No free photograph
Jan Vansina
Belgian historian and anthropologist (1929-2017) · Belgium · On the map · Academics · Died at 87
Jan M. J. Vansina was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was a major innovator in the historical methodology of oral tradition.
Jan Vansina is read about 31 times a day, in 10 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 7 July 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Awards
About this person
As a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he taught several generations of students and, according to a biographer, "set the pace in African historical studies from the 1950s into the 1990s."
