Person

Vansina, Claudine

Born in 1929 in Antwerp, Belgium, he trained as a medievalist before accepting a position in 1952 as an anthropologist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then a Belgian colony ... working at the Institute for Scientific Research in Central Africa (IRSAC) in Butare, Rwanda, where he met his wife-to-be, Claudine [où il rencontre sa future femme, Claudine Herman (marié sept. 1954)] Vansina went back to Leuven to earn a licence (BA) in historical linguistics and to defend a Ph.D. on “The Historical Value of Oral Tradition: Application to Kuba History” (1957). Professor emeritus Jan Vansina, one of the world's foremost historians of Africa, died peacefully in Madison on Wednesday, February 8, 2017. He was surrounded by his wife, Claudine, and his son, Bruno