Launch of Experimental Book Project by the Research Data Share Collective, African Minds, and Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography

We are excited to announce a new project to build a “database as book” to support an emergent collective of critical STS scholars in Kenya. The database book will provide a public knowledge resource for considering the kinds of public knowledge infrastructure that needs to be developed in Kenya and, possibly, in other developing-country contexts. Check out the full project proposal.

This initiative, supported by the Open Book Futures project (with funding by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund and Coventry University), will invest in building the technical functionality for a public "record of versions" in the open source Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) to increase its capacity to publish long-form scholarship. We are excited to experiment with a new genre of "database as book" to reimagine the relationalities that constitute academic writing, research, and publishing and how to represent these relationships in non-hierarchical, less linear ways, beyond the printed codex format.

Leveraging PECE software will bring modes of analysis to the surface in ways that enable the lateral work and relations necessary for effective community-led scholarly work. We are grateful for the input and support of open access monograph publisher African Minds. The workflow documentation on developing integrations between a book press and the PECE platform will also allow other presses to support the creation of future experimental versioned books.

Over the two-year project timeline, we will host 2 public in-person events in Nairobi to share project updates and discuss the importance of developing alternative knowledge infrastructures and modes of scholarly publishing towards dismantling existing epistemic hierarchies and exclusions. Sign up here to stay updated as the project develops.

This project brings together a wide range of stakeholders to collaborate on the production of this experimental book:

Author team: Aurelia Munene, Syokau Mutonga,  Leonida Mutuku, Dr. Angela Okune, Dr. Wambui Wamunyu | Quotidian Data (Nairobi, Kenya) & Eider Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)

Publisher: Dr. François van Schalkwyk | African Minds (Cape Town, South Africa)

Open Source Platform Team: Professors Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, and Lindsay Poirier  | University of California Irvine (Irvine, CA, USA) & Smith College (Northampton, MA, USA)

OBF Experimental Publishing Group advisors: Simon Bowie, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Janneke Adema | Coventry University (Coventry, UK)