The AJOL Board
Mike Schramm (Portfolio: Professional African Publisher and Board Chairperson)
Mike Schramm is a former biologist, university lecturer and published researcher with academic interests in the fields of ornithology, fisheries and fish parasitology. A period of engagement in the NGO world during the 1990s, working with school teachers in the science education arena, morphed into a publishing management role at one of the country’s large school book publishing companies. Mike is now Managing Director of NISC (Pty) Ltd a specialist scholarly publisher producing databases, books and academic journals that showcase the best of African scholarship to a global research community.
Dr Buhle Mbambo-Thata (Portfolio: University Librarian)
Dr Mbambo-Thata is a leader whose work spans international and continental work to advance the library sector as a key player in education and development. She has facilitated library consortium development in many countries in Africa, including Lesotho. She serves on boards of library develop organisations internationally. Her work on library development in Africa is extensive. Dr Mbambo-Thata is a distinguished librarian whose knowledge and expertise has been recognised with the following awards: the IFLA Medal for Distinguished service to Libraries in Africa; “the UNISA woman of the year” award, as well as the “Chancellor’s award for distinguished leadership”. She has edited three books and published in several referred journals. Her research interests are in women and ICT, and in technology applications in libraries. She is passionate about library development generally, and in Africa in particular. She is also passionate about mentoring librarians. (From the National University of Lesotho.)
Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata (Portfolio: Stand-alone Journal Editor)
Dzodzi Tsikata is Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. Before this, she was Professor of Development Sociology and immediate past Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana. Her research in the last 30 years has been in the areas of gender and development policies and practices; agrarian change and rural livelihoods; the labour relations of the informal economy and transformative social policy. Her recent publications are the co-edited (with Elisabeth Prügl and Fenneke Reysoo) Forum in the Journal of Peasant Studies on the theme “Commercialising Agriculture/Reorganising Gender” (JPS 48,7, September 2021). She is also the Principal Investigator of a pan-African research, networking and advocacy project, the Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy for Post-COVID-19 Africa (GETSPA) which is examining the social policy trajectories of thirty-one African countries. She is the secretary of the executive committee of IDEAS and a member of the Agrarian South Network and a member of the editorial collectives of Feminist Africa and Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. (From the School of Oriental and African Studies.)
Prof. Ernest Aryeetey (Portfolio: African University Leadership)
Ernest Aryeetey FGA is the secretary-general of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana. He was a senior fellow and director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, Legon and president of the Ghana Institute of Planners from 1998 until 2000, as well as a Member of the Programme Committee of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Chair of the Board of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), and has served on the governing council of the United Nations University. (From Wikipedia.)
Ginny Hendricks (Portfolio: International Scholarly NPO)
Since 2015, Ginny has been developing a community team at Crossref encompassing community engagement & comms, member experience, technical support, and metadata strategy. Before joining Crossref, she ran 'Ardent' for a decade, where she consulted within scholarly communications for awareness and growth strategies, branding and launching online products, and building digital communities. In 2018 she founded the Metadata 20/20 collaboration to advocate for richer, connected, reusable, and open metadata, and she helps guide several open infrastructure initiatives such as ROR and POSI. She recently co-founded FORCE11's Upstream community blog for all things open research.
Kerryn Wiblin (Portfolio: Finance and Audit)
Ms Wiblin is a professional accountant for one of the largest employers in Makhanda, AJOL's home base in South Africa, and also serves on several Boards to help ensure strong financial oversight.
