Inaugural lecture Professor Adriaan van Klinken
On 28 October 2021, Adriaan van Klinken will deliver his inaugural lecture as Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds, under the title Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa.
The School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (PRHS) and the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) are delighted to announce the inaugural professorial lecture of Adriaan van Klinken, which is also featured in Leeds11, Partner & Friends’ programme for Black History Month. The title of the lecture is “Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa”.
Please register here if you wish to attend, or click here to join the event via live-stream.
Adriaan is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa), in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice. At Leeds, he also serves as Director of both the Centre for Religion and Public Life and the Centre for African Studies. His prolific research is predominantly focused on the intersection of religion, gender, and sexuality in contemporary African settings.
Receiving his PhD from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) in 2011, Professor van Klinken joined the University of Leeds in 2013. He has written, published, and edited numerous articles and books, led externally-funded research projects and collaborations, and taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules and students. Among his key publications are the monograph Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism and Arts of Resistance in Africa (Penn State University Press, 2019), and the documentary film Kenyan, Christian, Queer (2020).
The inaugural lecture is loosely based on his recently-published book co-authored with Professor Ezra Chitando, Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa. The lecture explores how African thinkers, writers, activists, and artists contribute to the re-imagination of sexuality and Christianity in contemporary Africa, and how they debunk monolithic narratives of “African homophobia” and “religious homophobia”, thus opening up queer African futures.
All are warmly invited to attend what promises to be an engaging, meaningful, memorable, and informative lecture. The lecture is scheduled for Thursday 28 October 2021, beginning at 4.30pm (BST). There will be a reception to follow.
The venue of the event will be the Esther Simpson building, room 1.01. Please check the Campus Map for the location. It is a new building at Lyddon Terrace, just off Clarendon road (at the junction with Woodsley road) near Leeds University Business School.
Please register by 25 October via the University store if you wish to attend the event in person. Alternatively, you are welcome to join the live-stream via MS Teams.
In line with University covid campus policy, attendees are encouraged to wear face-covering (unless exempt) and to respect a 1 metre social distancing rule as much as possible.
For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Johanna Stiebert.