Acquisition Highlight: Prof. Sjoerd Hofstra’s Mende fieldwork notes

The ASC Library has been given valuable archival material from the estate of the Dutch anthropologist Sjoerd Hofstra (1898-1983), appointed Professor of African Anthropology at the University of Leiden in 1947. Between 1934 and 1936 Hofstra did research among the Mende in Sierra Leone, but he never fully wrote up his study of the Mende community. The ASC selected 67 publications from his archives; these have been incorporated into the library collection. The remaining boxes contain fieldwork notes that are handwritten (mostly in English) and cover e.g. the social organization of the Mende, but also interviews with local people. The Hofstra archives are the subject of our latest Acquisition Highlight.