What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

Ineke Bussemaker studied Maths at Leiden University and now works as a banker in Tanzania. In an interview in alumni magazine Leidraad she brings those two worlds together and looks back on her time in Leiden.

The United Nations (UN) made history in October 2000 when Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) was unanimously adopted.

Academic studies or an academic career are a big challenge if you are deaf. Particularly in Africa, where many countries don’t even have secondary schools for the deaf. A team of Leiden academics has organised the first summer school for and by deaf academics on the African continent, in Ghana. We spoke…

Research into 25 years of lethal violence in the Netherlands and into language socialisation of deaf families in Africa will receive grants from the Leiden University Fund (LUF).

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.

On 28 and 29 January 2020 the workshop ‘Law, Rights, and Governance in Africa. A look to the Future’ was held at Leiden Law School.

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

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.

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

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.

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, B. Sinsin, Co-Promotor: H.H. de Iongh

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…

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

On 8 March 2023 Helen Duffy, Professor of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Leiden, published a monograph on Global Trends in Counter-terrorism and the Implications for Human Rights in Africa.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) about the organisation of rebel and government auxiliaries in the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992).

Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) explains the timing,…

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.

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

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

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

The Leiden African Studies Centre (ASCL) will become part of the University from 1 January 2016.

This project examines the notion of sacred fertility and sacred landscapes, associated rituals and material culture, both archaeological and ethnographic manifestations in the Horn of Africa.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

Strengthening the cooperation between Moroccan, other African, and Dutch institutions for higher education. This was the focus of a two-day seminar at NIMAR (Netherlands Institute Morocco) in Rabat in July, during which scholars of the African Studies Centre Leiden interacted with colleagues from NIMAR…

Western countries still tend to view Africa as the periphery, says anthropologist Mayke Kaag. In her inaugural lecture, she calls for a shift in perspective: to see Africa as a mirror of global developments.

Early Childhood Community Practitioners’ analyses of new mother’s challenges in Alexandra Township South Africa: a collaboration between academics and practitioners

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

The African Studies Centre Leiden’s Research Programme for 2025-2029 is called ‘African Trajectories: Past Dependencies and New Directions’. Building on its former programme, it extends the recognition of Africa’s pivotal role in world affairs. The continent’s global significance has become increasingly…

The project

This project aims to systematically investigate the influence of information structure on nominal licensing in a subset of Bantu languages.

Africa needs a narrative that is consistent with the developments that are taking place all around the continent. In these developments, talented youth, creative tech hubs, and leapfrogging play a big role. We need to invest accordingly.

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies offers a new comprehension of colonial history from below by taking remnants of individual agencies from a whiteness studies perspective. It highlights the experiences and perceptions of colonisers and how they portrayed and re-interpreted their identities in Afric…

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

On 22 August, the GO-FAIR IN Africa was launched: an implementation network under the GO FAIR efforts to train, build and change the next generation of the Internet of FAIR Data and Services (IFDS).

On 13 November 2025, the project team and experts on insurgency and counterinsurgency across Africa and beyond came together in The Hague to discuss current trends in research on government and community responses to jihadist insurgencies in Africa.