News & Events

Transnational corporations are increasingly important players in the development arena under the banner of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The CSR movement promises to use the global resources of corporations to the benefit of local development. In today’s seminar, Dinah Rajak of the University of Sussex argues that CSR generates new processes of exclusion and inequality, inspiring deference and dependence, rather than autonomy and empowerment. Rajak takes the world’s third biggest mining company, from their headquarters in London to the platinum mines of South Africa, as an example.

Are you interested in studying Africa from a social-sciences perspective? Read what our two-year Research Masters in African Studies has to offer! The blog is written by current students and it’ll give you an idea about their first-year courses and the fieldwork they did in Africa in their second year.

In een muzikale monoloog vertelt acteur Raymi Sambo het verhaal van de Congolese professor Kanouté, die zijn studenten tot kritisch nadenken stimuleerde. Hij vluchtte na een periode in de gevangenis naar het Westen. De monoloog is gebaseerd op het leven van de Congolese onderzoeker Felix Kaputu, verbonden aan het Afrika-Studiecentrum en eveneens spreker op deze bijzondere avond, 16 oktober in Leiden. Language: Dutch/English. Let op! Nieuwe locatie / Please note! Change of location: Burumazaal, LUMC-onderwijsgebouw, Gebouw 3, Hippocratespad 21, 2333 ZD, Leiden.

On 28 November Henrietta Mambo Nyamnjoh will defend her PhD thesis 'Bridging Mobilities: ICT's appropriation by Cameroonians in South Africa and The Netherlands' at Leiden University. Her research seeks to understand migrants’ appropriation of new information and communication technologies to link home and host country and the wider migrant community. How does this change existing social structures and reconfigure new ones?

On Monday 25 November Karin Nijenhuis will defend her PhD thesis 'Farmers on the Move: Mobility, Access to Land and Conflict in Central and South Mali' at Wageningen University. In contrast to their sedentary image, farmers in Central and South Mali are surprisingly mobile.This mobility is, however, not just a reaction to changing farming conditions but also part of local political processes, including conflict, that mediate farmers’ access to land. 

Ton Dietz has been awarded the International Geographical Union’s special Lauréat d’honneur in recognition of his services to geography. The award was presented to him by the President of the IGU, Prof. Vladimir Kolossov (Russia), at the organization’s regional conference in Kyoto on 9 August 2013.

This seminar will examine the 2013 general elections in Kenya. Charles Hornsby will present a comparative analysis of five of the six simultaneous elections. How viable is the underlying basis of support for the Jubilee coalition? Hornsby will discuss events since April, focussing on the transfer of power to local authorities, the new 'non-political' ministerial structure and developments at the International Criminal Court. Why do the results of the election remain contested? Find out at our seminar on 14 November. (Photo: Stephen Wanjau)

The Rethinking Indigeneity Project, led by Keyan Tomaselli of the University of Kwazulu-Natal, has conducted research amongst indigenous populations in Southern Africa for twenty years now. At this seminar on 24 October, Tomaselli will focus on the Bushmen (San): what has been and is the perception of the Bushmen by Westerners, notably tourists? What about the perception the other way round? And what methods of research do ethnographers have at their disposal?