Changing partnerships in African Studies : The example of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands

Variations in partnerships or collaboration between European and African Social Science research institutes can be situated within the general history of African studies and Euro-African partnerships. An important debate dominates the history of African studies and the partnerships developed, namely that of the hegemony of knowledge production about Africa. The Netherlands provides an interesting example of these developments. In this chapter we examine the history of the collaboration policies of one of the major African Studies institutes in Europe, the African Studies Centre (ASC) in Leiden, the Netherlands. In this chapter the history of partnerships at the ASC is outlined with the help of evaluations as available in the archives and in the memories of senior colleagues at the ASC; and we discuss extensively the partnership with CODESRIA that was established in 2005

Violences structurelles et violences systémiques. La violence ordinaire des rapports sociaux en Afrique

L’étude de la violence ordinaire s’est développée dans les années 90, principalement dans les cercles d’ONGs et de mouvements militants. Pour les sciences sociales, c’est un nouveau terrain de recherche qui a besoin d’investigations approfondies. Dans cette introduction du bulletin de l’APAD sur les « violences ordinaires », nous explorons différentes réflexions théoriques sur l’étude de la violence au quotidien. Un des principaux arguments est que la violence actuelle, telle que décrite dans les différentes études de cas, peut être liée aux changements qui affectent les rapports sociaux autant que les normes et valeurs dans des sociétés africaines en mutation accélérée. Cependant, en l’état actuel de nos connaissances, la prudence s’impose et nous incite à éviter toute perspective victimisante dans l’analyse de la violence du changement social en Afrique.Title : Structural Violences & Systemic Violences. Daily Violence in African Social Links The study of ordinary violence only developed in the 1990ies, mainly in circles of NGO and militant writing. For the social sciences it is a new field of study that still needs to be explored. In this introduction of the special issue of the APAD bulletin on ‛violences ordinaires’ we explore different theoretical reflections on the study of ordinary violence. One of the principal arguments is that the present day violence as described in the different case studies can be linked to changes in social relations and norms and values surrounding these in African societies who are rapidly transforming. However we should be cautious in our presentations and avoid victimisation perspectives in the analysis of social change in Africa in terms of violence

The mobile phone and society in South Sudan : a critical historical-anthropological approach

This article outlines the development of mobile telephony in the nascent Republic of South Sudan (ROSS). We focus specifically on Juba, during turbulent times from the end of the second Sudanese Civil War in 2005 to just after independence in 2011. We highlight the complicated political relations behind the establishment of mobile networks and the main functions and importance of the mobile phone throughout this period. Despite major technical obstacles, reconnecting with (war-) dispersed relatives, providing security in the post-CPA period marked by high insecurity and symbolizing hope and access to markets were important features of mobile phone use in Juba. Mobile phones were also essential to the rapid development of migrant dominated trade and business. Through this case-study we aim to shed light on the way in which (new) communication technologies become entangled with mobility, politics and entrepreneurship in a (post) war setting characterized by a displacement economy

Poverty is Bad: Ways forward in livelihood research

In this paper, we take the view that the essence of poverty is the fact that one or several basic conditions for generating a living are not being met. The conditions considered most vital for making a living are to a certain extent context specific and subject to (cultural and social) interpretation and evaluation

Social media in the Global South: A Network Dataset of the Malian Twittersphere

With the expansion of mobile communications infrastructure, social media usage in the Global South is surging. Compared to the Global North, populations of the Global South have had less prior experience with social media from stationary computers and wired Internet. Many countries are experiencing violent conflicts that have a profound effect on their societies. As a result, social networks develop under different conditions than elsewhere, and our goal is to provide data for studying this phenomenon. In this dataset paper, we present a data collection of a national Twittersphere in a West African country of conflict. While not the largest social network in terms of users, Twitter is an important platform where people engage in public discussion. The focus is on Mali, a country beset by conflict since 2012 that has recently had a relatively precarious media ecology. The dataset consists of tweets and Twitter users in Mali and was collected in June 2022, when the Malian conflict became more violent internally both towards external and international actors. In a preliminary analysis, we assume that the conflictual context influences how people access social media and, therefore, the shape of the Twittersphere and its characteristics. The aim of this paper is to primarily invite researchers from various disciplines including complex networks and social sciences scholars to explore the data at hand further. We collected the dataset using a scraping strategy of the follower network and the identification of characteristics of a Malian Twitter user. The given snapshot of the Malian Twitter follower network contains around seven million accounts, of which 56,000 are clearly identifiable as Malian. In addition, we present the tweets. The dataset is available at: https://osf.io/mj2q/?view_only=460f5daef1024f05a0d45e082d26059f (peer review version).Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

CD26-negative and CD26-positive tissue-resident fibroblasts contribute to functionally distinct CAF subpopulations in breast cancer

The origin of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in cancer remains to be identified. Here, single-cell transcriptomics, in vivo and in vitro studies suggest that CD26+ and CD26- normal fibroblasts transform into distinct CAF subpopulations in mouse models of breast cancer

Group 2 innate lymphoid cells exhibit a dynamic phenotype in allergic airway inflammation

Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) are implicated in allergic asthma as an early innate source of the type 2 cytokines IL-5 and IL-13. However, their induction in house dust mite (HDM)-mediated airway inflammation additionally requires T cell activation. It is currently unknown whether phenotypic differences exist between ILC2s that are activated in a T cell-dependent or T cell-independent fashion. Here, we compared ILC2s in IL-33-and HDM-driven airway inflammation. Using flow cytometry, we found that surface expression levels of various markers frequently used to identify ILC2s were dependent on their mode of activation, highly variable over time, and differed between tissue compartments, including bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid, lung, draining lymph nodes, and spleen. Whereas in vivo IL-33-activated BAL fluid ILC2s exhibited an almost uniform CD25+CD127+T1/ST2+ICOS+KLRG1+ phenotype, at a comparable time point after HDM exposure BAL fluid ILC2s had a very heterogeneous surface marker phenotype. A major fraction of HDM-activated ILC2s were CD25lowCD127+T1/ST2low ICOSlowKLRG1low, but nevertheless had the capacity to produce large amounts of type 2 cytokines. HDM-activated CD25low ILC2s in BAL fluid and lung rapidly reverted to CD25high ILC2s upon in vivo stimulation with IL-33. Genome-wide transcriptional profiling of BAL ILC2s revealed ~1,600 differentially expressed genes: HDM-stimulated ILC2s specifically expressed genes involved in the regulation of adaptive immunity through B and T cell interactions, whereas IL-33-stimulated ILC2s expressed high levels of proliferation-related and cytokine genes. In both airway inflammation models ILC2s were present in the lung submucosa close to epithelial cells, as identified by confocal microscopy. In chronic HDM-driven airway inflammation ILC2s were also found inside organized cellular infiltrates near T cells. Collectively, our findings show that ILC2s are phenotypically more heterogeneous than previously thought, whereby their surface marker and gene expression profile are highly dynamic