Call For Papers – Writing Workshops
Call For Papers – Writing Workshops: Defiant Scholarship In Africa 2024
Summary:
We are inviting early career scholars to apply for writing workshops in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with subjects and techniques rooted in “defiant scholarship in Africa.”
We will seek to identify and confront the academic imperialism(s) and racism(s) that persist in the prevailing publication patterns over the course of these three-day hybrid workshops. To break with self-referencing, recursive, and imperial practices of social science research, we shall prioritize work that pursues decolonial, solidarity, and anti-colonial approaches (Ake 1979). Crucially, our group rejects popular models of North/South writing workshops, which all too frequently start with implicit presumptions that there is a lack of publishing expertise or competence in African contexts that has to be “corrected.”
The corporate and neoliberal practices of scholarly publication that have resulted in the corporate takeover of knowledge at Western institutions are rejected as unworkable. This includes, for instance, the “publish or perish” ideologies, which might be implicit or explicit, and how they are expressed at African universities as “publish and perish” (Nyamnjoh 2004: 331-335). Excessive competition, exhaustion, desperation, plagiarism, and idea theft have all been brought about by such approaches to hiring and retaining academic labor (Muhs et al. 2012; see also Hengel’s 2022 analysis of discrimination of female-authored articles during peer review; and Assis et al. 2023: 75 on exclusions faced by women authors in HE).
Requirements for Writing Workshops: Defiant Scholarship In Africa Qualification:
- Early-career researchers pursuing their PhD or within three years of completion of the PhD. Scholars should be affiliated with a university or research institute in the Central Africa or Horn of Africa regions.
- Language: Papers must be submitted in English or French. There will be live English/French translation at Workshop 1 in Yaoundé.
- Workshop 1 will be held in Yaoundé from 18 – 20 June 2024. Workshop 2 will be held in Addis Ababa from 7-9 October 2024. Accepted participants should be available to attend one workshop in-person and will attend select sessions of the other workshop online.
Country to study:
Application Deadline:
04 Mar 2024
Interview date, Process and Venue for Writing Workshops: Defiant Scholarship in Africa
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Workshop Dates: 18 – 20 June 2024
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Workshop Dates: 7-9 October 2024
