As we open Volume 16 of the Journal, we are pleased to report that our readership has continued to grow despite the challenges of the past two years. Downloads increased to more than 170,000 in 2021, with 30% of those coming from Africa. Kenya (3), Uganda (5), Ethiopia (7) and South Africa (8) were in the top 10 downloading countries. Submission rates also remain strong, up 16% on pre-pandemic levels, with many submissions from scholars based in Eastern Africa, and other parts of the continent. The Editorial team are grateful to our readers and authors for their continued engagement and to our reviewers, our Editorial Advisory Board, our sponsor the British Institute in Eastern Africa, and our publisher Taylor & Francis for their support.
We are also grateful to Dr Richard Vokes, who has stepped down from the Editorial Board with the end of Volume 15. Richard joined the journal in mid-2015 and helped to steer its growth through the last five years, including navigating the challenges of the pandemic and its knock-on effects. We are pleased that he will continue his association with JEAS by joining the Editorial Advisory Board.
With Volume 16, the Editors are very pleased to welcome Dr Florence Brisset-Foucault to the team. Florence is an established scholar of Ugandan politics, whose interdisciplinary approaches bridge politics, history and media studies. She recently published Talkative Polity: Radio, Domination and Citizenship in Uganda in the Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series for Ohio University Press (2019). She is a former member of the editorial committee of Politique africaine (2014-2020). Dr Brisset-Foucault will help to develop the Editorial Advisory Board and editorial team, strengthening our connections to the Francophone research community, in Eastern Africa and globally. Florence is a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a researcher at the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF) in France. She is a Junior Fellow at the Institut universitaire de France. Her interests lie in the sociology and history of citizenship, media and socio-political critique in Uganda.
We look forward to the rest of the year ahead, to your engagement with the articles in this issue and the rest of Volume 16, and to the journal’s continued growth and support for scholarship from and about Eastern Africa.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.