When I started this blog in October 2011, I saw it as a means to communicate my research with a crowd beyond the academic one and beyond my articles in journals and books. I also needed a tool where I could present temporary research findings faster than in slow-paced academic publications and where I could write more freely and in a less formal manner. I soon found that some friends and colleagues had the same need, so I extended this space to include their texts as well. Sometimes, strangers approached me to publish here, and sometimes, I approached people to write something for me. A few times I also, after permission, re-published texts that I found particularly interesting.

Years later, I look back at a surprisingly rich body of work: articles by people at the frontlines of research, quite often presenting commentaries on what is happening right now, yet with years of research knowledge behind them.

A good example of this was when the Ebola epidemic in West Africa reached global attention, and several posts about it had already been published in this blog. In the summer of 2014, I received a steady flow of messages from WordPress showing the number of visitors going through the roof – only to find out that the Washington Post had referred to a post published here. Subsequently, I would daresay that most social scientists who wrote about Ebola also published something in this blog. Similarly, when a major crisis occurred somewhere on the continent, we quickly got analyses from some of the best researchers. This has astonished me as it has been way beyond my original intention, but it has also taught me a lot about how social media works.

At the same time, I have also tried to involve scholars from the global south in writing about their African home countries. Although quite often, the number of non-locals outnumber the locals, and often the non-locals have carried out way more research than locals (the research world is genuinely not an equal place), I hope that in the future I can involve even more local researchers with profound, and often overlooked knowledge. In the spring of 2015, I returned to Uppsala University, where I had the pleasure of working with some fantastic students – and I have urged some of them to write for this blog. When you go through the blog archives, you will find some of their posts, too.

The last post I published does not fit neatly with the others. It is about multilingualism, with examples from, among others, a small village in eastern Ukraine from which my grandfather originated. It is written by my father, who is a linguist. Although it may be considered slightly nepotistic, it is a great piece. Enjoy:)

In total, there are 220 posts organised into about 80 different categories. To access them, enter via the categories below in the menu on the left.