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.

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

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…

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

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

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

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion people. In 30 years’ time, this will be 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically.

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.

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.

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…

Geesteswetenschappen, Instituut voor Geschiedenis

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

Africa is online. Leiden Africa expert Mirjam de Bruijn is fascinated by the fast development of mobile telephony and social media in Africa. She maintains a website on the topic, focusing on isolated, marginalised and conflict-ridden areas in Middle Africa.

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…

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…

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

Afrika-Studiecentrum Leiden

Congres/symposium

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…

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.

Lezing

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…

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.

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).

A mere day after setting foot ashore in the Bahamas on October 13th 1492, Christopher Columbus notes the broad foreheads of the inhabitants of the Americas. These permanently altered cranial shapes are deliberately created through the application of pressure to the head of the infant in the first years…

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

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

Knowledge of Muslim societies is essential to function in a globalised world and to fully understand our own Dutch society. Leiden researchers explore the languages, cultures, religions, legal systems and history of Muslim societies and in this way contribute to a centuries-old tradition.

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

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

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?

The main aim of this research is to understand the dynamics of identity within indigenous Caribbean communities as expressed through the practice of intentional cranial modification. A multidisciplinary approach will be applied to achieve this aim, combining current anthropological and sociological…

Governance is a complex puzzle of organisations, people and divergent interests. Academic research in this field furthers our knowledge of the role of public administrators, of different organisational structures, of the people who work at such organisations and of how these organisations implement…

The digitisation of society is a worldwide challenge. Not only are robots increasingly taking over human tasks, they are even beating the world champion at solving the most difficult brainteasers.

Law and Society: Governance and Global Development (MSc) is a one-year master’s degree at the internationally renowned Leiden Law School of Leiden University. The programme is distinct in its broad inter-disciplinary approach, offering a timely opportunity to study the dynamic relationship between legal…

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 research group Science Communication and Society aims to understand how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and society. Central themes are ‘Bridging the gap between experts and the general public’ and ‘Evaluating Science Communication’.

Our education responds to questions and needs from society. With the knowledge and skills they acquire through education, empowered and critical citizens will be able to contribute to a better world. Students can already start contributing during their programme, with community-based projects (Service…

The State & Society network critically interrogates the assumption that state and society are a priori conceptual and empirical objects.

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

In the specialisation Heritage and Society you explore the role of heritage in society. With our combination of education and research you lay a strong foundation for an (inter)national carreer in heritage management and policy.

Leiden and The Hague are home to many museums with large numbers of artefacts and archives. Leiden University also and Leiden University also houses special collections. Museums, Collections & Society stimulates research and education and raises ethical questions regarding the collections’ origin.

The aim of this PhD dissertation project is to study the effect of private foreign investment outside the realm of economics in the context of a colonial structure in Indonesia between c. 1910 and c. 1960.

Escritura de Ñuu Dzaui

The research group Science Communication and Society has been physically within the Institute of Biology (IBL) since 2012 and has become a formal part of the institute in 2018. The mission of this group is understanding how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and s…

How do societies move forward with sustainable, effective and efficient management of Earth's water resources?

During the Autumn semester (September-December), the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) offers a minor that focuses on the study of Morocco from a social sciences and humanities perspective.

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.