African Studies in the UK: measuring what we have achieved in the past 50 years

This article does not attempt to give a full answer to the question of what has been achieved in African Studies. It does attempt to give a preliminary checklist of measurement indices which might be helpful especially as the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) approaches its half century in 2013. ASAUK was founded in 1963, on the initiative of Professors Roland Oliver and John Fage, who went on to organise its first conference in 1964. Appropriately this was held at the University of Birmingham, where Fage had been appointed to direct a new (1962) Centre of West African Studies. Identifying Birmingham as the first Africa-dedicated centre in the UK must not be allowed to mask the pioneering role of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) which however, though founded in 1916, did not add Africa to its title until 1938.