Academics Encouraged to Contribute to The Conversation Africa

BY: .

A team from The Conversation Africa, a not-for-profit initiative that publishes daily news, comments and analysis on their website which is a collaboration between journalist and academics, recently conducted a writing workshop at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. UKZN partners with The Conversation Africa.

The workshop was aimed at teaching academics how to write for the general public and encourage them to pitch their articles for publication in The Conversation website.

Acting Dean of the School of Arts, Professor Nobuhle Hlongwa welcomed The Conversation team and UKZN academics who attended the writing workshop. Speakers from The Conversation were Pfungwa Nyamukachi, Strategic Partnerships Manager; Charles Leonard, Arts and Culture Content Editor; and Thabo Leshilo, Politics and Society Editor.

The Conversation global network of newsrooms was first launched in Australia in 2011. The online source has since expanded its footprint to Canada, the UK, France, Indonesia and now Africa.

About 33 UKZN academics and researchers have written 60 articles that have cumulatively reached over 486 000 online article reads globally. This excludes the reach of offline media achieved when articles are published in newspapers or when authors are interviewed on radio or television or are invited to speak at conferences, contribute to books, journal articles, or make input to policy as a result of their articles appearing on The Conversation website. The top reading countries for articles by UKZN academics are the US, South Africa, India, Australia, UK, Brazil and Singapore.

The workshop was part of the growing relationship between UKZN and The Conversation. Nyamukachi said The Conversation looks forward to more UKZN academics and researchers sharing their insights and findings with the organisation.

For more information, interested academics can visit https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are

Words: Nokubonga Nomasiko Jele