Call for Special Issues /// The Journal of Architecture — Thematic Calls (Rolling Special Issues)

The Journal of Architecture — Thematic Calls (Rolling Special Issues)

Manuscript deadline: 31 December 2028

Submit via: Taylor & Francis Online (https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/rjar-thematic-calls/) select “Special Issue,” then choose the relevant Thematic Call

The Journal of Architecture is launching a series of open-ended thematic calls. This rolling model sustains long-term scholarly conversations across architectural theory, design, history, and practice, and engages allied fields including urban studies, anthropology, political ecology, and science and technology studies. These thematic calls are part of the journal’s regular editorial process; accepted papers are published in regular issues and clearly indexed under the relevant theme. Full details are available on the Taylor & Francis call page. (think.taylorandfrancis.com)

What we are looking for

We welcome theoretical, historical, empirical, and practice-based submissions that:

• Challenge disciplinary assumptions and foreground under-represented contexts.

• Experiment with concepts, methods, and media.

• Treat architecture as process, relation, proposition, and socio-ecological responsibility.

Both established and emerging scholars are encouraged to submit. 

Current thematic calls

1. Architectures of extraction and repair: material politics, planetary crisis, and the ethics of making

Explores how depletion and maintenance, violence and care, abandonment and restoration are co-constitutive in architectural lifecycles across resources, labour, aesthetics, and governance. 

2. The architecture of borders: infrastructures, relations, and everyday practices

Repositions borders as multiscalar, urban, and infrastructural conditions, tracing how inclusion and exclusion are produced, and how architectural practices may contest or reconfigure bordering. 

3. Rural (re)configurations: architecture beyond the urban imaginary

Interrogates peri-urban and rural transformations in relation to migration, climate, infrastructure, and agrarian change, asking how architecture can move beyond urban-centric logics. 

4. Beyond the human: multispecies and more-than-human architectures

Centers interspecies responsibility and ecological interdependence, reframing site, inhabitation, and function through more-than-human ontologies and practices. 

5. Post-architectures: rethinking the discipline’s limits

Examines architecture as distributed, relational, and often provisional, attending to infrastructures, platforms, care, and maintenance beyond canonical boundaries of object, author, and building. 

6. Design as method: rethinking architectural research through practice

Positions design as a mode of inquiry that is situated, iterative, and speculative, foregrounding protocols, reflexivity, ecological epistemologies, and socially engaged methods. 

7. (Re)Learning architecture: in search of consistency

Invites reflection on architectural education’s commitments and contradictions, and considers how to

sustain curiosity, ethics, and transformative possibility across pedagogical structures. 

8. Appropriating architecture: owning, commoning, and curating

Probes cultures and economies of belonging, including co-operatives, commons, and curation, alongside the spatial politics of commodification and collective authorship. 

Special Issue Editors

Deljana Iossifova (The University of Manchester)

Christoph Lueder (Kingston University London)

Debapriya Chakrabarti (The University of Manchester)

Joshua Mardell (Royal College of Art)

Weijie Hu (Swinburne University of Technology)

Pari Riahi (University of Massachusetts)

Doreen Bernath (Architectural Association School of Architecture)

How to submit

1. Prepare your manuscript according to the journal’s author guidelines.

2. In your cover letter, state clearly which Thematic Call you are submitting to.

3. In the submission portal, select “Yes” to Special Issue submission, then choose the appropriate Thematic Call from the dropdown menu.

4. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis and, if accepted, published in regular issues and indexed under the chosen theme. 

For the official call page and submission links, please refer to Taylor & Francis: The Journal of Architecture — Thematic Calls (https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/rjar-thematic-calls/). 

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