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

Africa is seen as a potential leader in green hydrogen production for domestic consumption, export and greening industry. One key barrier to realising this potential is the mismatch of skills between those required by industry and the capability of local workforces.

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.

Biologist Laura Bertola argues that the traditional separation of lions into African and Asian subspecies is incorrect. She has discovered that Africa is actually home to two subspecies. Her PhD defense was on 18 March 2015.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

Unlike the predominant and excessive focus on the problems of food production and food insecurity in Africa, this project views African culinary tradition as a vibrant and rich cultural heritage, intertwined with language use.

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.

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 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 liber amicorum is a tribute to Prof. dr. ir. Hans H. de Iongh, associate professsor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of Leiden University and guest professor at the University of Antwerp, on the occasion of his retirement on 27 October 2016.

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

While African ground-based air quality measurements have struggled to gain national and continental footholds, satellite data, especially high-resolution measurements from the TROPOMI satellite, can provide not only continental coverage but lend new insights for regional to city-scale air quality issues…

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

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

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…

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?

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.

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

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…

Farmers on the outskirts of Nairobi National Park protect their livestock using flashing lights on top of the animal enclosures. This system keeps lions away at night. Leiden research has shown that the method is both simple and effective. Publication in PLOS ONE.

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

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.

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

We are happy to announce the 4th annual LION Image Award!

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

Leiden University will deepen its cooperation with knowledge institutions in Africa. During a trip to Ghana, a delegation spoke with several African knowledge institutions about intensifying their collaboration.

We are happy to announce the 3rd annual LION Image Award!

This systematic review of 68 English-language articles explores the roles of customary authorities in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa

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

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…

The number of lions in Kenya is decreasing alarmingly, due partly to the encroaching cities and the development of the countryside. Together with local scientists and inhabitants, Leiden biologists are studying how this decline can be halted. ‘Lions are cleverer than we thought.’

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.

Sander Blok has won the third edition of the annual LION Image Award. He created a colorful image of gold nanoparticles with a low-energy electron microscope.

A recent publication in Oryx, The International Journal of Conservation by Tumenta et al., 2013 (Leiden University) on human-lion conflict over livestock depredation in Waza National Park, Cameroon has demonstrated that the human-lion conflict remains an important factor in the depletion of lion pop…

The Netherlands eScience Center has announced to fund a new Path-Finding Project led by Dr. Dorothea Samtleben from the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). This project aims to make the processing of detection signals more efficient for the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, which is currently under construction…

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.

Human measures to protect lions have an impact on the genetic health of populations. Leiden and Kenyan scientists discovered this by analysing the DNA of 171 Kenyan lions. ‘By fencing reserves, for example, the chance of inbreeding increases.’ With the knowledge and tools from the research, management…

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

NCLUDE is an independent think-and-do-tank working to make knowledge count for inclusive development in Africa. Combining rigorous research with knowledge brokering to bridge the gap between evidence and action, INCLUDE's overall goal is to produce knowledge, share it widely, and help others use it…

In honour of 10 years of cooperation between Kenya Wildlife Service and Leiden University, a Leiden delegation visited Nairobi National Park. To cement the cooperation, a lion in the park was collared and named Karel, which in Dutch literally means ‘free man.’ It will be monitored through satellite…

What are the conditions under which coercive diplomacy can compel a State to abandon its controversial nuclear (weapons) program? Based on the experience of the US coercive diplomacy against the nuclear programs of three countries, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research…