A year-long writing and mentoring programme designed to help early career scholars based in Eastern and Southern Africa publish their PhD research in high-impact international journals is now accepting applications, with a deadline of May 20, 2026. Developed in partnership with the journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies and funded by the British Academy, the programme centres on a four-day in-person academic writing workshop at the University of Nairobi from August 11–14, 2026, and extends through an online mentoring, skills development, and networking programme running from June 2026 to May 2027. Accommodation and travel bursaries will be provided for all selected participants.

The workshop will bring together fifteen early career researchers working across African cultural history, performance, literatures, music, visual cultures, gender, media and technology, creative industries, world literature, and postcolonial studies. Experienced book and journal editors will be in attendance, offering participants feedback on their work, guidance on academic publishing processes and grant writing, and the opportunity to build relationships with an assigned mentor and peer writing group. The first day of the in-person workshop has been timed to coincide with the closing day of an academic conference on Eastern African Literary and Publishing Networks 1963–1978, hosted by the University of Nairobi’s Department of Literature in collaboration with the University of Exeter’s Department of English and Creative Writing.

To be eligible, applicants must be based in Eastern or Southern Africa and must be currently enrolled in a PhD programme or have been awarded a PhD within the last five years. Applications should be sent to [email protected] and must include a brief expression of interest with contact details for two referees (up to 300 words), a short CV including the date of conferral or expected conferral of the PhD, a substantive chapter or extract from the PhD (up to 10,000 words), and a 200–300 word abstract for an article to be developed from the PhD research through the workshop. Selected participants will be notified in early June and will be expected to submit a 4,000-word plan or extract of the article by July 20, 2026. The deadline for applications is May 20, 2026.