Deadline: 15 March 2011
Contact: d.kerr@bham.ac.uk
Call for Applications: ASAUK Writing Workshop for African Scholars
26-28 April 2011 in Nigeria
The African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) is currently organising a writing workshop in Nigeria to assist young scholars to prepare material for publication in international journals. The ASAUK is committed to enhancing academic links between British and African institutions and to increasing representation in British journals of work by scholars based in Africa. Previous ASAUK workshops in the UK and in other parts of Africa have been extremely well received and there has been a strong demand for places. The workshop will bring the editors of three UK-based Africanist journals, namely Africa, Journal of Modern African Studies (JMAS) and Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) to Nigeria in order to support doctoral and recently post-doctoral students as well as junior staff based in Nigerian universities in submitting articles for publication in international Africanist journals. The participating journals have asked prospective participants of the workshop to submit articles which address the journal themes outlined below. A second aim of the workshop is to bring together Nigerian and UK-based journal
editors to discuss shared interests and problems, and to explore possibilities for future co-operation.
The workshop is planned to take place in Nigeria on 26-28 April 2011, and it will be organised in collaboration with the Osun State University (UNIOSUN) at Osogbo, a peaceful city famous for its artistic community roughly 120 miles northeast of Lagos. The workshop organisers will provide accommodation and food for the duration of the workshop. Applicants may also be eligible for the reimbursement of travel costs.
The African Studies Association of the UK looks forward to hearing from you.
For more information, please see the Applicant details below or contact Mr David Kerr (d.kerr@bham.ac.uk).
Applicant Details
Eligibility: Scholars of all nationalities who have spent the past 3 years at a Nigerian university.
Deadline for receipt of applications: 15 March 2011.
In order to qualify for the workshop, scholars are invited to send in the following documents: A short CV including their name, gender, academic career and position at their current institution. A completed, full-length article (5,500-7,000 words) based on original research. Please indicate clearly whether you are addressing a theme and which journal you are targeting. If you would like to stay for the second part of the workshop, please give information about the journal you wish to represent. If you wish to apply for a reimbursement of travel costs, you must also submit an estimate of expenses (least expensive option, by road only).
Selection criteria: The primary selection criterion is the quality of the article submitted. The organisers also aim to attract scholars from institutions in the different geographical regions/ zones of Nigeria. Senior scholar are invited to apply if they feel this workshop would benefit them, but once the above criteria have been addressed, preference will be given to junior scholars.
Please send applications electronically to Mr David Kerr and Dr Insa Nolte at the University of Birmingham, email addresses: d.kerr@bham.ac.uk and m.i.nolte@bham.ac.uk.
Journal themes
Africa
Africa encourages an interdisciplinary approach, involving humanities, social sciences, and environmental sciences. The journal aims to give increased attention to African production of knowledge, highlighting the work of local African thinkers and writers, emerging social and cultural trends ‘on the ground', and links between local and national levels of society. At the same time, it maintains its commitment to the theoretically informed analysis of the realities of Africa's own cultural categories. For this workshop, we would be particularly interested in papers that focus on some aspect of local intellectual or cultural production – e.g. community newspapers, local histories, posters, pamphlets, oral genres or private video entrepreneurs. For more information, please see http://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org/journal.html
JMAS
The Journal of Modern African Studies places a very high emphasis on original research studies, usually derived from fieldwork in Africa, which at the same time help to illuminate issues currently affecting Africa. We do not publish general overviews, literature reviews, purely theoretical articles, or polemics. We do whatever we can to encourage African authors, and especially scholars based in Africa and carrying out research there. The journal is however internationally refereed, and accepted papers have to meet the standards required.We range broadly across the social sciences, though with a concentration in political science, sociology, gender, economics and international relations, while insisting that papers must be sufficiently non-technical to be read with interest and understood by Africanists working in other disciplines. We do not normally publish papers that fall into the fields of history, linguistics or literary studies, unless these illuminate issues of broader current concern. We do not publish studies on the African diaspora, but would be very interested in research into the impact of the diaspora on developments within Africa. For more information, please see http://assets.cambridge.org/MOA/MOA_ifc.pdf
ROAPE
Since 1974, ROAPE has provided radical analysis of trends, issues and social processes in Africa. It pays particular attention to the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression, whether driven by global forces or local ones such as class, race, ethnicity and gender), and to broadly materialist interpretations of change. It sustains a critical analysis of the nature of power and the state in Africa in the context of capitalist globalisation. For more information, please see http://www.roape.org/