In February 2023, the University of the Free State, South Africa, hosted the workshop 'Social History from the Global South: New Voice from Southern Africa', funded by the British Academy. This workshop was organised to address the issue of research output in the humanities from the African Continent. In a series of six sessions, the participants focused on the topic of journal publishing. They identified certain limitations, discussed writing techniques, and established new approaches to the publishing process. In this blog, historians Kate Law, Andrew Cohen, Matt Graham and Alfred Tembo highlight the workshop's aims, objectives and principal outcomes.

In the sixth and final article in our current blog series, 'Historical Research in the Digital Age', Jo Guldi reflects on her long experience of working with digital sources and tools as a historian, with particular focus on the opportunities and challenges inherent within text mining for historical research. As historians, Jo argues, we need to remain open to changes of direction, prompted by digital innovation, while also remaining grounded in the physical archive that digital may enhance but not replace.

In this fifth post in our 'Historical Research in the Digital Age' series, Gerben Zaagsma explores the concept of 'digital abundance' in global perspective. When we speak about abundance, whose abundance are we talking about, who can access it, and why does it matter? Allocations of digital resources, and the capacity to access digital content, reflect wider discrepancies in research culture between the Global North and South. However, as Gerben argues, the realities of digital imbalance also complicate these binary divisions. These are deficits of which we all need to be aware and to address.