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About the Centre

tapestryThe Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) is one of the most interdisciplinary centres of African Studies in the UK and in Europe. It brings together scholars with an active interest in Africa from across different schools and faculties at the University of Leeds. The Centre also has an active community of postgraduate research students.

Members of our Centre are leading researchers in various sub-fields of African Studies, such as arts, cultures, development, health, history, literature, politics and political economy, and religion.  They have won research awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust, among other funders.

Here at LUCAS, we promote African Studies at the University of Leeds and in the city of Leeds, and are also part of the Yorkshire African Studies Network (YASN). In 2017 LUCAS joined the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS), a research network of centres for African studies in European countries.

We also run the Schools Africa Project, a scheme that recruits postgraduate African students to go into British schools and promote a better understanding of African cultures and societies to pupils.

Our centre began in 1964 as the African Studies Unit, and has grown from a small cataloguing enterprise to a research centre with an annual African Studies Lecture, a regular seminar programme and an annual African Studies Bulletin. For a brief history of our emergence as a centre, written by former LUCAS administrator Kate Banham, please see here.

With the generous sponsorship of the Morel Trust, we also run a book distribution scheme to African universities and institutions.  Our current board members are listed here.

For more information, or to be added to our mailing list for events, please email: african-studies@leeds.ac.uk

To follow us on twitter please see @CASLeeds

Illustration: The Cover of the annual LUCAS Bulletin - designed by David Richards, a former Deputy Director of LUCAS and former lecturer in the School of English at Leeds.