The Journal of Eastern African Studies is a new international publication for work of high academic quality on issues of interest and concern in the region of Eastern Africa. It aims to promote fresh scholarly enquiry on the region from within the humanities and the social sciences, and to encourage work that communicates across disciplinary boundaries. It seeks to foster inter-disciplinary analysis, strong comparative perspectives, and research employing the most significant theoretical or methodological approaches for the region.
The Editors welcome submissions from all academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, development studies, economics, environmental studies, geography, history, international relations, literatures and languages, political economy, politics, social policy and sociology. We also wish to encourage inter-disciplinary research, and welcome articles that combine complimentary approaches and methodologies.
The coverage of the Journal of Eastern African Studies embraces a vast region from the Nile to the Limpopo rivers, encompassing Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia; Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi (and the eastern portions of the Democratic Republic of Congo); and Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and the islands of the Indian Ocean (including Seychelles, Comoros, Mauritius, Reunion and Madagascar).
The Journal will be published three times each year, in March, July and November. All papers submitted for publication to the Journal will be subject to international peer review, in which the Journal's Advisory Board will play an active role. The Editors will only accept for publication those papers that receive favourable reviews. Guidelines for scholars intending to submit papers for publication can be found at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/. The editors will encourage the very best scholarship, and nurture work from those based within the region as well as in the eastern African scholarly diaspora.
The Editors hope that this new journal will make a distinctive contribution to the wider field of African Studies publishing in three important respects. First, the geographical range of the journal represents an innovative definition of what constitutes the eastern portion of the African continent. We believe that this wider eastern Africa has intellectual and scholarly meaning, as well as representing an emerging political reality in terms of regional association and linkage. Second, over the past decade academic work on this wider eastern African region has gained a reputation for scholarly quality, imaginative research and political engagement. In providing a forum for this scholarly work, we hope that the Journal of Eastern African Studies will become the publication of first choice for those writing about this region. Of particular importance is the fact that we see the Journal of Eastern African Studies as an inclusive forum, one that brings together on equal footing scholars within the region and those in other parts of Africa, Europe and North America. Thirdly, we want the articles published in this journal to interrogate the complex dynamics of life in eastern Africa, offering new approaches to unraveling local realities through innovative and challenging research and writing. We hope that the range of topics and quality of scholarship offered in this first issue of the new journal signals this intent. Our capacity to maintain this depends upon the support of our readers, and we urge you to support the Journal of Eastern African Studies both through individual and institutional subscriptions, and through offering us your very best work for publication. This is intended as a journal for eastern Africa: we hope you will join us in making it a success.