Opportunities

The Editors of Brief Encounters are pleased to open a call for papers for the journal’s ninth issue and warmly invite research students and staff at CHASE-affiliated institutions to submit a short article, review, or creative piece of work for publication. Please note that this includes contributions that have been co-authored or co-created with individuals who do not have an affiliation to CHASE. The deadline for submission of an abstract is Monday, 6 January 2025.

The journal aims to encourage the exchange of ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary and institutional boundaries. It provides a space where researchers can publish short articles and share findings, which might not be long enough for publication in a more conventional academic journal, and also offers individuals a place to share their creative work.

For research students, publishing in Brief Encounters offers the opportunity to experience the peer-review process, to give their research exposure, and to build their publication record. All articles published by the journal are free to read and accessible to all with no registration required.

We are also putting out a call for new peer reviewers. This is an opportunity to review academically rigorous work by other CHASE-affiliated researchers and gain some skills and experience in acting as a peer reviewer. If you are interested, please email us by Monday 6 January, including a summary of your research area and expertise so we can best assign you to an article.

Encounters in Solidarity

On the 24^th of May 2024, over 150 academics and administrators from universities in Gaza issued an historic statement affirming their existence in spite of the damage to Gaza’s education system during the ongoing war. Since the beginning of the conflict, all twelve of Gaza’s universities have been badly damaged or destroyed and students in Gaza remain unable to travel or enrol in universities abroad. With the support of the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, Palestinian academics and administrators call for international cooperation so that teaching and study will resume at higher education institutions in Gaza at the earliest opportunity.

In response to this call, Issue 9 of Brief Encounters is about solidarity. We invite submissions that consider the ways in which solidarity can be practised by researchers, academics and administrators across disciplinary, institutional, and geographic divides; modes of scholarly exchange in times of crisis; and collaboration as a form of resilience in the arts and humanities. In practising solidarity, we also welcome submissions that are co-authored with individuals or groups not affiliated with CHASE.

We invite proposals from all disciplines and institutions across the consortium and its affiliates, and across all forms of solidarity—such as solidarity in the context of environmental crises; LGBTQIA+ alliances; solidarity against scholasticide; solidarity within Indigenous and anticolonial struggles, and many more. Submissions might address topics such as:

• Solidarity and interdisciplinarity 
• Transcultural collaboration in the arts and humanities 
• Solidarity and aesthetics 
• Histories of collaboration in social institutions  
• Solidarity as praxis 
• Collaboration and mobility 
• Co-authorship

We are mindful of the small role a single academic journal can play in the context of a crisis, but we are inspired by the solidarity enacted by Fobzu (Friends of Birzeit University) and Alliances of Understanding. These collaborations, and others like them, provide opportunities for direct action and engagement, and help us to understand how those in higher education can direct their resources and skills to address injustice.

If you are interested in submitting your work, please send the following to chasedtpjournal@gmail.com by the 6 January deadline:

• An academic bio of no more than 200 words, including your title, name, and institutional affiliation.
• An abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) – this can be an outline of the proposed work for creative submissions.

Please note that the acceptance of an abstract does not commit a research paper to inclusion in the journal; only after submission of the full contribution and completion of the peer-review stage will the editors provide a decision. 

The Editorial Team welcome contributions in a variety of formats, including academically rigorous and original articles (500 to 4,000 words), reviews on an area of emerging scholarship (500 to 1,000 words), interviews (500 to 2,000 words) and creative work, such as fiction, short stories, poetry, video essays, documentaries, musical compositions, posters and photography (accompanied by a critical commentary of 500 to 4,000 words). For more information about submission, please review the journal guidelines.

Find more details including the Faculty’s Guidelines on eligible uses of the Faculty PGR Fund 

To request funding please complete the Funding Request form and send the completed form to MAH-pgr@sussex.ac.uk. We aim to confirm funding within two weeks of the application being submitted.