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 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…

Since 2023 Leiden University has been intensifying its engagement with partners in Africa.

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

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.

This project is opening up the possibility of systematically studying research teams from a broad perspective, by developing specific bibliometric methodologies able to identify active collaborative research teams in Africa. Based on the extensive experience of CWTS and CREST, this project represents…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University's Faculty of Science with University of Pretoria in South Africa.

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

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.

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…

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

Team History of Africa and the Americas

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…

Sea-ing Africa explores how infrastructure in Ghana and Morocco shapes development, blending geopolitics, economics, and culture, impacting local and societal dynamics.

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.

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

Global health governance is at a crossroads. As the world reckons with the existential threat of planetary crises (climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution), international policy frameworks struggle to keep pace with a rapidly changing landscape in global health and public health.

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?

In this book, Lydie Cabane examines the history of disaster management in South Africa.

Comparative and Dutch Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

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…

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

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

VODAN Africa started as a platform to enable access to critical data needed from Africa to fight the novel COVID-19. The initiative was inspired by the experience from the Liberia Ebola Virus outbreak in 2014: early detection requires contact tracing. Inclusion of the most vulnerable is critical to…

The Leiden University Network for Health in Africa (LUNHA) aims to shift the focus of global health to be more about justice, fairness, and inclusion.

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 Institute of Political Science is a vibrant department with nearly 70 academic staff in Leiden and nearby The Hague.

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

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

History of Africa and the Americas

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.

It is often said that the links between political parties in Africa and their voters are clientelist, rather than programmatic. The familiar image is that of African ‘big men’, displaying personal wealth while being respected and celebrated in the community for sharing their riches. Yet, political scientist…

This research project 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 have…

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…

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.

This project aims at providing a broad perspective of the state of Science Technology and Innovation (STI) in Africa with a focus on global funding flows, in order to inform research funders in the continent, in particular those participating in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI). The project…

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

Do political knowledge and democratic values encourage young people to participate in politics or not? Political Scientist Leila Demarest had a closer look at adolescents’ participation intentions in Nigeria and shared her findings with The Conversation.

This project will study the influence of Arabic, Iberian, and Italian representations of Africa, as well as the impact of local African knowledge, on Dutch imaginations which were public in nature, and thus affected a shared European understanding of African alterity.