Legal scholar Hans Holleman   served as a director from 1963 to 1969. Barbara Harrell-Bond worked at the Centre in the 1970s. Kofi Abrefa Busia, who later became prime minister of Ghana, worked at the African Studies Centre between 1959 and 1962. Former director Stephen Ellis was editor in chief of "Africa Confidential". Petrus Johannes Idenburg, lector of African constitutional law at Leiden University, was one of the founders of the Centre. The Centre was one of the founders of AEGIS, a network of African Studies Centres in Europe that was set up in 1991 to build upon the resources and research potential available within Africanist institutions in Europe. As of 1 January 2016, the African Studies Centre is a part of Leiden University. On 1 September 2017, Jan-Bart Gewald became the new director of the ASC replacing Ton Dietz who had been director since 2010. The Centre publishes extensively, sometimes in cooperation with publishers such as Brill Publishers in Leiden. Among the ASC publications are: