Pan African Women's Day & Other News
In this newsletter, we would like to bring your attention to the recently celebrated Pan-African Women’s Day. We highlight an article by Derosha Moodley and Ansurie Pillay in the latest issue of Bakwethu, ‘Hamlet, role-play and narrative empathy: Studying Shakespeare through social and emotional learning at a South African Higher Education Institution’. Gender in this article comes through in an interesting, fairly incidental way. Participant E reflects on playing Ophelia and shares feelings about not being listened to, especially as a woman, and the article draws on a “pedagogy of discomfort” in discussing gender, psychology, and social conventions in the Polonius-Ophelia-Laertes dynamic.
Bakwethu: A Journal of Shakespeare Studies aims to foreground voices, methodologies and artistic approaches that have historically been underrepresented in Shakespeare studies, particularly, though not exclusively, those from Africa and the Global South. Read Volume 1, Issue 1 for free on ScienceOpen here.
Call for New Journals
We are looking to partner with more journals published from the African continent for 2027. Applications are open here. The deadline is 30 September 2026, although we welcome earlier applications and requests for informal discussions prior to making an application.
In 2025, Pluto Journals and African Books Collective (ABC) launched the African Journals Initiative working with a growing community of no-fee (‘diamond’) Open Access (OA) social science and humanities journals based in African universities, supported by ScienceOpen and JSTOR.
Ibadan on DOAJ
We are thrilled to announce that the Ibadan Journal of Sociology has been accepted for indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). This milestone significantly enhances the journal’s global visibility and credibility, ensuring that its scholarship is more easily discoverable by researchers, authors, and institutions worldwide. The initial six 2025 AJI journals and five new 2026 AJI titles are Diamond Open Access and all articles are free to read. You will be able to see the issues as they are published on ScienceOpen and JSTOR
We are currently considering titles for 2027 and have an exciting selection of journals from across Africa. We look forward to sharing them with you.
If you have any colleagues that might be interested, please share this newsletter with them. We will continue to highlight the latest articles from the African Journals Initiative, and they can sign up here.
