Current Issue

The concept of utopia continues to fascinate scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Utopia can broadly be defined as 'some variation on an ideal present, an ideal past and an ideal future, and the relation between the three', as suggested by historian Gregory Claeys (2020, 13). He also calls attention to the complex intermingling of utopia and dystopia that took root in the 20th century, 'the epoch defined by conflict involving all great powers' (6). Three decades after the end of the Soviet Union, the world is still grappling with the aftermath of what used to be a dream of an egalitarian future, powered by the promise of scientific and technological progress. The alternative has yet to deliver on the promised visions, as it comes under harsh criticism from politicians and public alike. Could the problems of today, from military conflicts to ecological crises, be a sign that the established society is still haunted by those utopian visions of the future that never materialised?

The promise of unlimited prosperity and peace for all humanity brought by liberation movements and technological progress is overshadowed by persistent threats of totalitarianism and the proliferation of surveillance technologies. Moreover, anthropogenic climate change brought on by once-lauded scientific and industrial advances is rapidly becoming an existential threat. The personal and collective traumas brought about by the architects of all kinds of utopias call for a 'haunted imaginary': an exploratory liminal space that belongs neither to the past nor to the future, but draws upon speculative visions and historic events. In this issue of Junctions we would like to offer such a space to our contributors.

We invite graduate and postgraduate students of the Humanities to contribute to the upcoming issue of Junctions, titled: ‘Haunting Utopias’.

The submission length for original journal articles is 4000–6000 words, and 1000–2000 words for book reviews. A separate call for book reviews will be published shortly. Submissions should engage with the scholarly literature of the appropriate discipline and clearly identify its contribution to the field(s). Manuscripts should be in Chicago author-date referencing style and follow the official Junctions template, which can be found on the author guidelines page. Please submit a digital copy (as a Word document) via the submission system on our website by 23 January 2023. Please omit references to the author in manuscripts to ensure anonymous reviews. After double-blind reviewing, accepted articles will undergo a revision process which will conclude with the publication of the journal issue. The journal does not accept manuscripts previously published by or simultaneously submitted to other publications.


For more informal questions, you can reach out to Junctions on social media at: @junctionsuu on Instagram and Twitter, or find us on Facebook or LinkedIn.


Download the full call for papers here!

Memory, history, and narrative—these forces, distinct but strongly interlinked, have shaped societies for as long as people have passed on stories, myths, and knowledge. Today, the relationship between these forces is more immediate than ever. The recent events in Ukraine have cast the importance of narrative, framing, and the making of history into the limelight. With Putin’s invasion and the following conflict taking center stage in international media, the question of whose narrative will dominate the ensuing conflict has gained immediate importance. After all, those who control the narrative can shape history into what they wish it to be. However, while the shaping of history is often done through the lens of the party in power, memory can exist outside of a dominant narrative. The framing of events will lead to a memory of the conflict that is both personal and something lived, shaped, and transmitted by society more broadly, as a way of establishing a shared reality and a shared identity. So we see that the events in Ukraine, like so many other armed conflicts, are framed not only through the dominant narrative imposed from above, but also by the experiences shared by those whose suffering needs to be voiced in order to be processed. The Ukrainian teens who have taken to online spheres such as TikTok to document their experiences show how memory-making can serve as a way of contesting domineering narratives by highlighting the lived experiences of those affected by the war.

Moreover, documenting stories and memories is particularly relevant in times of trauma, broad or personal. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, storytellers around the world, professional and amateur alike, have taken to online media to document their experiences, shared and in many cases traumatic. How the memory of this period will be preserved in art and the cultural consciousness, time will tell. Furthermore, there are the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have been forced to flee their homeland in past weeks, like millions of refugees before them. The experiences of their traumatic displacement and the life they leave behind ripple outwards, creating a need for the documentation of stories, memories, as a means of ensuring remembrance. Memory, after all, is not just connected to larger histories, but in the basis tied to the individual. Memory scholar Maurice Halbwachs notes, ‘We preserve memories of each epoch in our lives, and these are continually reproduced; through them, as by a continual relationship, a sense of our identity is perpetuated’ (1992, 47). As such, the production and active preservation of stories from below can amplify the voices that may have once been silenced or made invisible.

