PLEASE NOTE: The submission period for this call has closed.

The Journal of the British Academy is seeking submissions for a focused issue on “Displacement and Development.” Please submit articles of 10,000-12,000 words (including references) to Dr Palash Kamruzzaman at palash.kamruzzaman@southwales.ac.uk by 31 December 2020. Articles will then be peer reviewed.

The latest UNHRCR (June 2020) Global Trends report suggests that 79.5 million people were displaced at the end of 2019. In other words, 1% of the world’s population is displaced. Sixty-eight percent of the displaced population come only from five countries (Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar), while eighty-five percent of them are hosted in developing countries. Moreover, eighty percent of the world’s displaced people suffer from acute food insecurity and malnutrition, and forty percent of the displaced population are children. These are not mere statistics; instead, these represent human lives and their pains, struggles, treacherous journeys and deaths into the seas, strengths, stories, resilience, agency, dignity, vulnerability, helplessness, frustrations, and hopes. As grim the numbers are, these also represent challenges for the nation-states and political leaders at the national, regional, and global levels. Additionally, the global displacement trend poses major concerns for assorted actors including international and national NGOs, civil societies, UN agencies, donor organisations, faith groups, and academia, among others – especially at a time of global pandemic that will have impact on displaced people in terms of the closure of borders and the expulsion of migrant workers from some countries. This issue invites high-quality original research and conceptual papers that deepen the existing knowledge on displacement and cognate socio-economic, politico-cultural, development, policy and leadership challenges.

The Journal of the British Academy is a multi- and interdisciplinary open access journal publishing articles in the humanities and social sciences. ‘Supplementary issues’ publish thematic collections of papers, put together by guest editors. For authors’ guidance on style, please ask for the full details. Please review the Journal‘s Notes to Authors for guidelines on the preparation of your article for publication.