This is a call for papers and discussants for the first annual Workshop on Southern Africa (WOZA!) Conference, to be held Friday May 1 - Sunday May 3, 2026. In 2024, the organization formerly known as North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa (NEWSA) changed its name to WOZA! to acknowledge that it is no longer composed only of scholars based in the northeastern part of North America. With our new name, we hope to carry on NEWSA’s long-established spirit of community, intellectual seriousness, and warm engagement with new scholarship. For more information, please see our website:  https://sites.google.com/view/workshoponsouthernafrica/home 

Submission deadline, October 1, 2025

About the Conference:

WOZA! is an interdisciplinary conference open to scholars at all stages of their careers. We encourage scholars from all disciplines who are currently working on southern Africa (Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, the Indian Ocean Islands, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to submit proposals.

WOZA! is organized around intensive discussion of pre-circulated papers. There are also many opportunities for informal conversation about work in progress. This workshop model is designed to give southern Africanists the opportunity for close discussion of work across a wide variety of scholarly fields.

We aim to prioritize scholarship, regardless of discipline or topic, that is evidence-based and grounded in analysis of African discourses and concepts. The program committee encourages submissions from advanced graduate students and junior faculty. We especially encourage participation from African professionals, scholars and graduate students, including those currently based outside the continent. 

Participants may: (a) present a paper (b) propose a panel of three or four papers, or (c) serve as a discussant. Because of the high demand for participation relative to the size of the conference facility, and our desire to maintain the workshop atmosphere, we can only allow attendees who are presenting papers or serving as discussants, and we expect attendees to be present for the majority/all of the sessions. 

Logistics:

We will host the 2026 meeting, our first in-person gathering as WOZA!, at the Isabella Freedman Center in the Connecticut Berkshires  (https://adamah.org/retreat-centers/isabella-freedman/ ), from May 1-3, 2026. Located on 400 acres with a private lake and a working farm, the Isabella Freedman Center provides an ideal location to continue the NEWSA/WOZA! tradition of a scholarly retreat. Conference registration will include communal meals and on-site accommodation. This venue will also enable us to accept a limited number of virtual/online participants.

For conference costs please see website

Hybrid/online option:

WOZA! hopes to continue NEWSA’s tradition of in-person, retreat-style engagement, where many productive conversations happen informally, in addition to the scheduled sessions. But we also recognize that a variety of barriers can make it challenging for people to attend in person. We have a limited number of spots available for online (remote) participation, which you may request when submitting your abstract/proposal. These spots will be allocated when we accept proposals. Because we need to pay for our venue, we cannot permit last-minute switches to online participation.

Submission Instructions:

The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2025. We will notify accepted participants by the end of October, and ask that if accepted, you confirm attendance and pay your registration fee by December 15, 2025, so that we may finalize our booking with the conference venue.

Please use this submission form to submit: https://forms.gle/GkjzKf1zHySGQZwi9

 Individual Paper Submission Instructions: Your abstract should explain the argument you intend to make, the source of your evidence (e.g., archival, fieldwork, survey), and the contribution your paper makes to understanding significant problems in southern Africa, to furthering conceptual debates, and/or to producing new knowledge in Southern African Studies. WOZA! papers should not be previously published, and will ideally be at a stage of preparation that allows for incorporation of the feedback received during the workshop. The maximum length for the abstract is 500 words. 

Panel Submission Instructions: If you wish to organize your own three- or four-paper panel, your proposal should include a brief rationale for how the papers fit together  (250-400 words), as well as the abstracts for each individual paper (space is provided in the submission form). The organizers will be happy to negotiate alternative panel formats (such as open discussions of a current issue). We also reserve the right to accept only some papers within a panel. You may choose to include a discussant or leave it to us to provide one.  

Discussant Instructions: If you wish to serve as a discussant, please use the online submission form to indicate the areas of southern African studies on which you are most prepared to comment. Once the workshop participants are selected and organized into panels, each panel will be assigned a discussant. Discussants read the pre-circulated papers by the participants in their session and, after authors introduce their papers, give a 10-minute comment on the papers individually and collectively. Discussants also coordinate discussion of the papers amongst those attending the panel.

Completed papers, not to exceed 8,000 words, will be due March 15, 2026, so that the papers can be pre-circulated on the conference website ahead of the meeting. Pre-circulating papers is an essential part of the WOZA! experience. Papers are kept confidential among conference participants and will not be circulated beyond attendees.

As an intellectual community, WOZA! recognizes that scholarly interpretation can undergird economic, political and social marginalization.  We also recognize that power exists within scholarly communities, and that some members of our community are marginalized due to sex, gender, race, disability, nationality, and/or institutional position.  We are committed to working against such marginalization, and the programming committee has a mandate to create and prioritize panels that help achieve this goal. 

For any questions, please contact newsa.workshop@gmail.com