CHSS Research Centre - Centre of African Studies

Centre of African Studies

Image

The University of Edinburgh has important and long historical connections with Africa. The Centre was founded in 1962 as one of the original African Studies Centres in the UK established by the Hayter Commission and today is of the world’s leading hubs for the study of the African continent. The Centre of African Studies acts as a focal point for postgraduate teaching and supervision on Africa and a hub for research programmes that span all three of the University’s colleges. Our range of postgraduate degrees has expanded recently and we offer both on-campus and e-learning programmes. The Centre regularly appears at the top of Good University Guides, hosts a vibrant, cutting edge research community and delivers a range of high quality masters and doctoral programmes. Our students prepare for careers in academia and beyond: two former students featured in a recent ‘top 50 influential Scots’ newspaper feature, and many other of our graduates have pursued successful academic, non-profit and government careers.  Our researchers are internationally recognised. We currently host over a dozen research projects, including several large, international collaborative projects, and engage in multidisciplinary research that seeks to shed new light on Africa’s past, its politics, its development and its future. We act as a cultural hub for Africa in Scotland and in the UK. We support the highly successful Africa in Motion annual film festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we have close working relationships with the Scottish Parliament and Government and with local and African NGOs, we engage with African communities in Scotland and we seek to forge closer relationships between Scotland, the UK, Europe and Africa. The Centre in June 2019 will host in Edinburgh the European Conferences on African Studies (crf. 1,500 participants).

Visit the Centre of African Studies website to learn more.