Calls for submissions
Call for Interest: IFJP Online Conversation Series:
‘Knowing and Being Otherwise: Religion, Spirituality, and Feminist Interventions in Global Politics’
7-8 September 2026
In September 2026, the International Feminist Journal of Politics is launching a two-year online and in-person workshop and conference project around the theme of ‘Knowing and Being Otherwise: Religion, Spirituality, and Feminist Interventions in Global Politics’. More announcements to come but main activities include:
Online Gatherings - talks, conversations, study sessions
Ancestrality Brazil Conference (July, 2027) - led by Latin America Hub
Planning Workshop (Auroville/Pondicherry, India), 3 - 5 December 2026 - led by Asia Hub
Rwanda Workshop (2027) - led by Africa Hub
Other online and in-person 2027 events (inviting expressions to collaborate)
Main Conference (Varanasi, India), end of 2027
Traditionally, International Relations, Political Science and other cognate fields that study global politics —including feminist approaches within them—have privileged rationalist, positivist, and secular epistemologies as the primary frameworks for interpreting (international) socio-political realities. Within such paradigms, religion and spirituality are often relegated to the status of empirical “objects” of analysis rather than epistemic frameworks or ontological grounds of knowledge production. When they do appear, religious worldviews are often positioned as inherently and reductively in tension with feminist ethics, agency, and emancipatory praxis.
With this two-year project IFJP seeks to disrupt-in-conversation these entrenched epistemic hierarchies by foregrounding religion and spirituality as legitimate modes of knowing, being, and political engagement. We draw on feminist epistemology, decolonial thought, Indigenous and Black Studies as life studies, southern epistemologies and broader radical and critical philosophies of religion to cultivate a transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue that engages theological, metaphysical, and embodied ways of knowing alongside feminist political imaginaries.
We invite partners and participants to interrogate secularism not as a neutral backdrop but as a historically situated and contested formation that shapes global power relations. We aim to decentre hegemonic discussions on the religious phenomenon by engaging alternative conceptions of interiority and subjectivity. We seek out conversation and thinking from spaces wherein spirituality and religion are woven into the fabric of daily life through the co-presence of bodies and memories, i.e. ancestrality and understandings of past as ongoing and yet to come. The goal is to transcend conservative backlash and colonial dichotomies—such as nature/culture and body/mind—through situated, inter-faith, inter-cultural, inter-civilisational dialogues that recognize spiritualities as practices and possibilities of re-existence, communal bonding, historical reparation and liberation.
On 7-8 September 2026, we will hold a first set of online conversations to collect and explore collaborations, themes and avenues of thought to carry us forward in the coming two years. If you are interested in joining us, please apply via this link by 3 August 2026.
For any questions or further information, do not hesitate to reach out to Olivia, ourutazibwa.ifjp@protonmail.com
Call for Review Essays
Global feminist scholarship is flourishing, with a significant number of new books that explore feminist politics and gender relations in a global frame published each year. The IFJP Book Reviews Section provides a space where new work and new ideas can be made visible, critically discussed, and brought into conversation across established disciplinary, spatial and discursive boundaries. Our book reviewers make significant contributions to our intellectual community through identifying emergent and innovative literature and analytical directions, and through contributing to thoughtful and critical intellectual exchange.
IFJP is now issuing a special call for review essays that cover at least three recent books. Review essays discuss several texts on the same theme and bring them into conversation with each other, aiming to explore a recent debate or emerging research field that has generated a range of new publications. While review essays should be written in English, we also welcome submissions that review feminist scholarship published in other languages, and discuss ongoing debates beyond English-speaking academia. With the aim of fostering a truly global feminist community of scholars, this will allow a broader range of feminist scholarship to be debated in IFJP, and allow IFJP readers to learn about and benefit from feminist scholarship representing diverse positionalities and perspectives.
Review essays should be between 2000-2500 words long. To maximize the availability of these review essays, they will be made free access for six months from the date of online publication.
If you are interested in submitting a review essay, please contact the Book Reviews Editors: Priscyll Anctil Avoine, Elin Berg, Jenny Hedström, Leena Vastapuu, Annick T.R. Wibben, and Julia Zulver.
For further information, please refer to the journal’s FAQ page on Book Reviews.