Call for Papers for Issue 12.1: Home

Home.

Home has long carried connotations of safety, comfort, warmth and familiarity. In the Western popular imagination, home is often seen as a shelter from the confusion of the outside world - a sacrosanct space in which individuals can express themselves freely and in private. A place which can become an extension of the self, and should be treated accordingly. However, in an increasingly interconnected world, the term ‘home’ takes on new meanings. Widespread media coverage of mass migrations resulting from political turmoil shed light on alternative understandings of home, with issues of statelessness, national identity, forced relocation, longing/belonging, acculturation, and assimilation becoming increasingly pressing. At a local level, the global pandemic and associated call to ‘stay at home to save lives’ has also impacted our understanding of home – it has become a space that incorporates work, schooling and healthcare, reminding us that it is a territory which reflects the interactions and intersections between the public and the private. It is also a site of inequality; inequality in accessibility, inequality of ownership, and inequality in the division of domestic responsibility. And at the global level, individuals and institutions have begun to recognise that the planet itself is also our ‘home’ – a home shared with uncountable others, human and otherwise - and therefore deserves the same, if not more, care and attention given to it as given to the buildings in which we reside. Regardless of the lens adopted, it is clear that ‘home’ is a complex signifier. It is a space which every individual will experience differently, imbued with contradiction, and deserving of academic attention.

For our next issue, Excursions Journal invites researchers from all disciplines to 'home in' on one or several aspects of home. We welcome contributions from scholars in any discipline, including natural sciences, philosophy, sociology, social policy, geography, migration, politics, anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, film, business, and literature. Potential areas for consideration include but are not limited to:

• Representations of home: artistic, media or literary representations
• Understanding home: sociology and home; homelessness; care homes 
• Gender equality at, or gendered representations of, home
• Migration, mobility, and home, refugee experiences of resettlement
• Psychology and/or affect of home
• The Self at home: identity, emotions, well-being, body image, etc.
• Home and crime: domestic abuse, prison, rehabilitation
• The environment as home: climate, climate change, biodiversity, ecology
• Home and the sciences: food and nutrition, home experiments, etc.
• Home and economics: local organizations, family wealth, local business opportunities
• Home and Covid19: lockdown, home-schooling, families and mental health

Please submit your extended abstract of 500 words by 11th October 2021 via our website.  Final manuscripts will be due by the 1st of December and should be no longer than 5,000 words. Excursions adopts Harvard style for citations and bibliography. More information about Author Guidelines can be found here. If you have trouble with our submission system, please email us at enquiries@excursions-journal.org.uk.

Alongside traditional academic articles, we also consider alternative ways of communicating research, such as videos, short stories, photo essays, posters, verse, among others (please contact the editorial staff prior to submission via enquiries@excursions-journal.org.uk).

Submissions will also be considered for presentation at the Excursions Online Symposium (more information to come). We encourage submission as soon as possible, as we accept articles on a rolling basis.