Reimagining Justice and Human Change: Global Ideals, Local Realities, and Applied Arts

Call for Papers

Reimagining Justice and Human Change: Global Ideals, Local Realities, and Applied Arts

Journal: South African Theatre Journal
Publisher: Routledge – Taylor & Francis Group
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 September 2026

South African Theatre Journal invites submissions for its Special Issue titled "Reimagining Justice and Human Change: Global Ideals, Local Realities, and Applied Arts."

About the Special Issue

Inspired by the 17th Drama for Life Conference and Festival (2025), this Special Issue explores how Applied Arts can contribute to justice, social transformation, and human change amid growing global crises, political instability, ecological uncertainty, and systemic inequality. It seeks to examine justice as a lived, collaborative, and creative practice grounded in community knowledge, embodied engagement, and diverse cultural perspectives.

The issue welcomes interdisciplinary contributions that investigate how Applied Arts respond to local realities while engaging with global questions of justice, ethics, identity, healing, and social change. It aims to foster dialogue across artistic, scholarly, therapeutic, and community-based practices.

Scope and Topics of Interest

Submissions may address, but are not limited to:

• Applied Drama, Theatre, and Arts responses to justice and social transformation

• Political trauma, conflict, repression, and authoritarianism

• Human change in contexts of systemic violence and socio-political upheaval

• Indigenous and meta-universal ways of knowing

• Arts-based approaches to ethics, justice, and transformation

• AI, digital technologies, and virtual environments in Applied Arts

• Applied Arts in health, education, mental health, migration, and displacement

• Community-based arts interventions and collaborative methodologies

• Arts therapies for justice, healing, and wellbeing

• Creative, practice-based, and hybrid research methodologies

• Performance, psychology, education, anthropology, and social justice collaborations

Submission Guidelines

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 05 May 2026

• Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 September 2026

• Submit an abstract of 250–300 words via email.

• Abstracts should clearly include the article title, research focus, context, theoretical or methodological orientation, and contribution to the Special Issue.

• Authors should also provide their name, institutional affiliation, email address, and 5–7 keywords separately.

• The Special Issue welcomes:

  • Full-length academic articles (5,000–7,000 words)

  • Reflexive essays (4,000–6,000 words)

  • Academic articles aligned with the Special Issue themes, including those not presented at the conference.

Special Issue Editors

• Sibongile Bhebhe — University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts, Drama for Life

• Petro Janse van Vuuren — University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts, Drama for Life

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