This project investigates the rich linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and includes a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages. These outcomes, combined with recent archaeological and genetic research, will contribute to a new understanding of East Africa’s…

Leiden University has been intensifying its engagement with partners in Africa.

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

If you follow the western media, you are likely to think of ‘Africa’ as the continent of origin of desperate migrants, a continent of hunger and disease and a breeding ground for international terrorism. But if you want to see the bigger picture, you should look no further than the African Studies scholars…

This project is opening up the possibility of systematically studying research teams from a broad perspective, by developing specific bibliometric methodologies able to identify active collaborative research teams in Africa. Based on the extensive experience of CWTS and CREST, this project represents…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University's Faculty of Science with University of Pretoria in South Africa.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Science with the University of Pretoria.

The debate about Africa’s changing relations with the world has rapidly evolved over the past decade. The initial emphasis on China’s role in Africa has given way to a more diversified approach, acknowledging that other emerging global players have also become important.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with the University of Pretoria.

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

Sea-ing Africa explores how infrastructure in Ghana and Morocco shapes development, blending geopolitics, economics, and culture, impacting local and societal dynamics.

The emergence of new players on the world market such as India, Brazil, China, Turkey and the Gulf States gives Africans more choice in who they work with and under which terms. At the same time, African multinationals are choosing to work with regional partners and are thus furnishing old political…

The authors in this volume explore how external innovations (products, technologies, services, institutions and processes) have been appropriated in African societies in order to be acceptable and relevant to local conditions, expectations and demands.

Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Environment, vol.16. Edited by Noriyuki Shirai.

English The purpose of this research is to identify and examine the challenges faced by African States in the field of foreign investment with a view to contribute not only to the academic debate, but also to foster awareness and develop the capacities of these States with regard to the drafting, negotiation…

The Great Rift Valley in Africa is a real treasure trove for discovering early human fossils. The fossils found in this part of Africa have determined our view of human evolution. But was the Great Rift Valley really the place where evolution took place or just a place where fossils are well preserved…

This project investigates the causes of the major archaeological change in the period of 40.000-20.000 BC in South Africa.

The studies outlined in this volume explore how connectedness continues to change Africa and how Africa continues to shape the social life of connections.

VODAN Africa started as a platform to enable access to critical data needed from Africa to fight the novel COVID-19. The initiative was inspired by the experience from the Liberia Ebola Virus outbreak in 2014: early detection requires contact tracing. Inclusion of the most vulnerable is critical to…

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process.

This monograph by Robert Ross provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century.

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

Global health governance is at a crossroads. As the world reckons with the existential threat of planetary crises (climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution), international policy frameworks struggle to keep pace with a rapidly changing landscape in global health and public health.

In this book, Lydie Cabane examines the history of disaster management in South Africa.

This project aims at providing a broad perspective of the state of Science Technology and Innovation (STI) in Africa with a focus on global funding flows, in order to inform research funders in the continent, in particular those participating in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI). The project…

The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

This project uses archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence to investigate urban development in Roman-period North Africa, compiling this in a GIS-linked database in order to analyse the development of urban settlement spatially over time.

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

COUNTERRR examines domestic responses to jihadist armed groups in Africa, analyzing variation in state repression, community resistance, and the evolution of security across Mali, Nigeria, and Mozambique.

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations.

Leiden University investigates biodiversity not only in the Netherlands, but also abroad, with the goal of improving global nature conservation. We do so in collaboration with local universities. Education is also high on our agenda.

This study seeks to partially fill the knowledge gap about national culture in Africa, basing its research on data on ethnolinguistic groups (instead of administrative regions).

This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the ‘global shadows’ of the world.

On 10 november 2021, Carmel van Niekerk-Jacobs defended the thesis 'Realising the right to reproduce with assistance in South Africa'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen and Prof. T. Liefaard.

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

Taught from primary school to the university level – where new courses on the globalization of the Arabic writing system have cropped up (Abdallah 2014) – the Arabic script, with all its orthographic peculiarities and multiple facets, continues to shape languages other than Arabic, their communities…

On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, Catherine O'Regan will deliver the annual Van Vollenhoven Lecture