Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Community Strength in Times of Compounding Crises: Reimagining Research and Praxis towards Emancipatory Futures”

11-11-2026

Rationale

Across the globe, overlapping social, economic, political, ecological, and epistemic crises are intensifying. Authoritarian and repressive regimes, alongside imperialist wars and genocides, are deepening inequalities, expanding poverty and destitution, and exacerbating social exclusion and criminalization, thereby rendering some lives increasingly disposable and ungrievable. In this context, communities are struggling to sustain conditions for collective life and hope amid increased uncertainty, repression, and fragmentation.

Such unsettling times call for renewed and more committed efforts to mobilize knowledge and efforts in support of community wellbeing and emancipation, and towards the creation of liberated and emancipatory futures. In response to the expanding geographies of exclusion and fear, there is an urgent need to nurture collective movements and infrastructures of mutual care, solidarity, and hope that are emerging from below. While many communities continue their battles to overcome oppressive structures and secure better living conditions, psychology has so far largely stood outside these struggles, positioning itself in supposedly “technical” roles as observer, mediator, or mitigator, when not actively producing harm and further marginalization. Reformulating the position to long-term solidarity-based partnerships is vital for bridging the divide that still exists between communities and psychologists.

Such a commitment requires community psychology and allied fields to confront pressing epistemological, methodological, ethical, and political challenges. How can research and practice respond meaningfully to communities’ struggles, demands, and aspirations, rather than reproducing the hierarchies and exclusions they seek to challenge? How can we recognize and value local, situated, and plural forms of knowledge and challenge the coloniality of power embedded in academia more broadly and psychology in particular? These questions call for critical, decolonial, and transdisciplinary approaches that place community organizing, collective agency, and critical knowledge co-production at the center of research and praxis. They also invite us to explore creative and multimodal ways of generating, sharing, and mobilizing knowledge that can support emancipatory struggles and transformative action. Importantly, these challenges unfold within a rapidly evolving technological landscape that is reshaping community life through increasingly online forms of existence, in which digital, physical, and relational dimensions become deeply intertwined.

Building on these considerations, and on the rich themes, practices, and critical reflections emerging from the ECPA 2025 Conference “Building Community Strength in Uncertain Times”, this Special Issue invites contributions that engage with critical participatory, creative, and community-based approaches to supporting and strengthening communities’ struggles, knowledges, and aspirations amid multiple and overlapping crises. We particularly welcome contributions that advance transformative and liberatory research and praxis, foreground community agency and collective processes of change, and offer critical, reflexive analyses of the ethical, epistemological, and sociopolitical implications of this work. We are especially interested in how such practices can nurture collective imaginaries, sustain emancipatory struggles, and contribute to building liberated futures.

Contributions may include reports of empirical qualitative, quantitative and multi or mixed-methods studies (Research articles and Short Research Reports), Perspective and Opinion articles (for this Special Issue, the acceptance of the extended abstract constitutes the invitation required by the journal for these article types), Literature Reviews and Reports of Community Practice. Other formats may also be considered where relevant, subject to prior agreement with the Guest Editors and the Editor-in-Chief on format and length. Article types and word limits follow the journal’s Author Guidelines (https://ese-journals.unisalento.it/index.php/cpgp/about/submissions).

Contributions by community-engaged scholars, activists, and practitioners may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

  • Collaborative and participatory frameworks that foster community co-creation, transformation, and liberation in contexts of multiple crisis and deepening inequalities;
  • Methodological advancements in community-engaged, activist, and participatory research and action aimed at promoting collective well-being, self-determination, and emancipatory futures;
  • Artistic, performative, and narrative approaches for engaging communities, creating counter-narratives, and promoting change, while challenging hegemonic framings and redistributing epistemic power;
  • Emancipatory praxis of education and knowledge production across diverse learning contexts;
  • Digital, virtual, and hybrid environments that support participatory inquiry and civic, collective, and political action;
  • Cross- and transdisciplinary engagements and approaches that challenge extractive and colonial logics of knowledge production, foregrounding methodologies that resist epistemic injustice and support emancipatory, community-led forms of knowing and transformations.

Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract in English (approximately 800–1,000 words, excluding references) to Guest Editors, by sending an email at: specialissue2026@yahoo.com.

All submissions should follow a clear structure (i.e., outlining the theoretical framework, objectives, methodology, results, as appropriate to the article type) and explicitly articulate their relevance to the themes of the Special Issue. 

Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit a full manuscript. Abstracts will be selected on the basis of their relevance to the Special Issue, originality, and conceptual and methodological soundness. The invitation to submit a full manuscript does not guarantee publication. The manuscript will be submitted through the submission portal of Community Psychology in Global Perspective (CPGP; https://ese-journals.unisalento.it/index.php/cpgp), an open-access journal that charges no article processing or submission fees. At the time of submission please select the section dedicated to this Special Issue.

Important Dates:

  • Extended abstract submission deadline: 31 December 2026.
  • Notification of acceptance: by 31 January 2027.
  • Full manuscript submission deadline: 30 April 2027
  • First-round review decision: by 31 July 2027
  • Revised manuscript submission deadline: 15 September 2027
  • Final decision: by 31 October 2027
  • Expected publication of the special issue: December 2027

All full manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process in accordance with the journal guidelines. The final decision on publication rests with the Editor-in-Chief.