About the Journal

The South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ) is a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal devoted to research in the social sciences and humanities on South Asia. It specializes in the publication of comparative thematic issues as well as individual research articles, review essays, and book reviews. Committed to disseminating rigorous scientific research to the widest possible audience, SAMAJ is fully and freely accessible online. SAMAJ receives institutional support from the Centre d’Etudes Sud-Asiatiques et Himalayennes (CESAH).

Multidisciplinary in scope, SAMAJ combines the approach of established disciplines—history, geography, anthropology, sociology, political science, and economics—and recent fields of investigation (media, environment, and gender studies, for instance). SAMAJ’s editorial project is to question the specificity of South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) by investigating the social, political, economic and cultural dynamics of its countries and regions within the framework of the methodological and theoretical discussions that prevail in the wider world of social sciences. Through in-depth thematic and comparative studies, SAMAJ seeks to bring out new perspectives on the diverse trajectories of South Asian societies in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Beyond the societies of South Asia in situ, a significant focus of this journal is also on diasporas, both in “home” and “host”-societies.

SAMAJ’s thematic issues offer a collection of articles, often in the form of case studies, probing the guest editors’ hypotheses and highlighting the peculiarities related to different countries and methodologies. These contributions are preceded by a general introduction presenting a “state of the art” on the chosen theme and the main research questions of the issue. Individual research articles are published on an ongoing basis, either through author-initiated submission or upon request by the editorial board. In addition, SAMAJ publishes essays and reviews on significant books published on South Asia in the social sciences, making SAMAJ a relevant site of academic debate. SAMAJ encourages early career researchers to submit manuscript proposals.

SAMAJ’s articles undergo two rounds of screening, by the issue editors and anonymous peer reviewers. The journal invites proposals for thematic issues from guest editors whose aim is to explore a particular research question through an inter-disciplinary and comparative method (to submit a proposal for a thematic issue, contact ti@samaj.eu). Individual authors of research articles or book reviews can submit their proposals through our online submission portal: https://ojs.samaj.eu. Varia article and book review editors can be reached, respectively, at fsa@samaj.eu and br@samaj.eu. General enquiries should be addressed to chiefed@samaj.eu.

For submission guidelines see our Informations for authors page.