Legacies of
Violence and War

A Security Studies Call for Papers
and Special Issue Proposals

Submission deadline for
special issue proposals:
December 15, 2022

Submission deadline for
full individual papers:
February 15, 2023

The field of international relations, reflecting its origins and its central preoccupations, has long centered on the causes of war and violence. It has historically devoted less attention to their consequences. There have of course been important pockets of literature exploring the implications of war mobilization and warfare for, among other subjects, state-building, regime development, economic performance, and gender roles and rights. Students of empire have long been sensitive to the ways in which imperial violence has shaped post-colonial polities and societies. More recently, using both experimental tools and archival records, scholars have examined the impact of war experiences on subsequent political attitudes, mobilization, and participation, and others have sought to pinpoint the long-term consequences of violence for local and regional economic development. Nevertheless, on the whole, the consequences of violence and war, both intrastate and interstate, continue to receive less scholarly engagement than their causes.

The editors of Security Studies believe that ours is a world shaped by violence and war. The legacies of intrastate and interstate conflict are manifest, both in the short term and over the longue durée, around the world in behavior, institutions, memory, and discourse. The editors wish to give a platform to ongoing cutting-edge scholarship in this arena and to encourage more of it. To that end, Security Studies is issuing a call for both individual papers and special issue/forum proposals on the legacies of threats, war mobilization, and violence/warfare, broadly construed, both within and between states. Those legacies may be located in any domain, from politics to categorical identities to memory to economics to public health, and we are particularly interested, as the word “legacies” implies, in the long-run consequences of threats, war mobilization, and violence/warfare. This call does not presume that the boundaries of wartime are unproblematically defined or that wartime can be clearly demarcated from peacetime. As always, we are open to scholarship featuring a wide range of methods and grounded in diverse epistemological commitments, in the firm belief that all can contribute to growing scholarly knowledge about the legacies of violence. In addition, Security Studies particularly welcomes scholarship regarding the legacies of violence and warfare in the Global South and/or scholarship composed by scholars hailing from or located in the Global South.

The editors will organize accepted individual submissions on these themes into a special issue or forum. That would not preclude, however, the publication of a guest-edited special issue or forum on these themes. The editors thus welcome both completed individual papers as well as proposals for special issues/forums exploring a wide range of substantive research questions on the theme of this special call.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS. Please submit full individual papers (not proposals) as regular research articles (via the ScholarOne platform), noting in the cover letter that the paper is for consideration under the “Legacies of Violence and War” call. In preparing your article, please take note of our usual guidance for Security Studies authors.

SPECIAL FORUM/ISSUE PROPOSALS. To submit a special forum/issue proposal, please carefully consult and follow our general special forum/issue guidelines and submit the proposal via email to Editor-in-Chief Ron Krebs. Security Studies deeply values diversity in all its forms, and the editors will be attentive to whether special forum/issue proposals exhibit theoretical and methodological diversity and involve contributors from diverse stages of career and with diverse backgrounds. 

For full consideration under this call, please submit special forum/issue proposals by December 15, 2022, and full individual papers by February 15, 2023. Once manuscripts are accepted for review, please be prepared for an expedited review process and a tight revision and publication schedule.

For further inquiries about this initiative, please contact Editor-in-Chief Ron Krebs.