News & Events

On 6 July 1937, Bessie Amelia Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg. Although she was born in South Africa, she is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Head was born of an illegal union between her white mother and black father at Fort Napier Mental Institution, where her mother was a patient. Read the Library Weekly!

In post-Arab Spring Cairo, two strangers meet and fall in love. If an Egyptian cannot speak English, by Noor Naga, is a story of two people dislocated from their home environments, one by intent and one by necessity. It is the subject of our latest Library Highlight!

Since the democratic transition of 1994, increasing numbers of ‘Khoisan revivalists’ in South Africa are rejecting their coloured identity and engaging in activism as indigenous people. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town, this book by Rafael Verbuyst takes an unprecedented bottom-up approach. 

The African Studies Centre Leiden is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year! We will organise a day full of festivities highlighting this anniversary, which will take place on Thursday 8 September at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. 

The student members of the African Studies programme committee have nominated Akinyinka Akinyoade for the Faculty Education Award. Each year, the Faculty of Humanities awards the Faculty Education Prize to the best university lecturer. Akinyoade's nomination relates to the Master's programme, in which he teaches several courses.

On 27 June 2011, Mozambican writer, journalist and political activist Lina Júlia Francisco Magaia died in Maputo. While still at school she joined the Mozambican Liberation Front and was imprisoned for three months for political activities. Read the Library Weekly!

We are saddened by the news that fellow Africanist Paul Hebinck passed away on 21 June. Paul worked at Wageningen University until his formal retirement three years ago. He was involved in the ASCL as a teacher in the Research Master African Studies, in various conferences, and as a Community member.