Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University

About Us

About Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University:

The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) is the premier research institution and archive on Afghanistan in the region, with the most extensive collection of primary resources available in print and digital formats. The mission of ACKU is to promote literacy, facilitate scholarly work, and provide academic research training through its archive, digital library, and outreach and research programs.

ACKU was initially known as ACBAR Resource & Information Center (ARIC). The concept was envisioned by Louis Dupree and Nancy Hatch Dupree, two of the foremost experts on Afghanistan history and culture. After the death of Louis in 1989, Nancy continued to work for the protection of cultural heritage through ARIC and later ACKU with a motto of “nation building through information sharing.”

Programs

The Library/Digital Resources

The ACKU library holds extensive collection of documents on Afghanistan collected from various sources. Currently, it has more than 170,000 documents in Farsi, Pashto, English, and some other local and European languages. Its collection comprises of monographs, posters, newspapers, slides, CDs, fact sheets, music recordings, periodicals and magazines stretching back decades. The primary activities of ACKU library includes acquiring, cataloging, digitizing the documents and making these accessible to local and international users through user-friendly online databases.

ACKU Box Library Extension

The mission of ABLE is to improve literacy among children and adults by promoting a culture of reading through easy-to-read books and educational material that is locally written and published. Since 1996, ABLE has established 277 libraries in communities across all 34 provinces. These libraries have over 200,000 annual users. ABLE has published 419 books in Farsi, Pashto and, recently in, Uzbeki, on a variety of subjects based on the user suggestions, of which over 50 titles are for young readers.

Communications and Research

ACKU promotes and supports a strong research environment in Afghanistan by training local scholars in research methodology, critical analysis and academic writing. University students and faculty members are main beneficiaries of the research courses. An academic research project on the issue of migration was completed at ACKU in collaboration with City, University of London in late 2018. In addition, ACKU organizes various events, such as seminars, conferences and workshops, and hosts sponsored events from partner institutions on its premises. Through this, ACKU aims to provide a platform for Afghan and international scholars to interact and exchange idea