean life. The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician is the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight!