Manon van der Heijden and Leo Lucassen, and Maarten Mous will receive NWO Open Competition funding. This funding amounts to a maximum of 750,000 euros and is intended to carry out research into a subject of their your own choice, without thematic preconditions.

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion. In 30 years’ time, this will be 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically. Researchers from the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) have been aware for decades of the crucial role…

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,…

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

Traditional leaders in many African countries have regained some of their former powers. Politicians and companies in some of these countries manage to gain access to valuable land via these leaders, at the cost of the local population. This is the message of Professor of Law, Administration and Development…

In one year, you’ll complete five months of coursework, conduct an Embedded Research Project, and write your thesis.

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor in Governance of Crises at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, recently published the book The Government of Disasters. In this book Lydie explores how the South African state bureaucracy reacts to disasters.

Many conflicts in Africa have been studied and described as location and time bound. Yet conflict is rarely confined and contained, and instead reaches across communities, borders, and generations.

Both on a personal and institutional level, the staff of Leiden CADS collaborates with:

This minor equips students from diverse disciplines with the knowledge and skills to critically engage with and strengthen Africa’s role in a globalised world through integrated and sustainable approaches. It builds on the ambitions of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030,…

In the eighties the Umhlatuzana rock shelter in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, was excavated. Results from this excavation led to an understanding when the Later Stone Age started in this area. This archaeological period is often associated with the structural presence of modern human behavior. Now a…

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

Digitally Preserving Heritage at Risk

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

In the BA African Studies you will gain in-depth knowledge of Africa and the specific theme of your choice. At the same time, you will develop valuable academic and digital competences, as well as personal skills.

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.

CompaRe aims to conduct and stimulate research on comparative regional integration in Europa, Asia, Africa and Latin-America. To this end, CompaRe organizes conferences and workshops, and CompaRe members contribute to conferences, research papers, publications and reports on comparative regional…

A bloody civil war has raged for years in the Central African Republic. PhD candidate Crépin Mouguia points out a tragic pattern: young people have been recruited as fighters or soldiers for generations and thus fuel the conflicts.

Studying Africa’s history, cultures and languages in this programme will give you insight into other aspects of Africa as well, including economics, politics and international relations. In the second year, you will be able to specialise in one or more of our themes, tailoring the programme to your…

Jan Erk, political scientist at Leiden University, has been selected as the 2016-2017 Smuts Memorial Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During his residency at the renowned British academy, he will work on his research project ‘The Enduring Impact of Africa’s extinct kingdoms and invisible chief…

The master’s in African Studies combines world-class scholarship with practice-based learning.

The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

For almost ten years now Lamin Sow, a cleaner working at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building, has been collecting discarded pens he comes across throughout the day. When he returns to his home country he takes the pens with him as gifts for children.

On 23 February 2011, Hans de Iongh gave a Skype lecture for a group of 15 students of the Duke University of North Carolina, USA on the invitation of Dr Andrew Jacobson.

How do insurance products transform intimate and personal relations? What are the consequences of the classifications that insurance companies use and how do these affect solidarity, morality and inequality?

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch received an NWO Veni grant for her research on the conditions of collaboration between militias and state forces and its consequences for safety and political order.

Researchers from Leiden see hungry villagers in the north of Cameroon steal meat from the prey of lions. The researchers from Leiden University's Institute for Environmental Sciences (CML) reported on this kleptoparasitism in the online publication of the African Journal of Ecology in July.

During the project, this page will be updated with news updates and events organised as part of the research project.

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

Technological advances have an impact on our daily lives. They have also been employed by governments to manage border security, especially at controversial border crossings. Fences, heat sensors, heat cameras, drones and other hi-tech equipment that are currently being tested collectively produce a…

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

My first fieldwork in Nigeria began up in the air, as we were approaching the runway of Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed Airport.