Le métier de sage-femme en Afrique

Studying Midwifery Work and Workers in Global Africa across Time, Spaces, and Disciplines

Call for papers

Special section in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME)


We are currently preparing a proposal for a special section of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME) https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame, provisionally entitled “Studying Midwifery Work and Workers in global Africa across Times, Spaces and Disciplines.”

The project grew out of a panel (Panel A65) held at the 2026 Conference on African Studies in France (REAF) https://reaf2026.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/1 and brings together historians and anthropologists working on midwifery across different historical and geographical contexts in global Africa.

The special section examines midwifery not as a self-evident or homogeneous professional category, but as work and as a social and professional position that has been historically produced, regulated, valued, and negotiated. Across the existing contributions, we ask who is or has been recognized as a midwife; how training, professionalization and regulation shape legitimate knowledge and practice; how gender, race, class, social background and reproductive position affect midwives’ trajectories and authority; and how midwifery workers themselves negotiate, contest, and reshape these categories and hierarchies.

To broaden the anthropological and contemporary dimensions of the section, we are currently looking for two additional contributions by anthropologists working on midwifery work and/or workers.

We particularly welcome ethnographically grounded contributions engaging with contemporary transformations and possible or imagined futures of midwifery. Relevant perspectives might include, but are by no means limited to, Science and Technology Studies (STS), migration and transnational mobility, humanitarian aid, war and emergency settings, changing healthcare systems, reproductive politics, technologies, professional recognition, and transformations in training and working conditions. We are especially interested in contributions that ask not only how midwifery work is changing in the present, but also how different futures of midwifery work and workers are imagined, negotiated, or made possible by midwives themselves, or by the institutions and societies in which they work.

The special section adopts a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective across global Africa, including African and African diasporic contexts. Contributions should therefore speak to the broader comparative questions of the section while remaining grounded in specific ethnographic settings.

If you are interested, please send us a short abstract (approx. 150 words) and a long abstract (300-500 words), together with a brief biographical note (max. 300 words) by 1 November 2026, addressed to: mariamfive@gmail.com , valentina.vergottini@uclouvain.be , i.zecevic@rug.nl.

Selected contributors will be invited to submit a full article of approximately 8,000 to 10,000 words by 2 May 2027. Further editorial guidelines will be shared upon acceptance of the abstracts.