*CFP* "AFRICAN DIGITAL DIASPORAS", SPECIAL ISSUE AFRICAN DIASPORA, JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL AFRICA IN A GLOBAL WORLD

Digital media have come to play an essential role in the ways in which African diasporas (re)imagine themselves and transnational migrant communities connect across political boundaries and geographic distances. The internet has offered new ways of creating or maintaining a sense of belonging and connectedness among diasporic groups, new modes of political activism and organizing, and means for connecting with people and institutions in the homeland. Social media, homeland-focused websites, and other platforms are facilitating connections that build on existing communities and diasporas with a national, regional, local, ethnic or religious focus. Digital media also have opened up new linkages between older diasporas, such as those resulting from the transatlantic slave trade, and African organizations, and newer African diasporas. African Diaspora is inviting empirically based contributions which explore the various dimensions of African digital diasporas from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Some possible issues to consider that reveal the dynamics of these on-going processes include but are not limited to:

• What kinds of communities, identities and imaginaries emerge from digital diasporic spaces? 
• Do we need to re-think our conceptualizations of diaspora in the digital age? 
• What contradictions or conflicts arise from diasporas’ engagements with digital media? 
• How are issues of generation and gender reproduced and transformed through online activities? 
• What forms of digital innovation, creative repurposing, and novel applications have been undertaken by African diasporas to meet specific needs? 
• How are the activities of African digital diasporas understood and experienced in the homeland?

The deadline to submit papers for consideration is January 4, 2019.

Manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Please submit your papers to the special issue editor, Victoria Bernal by email: vbernal@uci.edu. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact her.

African Diaspora, a Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World, is an interdisciplinary scholarly journal that seeks to understand how African cultures and societies shape and are shaped by historical and current diasporic and transnational movements. Contrary to assuming 'Africa' as a bounded geographical entity and the African diaspora as a single imagined community, the journal charts uncovered territories and entangled histories of plural diasporas and transnational movements from, to and within Africa. These include, but are not limited to, the Transatlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East as well as Europe and the former socialist countries of the European continent. By focusing on when and how diasporas are produced and lived, diasporic connections are claimed, and transnational engagements evolve, the journal fosters a view on the ways in which these movements are navigated by people, networks, communities and states in historical, political and socio-cultural terms. The journal encourages the submission of articles that are ground breaking in their empirically founded re-conceptualizations of this intellectual terrain. Articles should be based on research grounded in qualitative and ethnographic approaches. 

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