Africa is fascinating! In today’s globalised world, the continent plays an increasingly important role in international social and cultural developments. Would you like to explore the many sides of Africa and its impact on the rest of the world, while also learning one of its languages? Our African…

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion people. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, societies but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically.

The master’s in African Studies at Leiden University is an advanced area studies qualification that combines world-class scholarship with practice-based learning.

The research master's in African Studies at Leiden University is unique in continental Europe for the interdisciplinary range of subjects offered and the long-term fieldwork in Africa.

Are you thinking about studying African Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video and the programme presentation.

In the last couple of decades an ‘animal turn’ has taken place in the social sciences. This has led to a call to study social issues by including non-human animal perspectives. This Collaborative Research Group thinks it's high time that African Studies joins the chorus of minds that try to contribute…

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The ASCL Research Programme for the years 2019-2024 is called ‘Strident Africa: Societal and Environmental Change in the Context of 50 Centuries of History’. It examines the dramatic changes taking place on the continent in terms of population growth, urbanization, the role of external actors and the…

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

African Studies is a field notoriously lacking in African scholars. Miriam Siun, research master student in this field, noticed this from the moment she started the programme. She decided to take matters into her own hands and hold a seminar reflecting on this issue.

The Rabobank has awarded Leiden University 50,000 euro for a ‘study-related' purpose. The gift is to be used to allow two African students to follow the research master’s programme in African Studies in Leiden.

This Collaborative Research Group acts primarily as a platform for discussion of historical issues related to the African continent, its place in the world and in African Studies.

Leiden University offers one full Leiden University Excellence Scholarship (LExS) to an African candidate interested in the two-year Research Master African Studies programme (ResMA AS); thus non-EEA/non-EFTA* applicants. LExS is a prestigious scholarship and includes a fee waiver up until the statutory…

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

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

In this unique collaboration between Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam and building on the goals set in the African Union Agenda 2063 the United Nations Agenda 2030, the multidisciplinary minor African Dynamics fosters a deeper understanding of integrated…

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

This project aims at studying the social media reception of African publications as covered by the most important “altmetric” sources.

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been appointed as the new director of the African Studies Centre in Leiden with effect from 1 September 2017, for a period of five years. Professor Gewald will succeed Ton Dietz, who will be retiring in September.

This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

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.

How do Central African refugees navigate through uncertainty in a new and hostile environment in the DR Congo?

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

Conference

Madeleine Hosli, Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, together with two other authors, wrote a chapter in Group Politics in UN Multilateralism. This chapter assesses the composition and functioning of the African Union (AU) within the United Nations.

On 13 January 2022, Pie Habimana defended the thesis 'Harmful Tax Competition in the East African Community'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. H. Vording and Prof. S.C.W. Douma (UvA).

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Meike de Goede tells about the book 'Between Tides' by Valentin Mudimbe. The novel, little known beyond the circles of Africanists and…

On the 27th of February, Marta Morgado successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Marta on this achievement!

Counter-Discourse in Zimbabwean Literature is a study of specific aspects of counter-discursive Zimbabwean narratives in English. In discussing the selected texts, my thesis is based on Terdiman’s (1989) the postcolonial concept of counter-discourse.

After graduation, you may want to continue your academic education. You will find that the African Studies bachelor’s programme qualifies you for many master’s programmes. A master’s will earn you the title of Master of Arts (MA) and will significantly increase your chances of finding a position at…

Promotores: H.A. Udo de Haes, H.H.T. Prins, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

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).

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

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?

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Now available on YouTube!

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This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

In African societies today, growing inequality and continued exclusion due to ethnicity, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation give rise to both contestation and cooperation for social change. How does the written or spoken word lead to collaboration and contestation in areas of social…

In the African Studies BA programme you will obtain in-depth knowledge about 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.

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