Public Humanities is a new international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life. The journal invites proposals for themed issues that pose urgent questions on contemporary public issues that require rigorous and relevant humanities knowledge.
The journal invites submissions for the upcoming Themed Issue The World Beyond the Trowel: Radical Encounters between Archaeology and Community which will be guest edited by Dr. Eleanor Q. Neil and Andy Rogers.
The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2025.
Description
Archaeology is the study of the material remains of the past, but it is deeply entwined with issues we face in the contemporary world – climate change, threats to traditional lands, intensifying development, conflict, and global inequality. These forces directly impact the preservation of the archaeological record and widen the gap between communities and their own histories. Traditional archaeological practice, however, has a long legacy of contributing to both direct and soft-power colonialism and a top-down research model, with the needs of people and communities typically being secondary or an add-on.
The diverse methodologies of community archaeology enable archaeological practices that align more closely with the needs of living people, embodying ideals of service and care. They aim to amplify a range of voices, share creative power, and make the research process open, inclusive, and interrogable. In them we see the radical potential to shake up the discipline, and to use an archaeological mindset, centred on the material world, to tackle and respond to global challenges. However, not all community archaeology is equal, and it can often default to basic inclusion in excavation.
Truly collaborative, community-centred research should be relationally-constituted and embedded, emerging from the “bottom up” to undercut the dominant archaeological mode. This themed issue of Public Humanities aims to expand archaeology beyond excavation, and create space for creative, diverse, engagements between archaeological materials, landscapes, narratives and non-specialist communities. We welcome contributions that embrace this ethos, highlighting archaeology as a public good capable of addressing contemporary challenges. Potential contributions could include (but are not limited to):
- Digital technologies and other non-invasive fieldwork methodologies
- Museum or archive collections
- Storytelling
- Artistic responses
- Therapeutic initiatives
- Archaeological landscapes
- Personal/communal histories
We are soliciting contributions in a number of formats. If you would like to submit in another format not listed here, please get in touch as we are open to creative and innovative outputs.
Submission guidelines
Submissions should be written in accessible language for a wide readership across and beyond the humanities. Articles will be peer reviewed for both content and style. Articles will appear digitally and open access in the journal.
All submissions should be made through the Public Humanities online peer review system. Authors should consult the journal’s Author Instructions prior to submission.
All authors will be required to declare any funding and/or competing interests upon submission. See the journal’s Publishing Ethics guidelines for more information.
Contacts:
Eleanor Q. Neil: [email protected] | Andy Rogers: [email protected]
Questions regarding peer review can be sent to the Public Humanities inbox at [email protected].
Guest Editors:
Eleanor received her PhD from Trinity College Dublin and her research examines community archaeology in Cyprus. Her PhD allowed her to explore digital engagement methodologies which she continues to expand upon in her role. At Aarhus, she is working in the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) contributing to several projects examining the historiography of archaeological missions in the Middle East.
Andy is a PhD candidate in Archaeology at the University of Leicester, and his thesis is focused on ontologies of the body in the pre-Columbian Caribbean. His research focuses on the affective roles of materials in shaping body-worlds, going beyond visual symbolism to explore what bodies in art do rather than what they stand for or represent. His interests also encompass the Americas, colonial archaeology, collaborative approaches, new materialism, posthuman feminism, and the intersection of body and art more broadly.