We invite graduate and postgraduate students of the Humanities to contribute to the upcoming issue of Junctions, titled: ‘Producing Memory’.

The submission length for original journal articles is 4000–6000 words, and 1000–2000 words for book reviews. A separate call for book reviews will be published shortly. Submissions should engage with the scholarly literature of the appropriate discipline and clearly identify its contribution to the field(s). Manuscripts should be in Chicago author-date referencing style and follow the official Junctions template, which can be found on the author guidelines page. Please submit a digital copy (as a Word document) via the submission system on our website by May 30th. Please omit references to the author in manuscripts to ensure anonymous reviews. After double-blind reviewing, accepted articles will undergo a revision process which will conclude with the publication of the journal issue. The journal does not accept manuscripts previously published by or simultaneously submitted to other publications.


For more informal questions, you can reach out to Junctions on social media at: @junctionsuu on Instagram and Twitter, or find us on Facebook or LinkedIn.


Download the full call for papers here!

As ever, the 7.1 issue of Junctions is intended to give recent MA and RMA graduates the opportunity to publish their research and gain first-hand experience of the academic publishing process. However, on this occasion, instead of responding to a themed Call for Papers, we are inviting graduate and postgraduate students from all humanities subjects at research universities in the Netherlands to revisit their (Research) Master’s theses.

At Junctions we seek to provide an interdisciplinary platform for graduate scholarship. We do this by writing Calls for Papers that target very specific topics, like decolonizing the institution, our city spaces, or bodies in disarray. In doing this, we seek to contribute to the continued elevation of scholarly work at the graduate level. This has the advantage of providing an environment to delve into contemporary and relevant topics from multiple angles. However, we know that many (Research) Master’s students write amazing theses that often go unpublished and unread. These scholarly works that represent the culmination of months of effort should be given the platform they deserve. We are therefore dedicating issue 7.1 to recent graduates in the humanities and their theses. Through this showcase we give our scholars the opportunity to reach new audiences with their research and insights, and give readers the opportunity to engage with state of the art scholarship in the humanities.

While the purpose of this issue is to elevate thesis work, the platform is not intended to publish whole theses, but rather, academic papers. All submissions must fulfil the role of stand-alone papers and will therefore require adaptation from their original thesis format. It is important not only that submissions meet the word-limit requirements, but also that they are structured to suit this purpose.

Possible submission formats may include:

    Revised Introduction. A revised version of the thesis introduction; this should be shaped to form a rounded argument with conclusions drawn. Using this format, an author can present the ideas of their whole thesis in a condensed manner, including a summary of the theoretical background and an abbreviated version of some of the most important insights.

    Edited Chapter. One thesis chapter with a short introduction and contextualization of the overall project. This contextualization may be provided in a short summary prefacing the work (max. 500 words), explaining the purpose and scope of the thesis as a whole, and how this particular chapter relates to and supports the broader premise and arguments of the thesis.

    Full Paper. A full, standalone paper based on (parts of) a thesis or development of an idea or argument related to your thesis. This may include thoughts and reflections that have come about as a result of your thesis, but were not necessarily developed in the thesis itself.


For this issue we are seeking submissions from RMA and MA humanities graduates who have recently completed their thesis at a research university in the Netherlands.

The submission length for original journal articles is 4000–6000 words.  Submissions should engage with the scholarly literature of the appropriate discipline and clearly identify its contribution to the field(s). Manuscripts should be in Chicago author-date referencing style, following the official Junctions Word template and the prescribed author guidelines. Please submit a digital copy (as a Word document) via the submission system on our website by 10th January 2022. Please omit references to the author in manuscripts to ensure anonymous reviews. After double-blind reviewing, accepted articles will undergo a revision process which will conclude with the publication of the journal issue. The journal does not accept manuscripts previously published by or simultaneously submitted to other publications.

For more informal questions, you can reach out to Junctions on social media at: @junctionsuu on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or find us on Facebook.

Download the full call for papers here!