IN MEMORIAM DR SABINE LUNING (1959-2025)
With great sadness the NIMAR colleagues learned about the death of our dear colleague Dr Sabine Luning on 6 March 2025. Sabine was a highly appreciated associate professor of anthropology at Leiden University and a prolific scholar. Her main area of research was West Africa, while during recent years she focused on issues of extractive practices (especially gold mining) and large infrastructural works. She played a mayor role in the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus cluster PortCityFutures. Together with Carola Hein she obtained a Leiden University Fund grant in 2023 for a three year field school project “Sea-ing Africa: Tracing Legacies and Engaging Future Promises of ‘Big’ Infrastructure Projects in Port City Territories in Ghana and Morocco”, in which among others the University of Ghana in Legon/Accra, the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture in Rabat and NIMAR are partners. In January 2024 we had a very fruitful preliminiary meeting in Takoradi. Sabine was scheduled to come soon afterwards to her beloved Morocco to prepare the first field school in Rabat. Unfortunately, reasons of health prevented her from joining us. Gradually it became clear that she would never be able to return to Morocco, to which she not only had scholarly ties, but was also connected personally through her foster son Bilal. Bilal spoke movingly about this during her funeral on 14 March 2025. We dearly missed Sabine, her ideas, her energy and her joy of life dearly during the first field school last January in Rabat. We are very grateful for all her academic work, her dedicated teaching and mentoring, and her dear friendship. We will cherish the legacy of her inspiring work and our memories of a beloved colleague and friend.For more extensive evocations of Sabine Luning’s life and work please consult:
In Memoriam: Sabine Luning (30 augustus 1959 - 6 maart 2025) - Leiden University