CFP: Call for abstracts - Forward Thinking

Call for abstracts - Forward Thinking: New Voices for the Future

In an era marked by ecological breakdown, epistemic instability, and widening global precarity, the very notion of “the future” has become a site of intense conceptual struggle. We invite scholars carrying out visionary work across the humanities — philosophy, literary theory, political thought, cultural studies, and related fields — to articulate bold and innovative interventions on what it means to think futurity today. 

What forms of imagination, refusal, and re-worlding become possible, or necessary, in the wake of overlapping crises? What is the role of the Humanities in shaping worlds yet to come? Crucially, how might we unsettle inherited frameworks and open new horizons? This project seeks to amplify new voices reshaping contemporary debates and reorienting the terms on which the future is imagined. Our project is not simply about the future: it is itself an act of future-making. 

We invite abstracts addressing any themes related to these core questions, from scholars working in all humanities disciplines. We are equally interested in work that operates within a single disciplinary tradition with rigour and depth, and in work that crosses or questions disciplinary boundaries. 

Titles and abstracts for your proposed chapter of no more than 300 words should be submitted by email to the co-editors at [email protected] by 15 September 2026. For more information about eligibility and the Forward Thinking network, please see the Further Particulars below.

Dr. Marie Chabbert (Utrecht University)

Dr. Madeleine Chalmers (University of Glasgow)

FURTHER PARTICULARS

We are looking for scholars who are genuinely excited by the intellectual questions at the heart of this project, and who are ready to contribute a substantial chapter-length piece of approximately 7,000 words to the volume. We value ambition, precision, and willingness to engage seriously with difficult questions. 

We welcome expressions of interest from scholars working in all humanities disciplines, including but not limited to: philosophy (continental, analytic, and non-Western traditions), literary theory and criticism, political thought and intellectual history, cultural and media studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, critical theory, aesthetics, religious and theological studies, science and technology studies, and environmental humanities.

We are equally interested in work that operates within a single disciplinary tradition with rigour and depth, and in work that crosses or questions disciplinary boundaries. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in orientation are actively encouraged, as are those which offer genuinely new conceptual frameworks or unexpected angles.

We strongly encourage applications from scholars with global, non-Western, and otherwise underrepresented perspectives on the volume’s core questions.

We are not looking for survey chapters or literature reviews. The volume aims to make original arguments about futurity — arguments that will be legible to readers across disciplines, but that do not sacrifice intellectual specificity. Contributors should be willing to engage with the editors' feedback through a process of peer review and revision between April and September 2027.

Eligibility

This call is open to early-career researchers in the humanities, broadly understood. Researchers of any nationality and based at institutions anywhere in the world are warmly invited to apply. We are committed to building a genuinely international network, and actively encourage applications from regions and traditions that remain underrepresented in Anglophone humanities publishing.

Applicants are eligible if they meet either of the following criteria at the time of the deadline:

·       they are within 8 years of the award of their PhD or viva 

·       they are within 6 years of their first full-time academic appointment 

Researchers with between 7 and 12 years of experience since the completion of their PhD who do not have an institutional affiliation are also eligible to apply, provided they can demonstrate a track record of research and publication. This route is intended to recognise that career trajectories in the humanities vary significantly, and that experience and affiliation alone are not measures of scholarly promise.

Eligibility thresholds can be extended for applicants who have experienced interruptions or delays to their careers. Recognised grounds for extension include, but are not limited to:

·       Maternity, paternity, adoption, or parental leave

·       Serious illness or disability

·       National or compulsory service

·       Clinical training or professional obligations

·       Natural disasters or humanitarian crises

·       Asylum-seeking processes

·       Experience as a victim of gender-based violence or any other form of violence

The Forward Thinking network

Contributors to the volume will become founding members of the Forward Thinking network, participating in a series of online writing workshops in the autumn and winter of 2026, and offering and receiving feedback on work-in-progress in a genuinely collaborative environment. The workshops are designed to foster intellectual exchange across disciplinary and geographical divides, and to build lasting scholarly relationships.