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 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.

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.

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

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…

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.

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…

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

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.

PhD Defence

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 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…

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.

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

Bachelor, Master

Bachelor, Master

Bachelor, Master

Politics, governance and law form a triangle of themes defining power and the production of power. The themes constitute a crucial domain in African societies and economies, reinvigorated by contemporary new forms of youth politics across the continent.

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

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

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…

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.

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.

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.

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…

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…

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

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.

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

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

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…

To what extend can coercive diplomacy coerce a State to abandon its controversial nuclear program? Out of three case studies, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research project aims at studying the conducive conditions of coercive diplomacy.

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…

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

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

MA student African Studies Eline Sleurink is currently on an internship in Accra, the capital of Ghana. She’s sharing her adventures on The Leidener, a blog that is run by international students of Leiden University.

‘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.