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

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

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 research projects wants to know what Muslims in the West do and mean by ‘Sharia’, and how the Western legal system responds to that. The focus is on Sharia as an informal practice by Muslims in the West, i.e. other than through state law or state courts.

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…

Lions in West and Central Africa form a unique group, only distantly related to lions in East and Southern Africa. Biologists at Leiden University confirm this in an article published in Scientific Reports.

Islam is often studied as a distinct and uniform phenomenon that is or should be kept private, and stands apart from any other human activity, be it in the field of economics, law or politics.

The role of domestic and wild resource exploitation in Bronze Age subsistence

Facts, Fears and the Future of Islamic Rules on Family Relation in the West

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Science with the University of Pretoria.

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

On 30 November 2016, Cecily Rose participated in a Symposium held at the T.M.C. Asser Institute on 'A Court for the World? Trust in the ICJ 50 years after South West Africa'.

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…

Muslims have lived in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe for centuries. Their arrival in Western Europe, the two Americas and Australia is however relatively recent. Studying how Muslims relate to their Western environment (and vice versa) and the mutual influences of Western and Islamic philosophies…

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.

Lecture

On the 26th of May Sudarmoko successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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.

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…

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

How did free agents oppose the monopolies held by the VOC and WIC in court?

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

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

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

Research on the process of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in West-Africa

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.

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.

The NIMAR offers Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes about Morocco, the Arabic world and North-West Africa.

'Communal Dining in in the Roman West' explores why the practice of privately sponsored communal dining gained popularity in certain parts of the Western Roman Empire for almost 300 years.

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…

Archaeobotanic research by prof. dr. C. Bakels and students on agriculture.

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 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…

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.

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

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

When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

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.

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

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…

Like any language, the natural sign languages of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that sign languages make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…