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…

NIMAR is the Netherlands expertise centre for Moroccan Studies. Starting 2016, NIMAR is a part of the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University. NIMAR organises lectures, facilitates research and actively adds to the knowledge of Moroccan languages, cultures and society in The Netherlands.

Gold Matters: Sustainability Transformations in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining: A Multi-Actor and Trans-Regional Perspective.This project explores whether a transformative approach towards sustainability can arise in Artisanal and Smallscale Gold Mining (ASGM).

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

Bachelor, Master

Bachelor, Master

Bachelor, Master

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…

Lecture

Greenport West-Holland (GPWH) is one of the world’s most innovative regions in the field of greenhouse horticulture. Here, horticulture entrepreneurs, local and regional authorities, educational and research institutions work together through the triple helix organization that also bears the name of…

Lecture

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.

On 1 April 2020, Ivan Romashchenko defended his thesis 'Related Party Transactions and Corporate Groups: When Eastern Europe Meets the West'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. S.M. Bartman en Prof. A. Radwan (Kaunas, Lithuania).

How many written parliamentary questions does each party put to each minister? Political scientists Simon Otjes (University of Groningen) and Tom Louwerse (Leiden University) studied the practice in Dutch parliament and found that parties use parliamentary questions strategically as part of their ‘permanent…

Lecture

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

How did interests outside the scope of the Dutch chartered trading companies influence the career-paths of Dutch colonial governors?

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.

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).

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) is a Leiden University institute. It is financed by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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

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.

At the end of March, the first coronavirus infections were detected in southern Africa, which resulted in country after country rapidly closing their borders. Tycho van der Hoog witnessed this process at first hand during his PhD research in Namibia. He analyzes the state of the corona crisis from his…

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…

In Europe, archaeological traces of fire become more frequent between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago; but could the earliest occupants have survived without fire for at least half a million years before this? How could the early occupants of Europe have kept warm and processed meat without fire?

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…

How do old and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) relate to new social and political movements in Central Africa? What does this tell us about Africa and the Information Age?

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

Today, everybody and everything produces data. People produce large amounts of data in social networks and in commercial transactions. Medical, corporate, and government databases continue to grow. Sensors continue to get cheaper and are increasingly connected, creating an Internet of Things, and generating…

Lecture, Seminar

Mission Director: Dr. Carina van den Hoven

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

Within the Global Ethnography specialisation, you can develop your own research project or make use of the research opportunities offered by our staff members listed below.

This study attempts to understand how indigenous community institutions pose an important role in sustainable community-based development, including the integration between local culture and development.

Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. In this dissertation, Issa Boulos has examined historical records that revealed many differences and similarities between Palestinian communities…

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…

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

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

Emphasizing on the key role of polysemy in forming the lexicon is the main goal to be achieved in this dissertation paper. The paper suggests a qualitative evaluation of polysemy in comparing it with other relations that form the lexicon. The research confirms that the polysemic links must not be modeled…

Economic Anthropologist Erik Bähre talks on the Dutch News Radio Channel BNR about the effects of the Russia-Ukraine grain agreement for African countries.