Call for Papers: Gender, Space and Livelihoods, Abstract submission deadline- 10 October 2026
Gender, Space and Livelihoods -Pathways to Human Flourishing in the Majority World
Edited by Prof. Grey Magaiza and Prof. Narnia Bohler-Muller
An edited volume currently under review by Palgrave Macmillan
Themes and Areas of Interest
1. Gender, Space and Livelihoods: The Constitutive Triad
• Theorising the entanglement of gender, space and livelihoods
• The gendered production of space
• Feminist and intersectional approaches to livelihood studies
• Spatial dimensions of livelihood insecurity
• Rethinking livelihoods beyond economistic framings
2. Spatial Justice, Land and Uneven Development
• Spatial injustice, uneven development and rural–urban inequality
• Gendered geographies and the right to the city
• Land, territory, belonging and dispossession
• Property regimes, agrarian transformation and gender
• Urban planning, peripheral spaces and exclusion
3. Mobility, Migration and Translocal Livelihoods
• Gendered migration and cross-border livelihoods
• Circular, translocal and multi-sited livelihood networks
• Borders, mobility and spatial exclusion
• Migration and livelihood (in)security
4. Livelihoods, Informality and Political Economy
• Gendered informal economies and informal urban work
• Women’s livelihood strategies, survival and resilience
• Labour transitions, entrepreneurship and self-employment
• Capital, state power and livelihood-making
• Alternative and solidarity economic practices
5. Gendered Poverty, Care and Social Reproduction
• Feminisation of poverty and gendered precarity
• Unpaid, invisible and reproductive labour
• Care economies and social reproduction
• Poverty, wellbeing and alternative understandings of security
6. