African Studies Leiden University

Overview

The multidisciplinary African Studies master’s programme offers you an opportunity to learn about Africa from a wide range of angles, including historical, literary, cultural, socio-economic, and political. The programme offers a solid methodological and comprehensive programme with six cross-cutting themes: ‘Framing Africa’, ‘Developing?’, ‘Decolonizing?’, ‘Dwelling and moving’, ‘Caring’ and ‘World-viewing’. At Leiden, relevance and real-world issues are at the fore, which means that you get to critically analyse current events as they unfold, from a broad, comparative, and global perspective.

An important part of the master's programme is a ten-weeks embedded research project with a societal organisation in Africa or Africa-related setting elsewhere. Here, you can test your new skills and ideas in practice while gaining invaluable cultural and professional experience. You will receive funding for your embedded research project.

What you will learn

The Master’s in African Studies programme at Leiden University aims to equip you with a range of key skills and knowledge. Whichever your area of specialisation, you will graduate with a global and comparative context to your knowledge and the critical-thinking skills to shed new light on established ideas. Besides specialist knowledge of Africa, you will also develop a number of general skills that form valuable assets in their search for employment thanks to a period of internship in Africa. Moreover, the programme aims to raise students to a level of knowledge and skills that allows them to proceed to PhD research.

Career prospects

The master’s programme in African Studies offers outstanding preparation for high-level positions in the international job market. Your degree equips you for an impactful career in cultural organisations, education, policy-making, business, tourism, development, publishing, public relations, or journalism.

Examples of the diverse professions of our graduates include:

• Policy officer for agriculture and trade at an embassy in Ghana
• Teacher of African languages
• Journalist
• Curator at a cultural institution
• Manager of a translation and/or interpreting agency
• Project Manager at an NGO in Africa
• PhD candidate at the Centre of African Studies in Edinburgh
• Team leader at a human rights organisation
• Policymaker at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Accreditation

Accredited by NVAO, the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders.