The Tamil Academic Journal (TAJ) is a peer-reviewed, open-access publication committed to promoting original research about Tamil people globally. TAJ publishes work from across all disciplines, including the Arts, Humanities, Social and Applied Sciences, and encourages interdisciplinary, community-informed, and decolonial approaches to knowledge production. Our aim is not only to foster academic research, but to build a space where Tamil scholars can connect across generations, geographies, and lived experiences.
Founded in 2019 in the United Kingdom and now based in Canada, TAJ is a youth- and women-led initiative run voluntarily by a team of students, researchers, and academics from diverse disciplines. Our work is rooted in the recognition that traditional academic publishing practices are often exclusionary and shaped by colonial, racist, and casteist legacies. Tamil knowledge, especially that created by youth, women, queer, disabled, and working-class members of our communities, has historically been sidelined, misrepresented, or produced by those outside our lived experience. TAJ was created to challenge that.
We focus on three key pillars: mentorship for emerging Tamil researchers, particularly those impacted by structural barriers; fair compensation for marginalized contributors; and multi-media publishing practices including oral storytelling, archival work, and visual research. TAJ reimagines academic rigour as something rooted in community accountability, rather than institutional gatekeeping. We ask: What does peer review look like when our communities are our peers? Who gets to be considered an expert?
TAJ is also dedicated to building long-term pathways for Tamil youth in academia and research, while making academic knowledge accessible to the broader community. Through our conferences, workshops, and publications, we aim to create a living archive of Tamil thought, grounded in care, justice, and the complexities of our diasporic and intergenerational realities.