We share with you a project that drkasembelicentre.org recently completed as part of the work of the ASAUK/ASAA collaboration with the Journal Work Academy. The culmination of months of work was a special issue which included early career Scholars from across Africa – from Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, and was published in the Journal of African Cultural Studies.  

The work we did in the Journal Work Academy was about starting with the drafts of early career researchers and supporting them through the writing process. This publication work was important because it enlightened us on the publication process- working with the editors, with blind peer reviewers, with the writers on the other end. The labour involved following up on these writers, encouraging them, getting updates from the editor, following up on how the writers were responding to the revisions requested during the peer review process. The heart of the work at Journal Work Academy, as outlined on its web site, “is to encourage collaborative work, and [it] understands journal publishing not simply as a step to career advancement, but as an engaged and contextual scholarly practice.”

In the jointly authored introduction to the issue I wrote: “This Special Issue work was one of labour, the invisible labour and strife that goes into research and publishing. It was about working with researchers who are also human: they are family people, working people, they experience loss, are swamped with work, pain, sickness, trauma, mental instabilities. It was about deconstructing the myth that academia is for the well put together and organized. It was working with this kind of researchers that made this work exciting and unique. Unique because it portrayed the way in which the self is not removed from the research.”

The work we do at drkasembelicentre.org is to enable writers and researchers who experience multiple challenges, or those who only have rough sketches of their work. We look for informal peer reviewers, edit and give content analysis, help identify reading materials and make recommendations on possible publishing venues. 

Write to us on our comments page for more information.

See attached  the co-authored introduction titled “Slow Research and Peer Support: An Alternative Model of Networking”, and published in the Journal of African Cultural Studies.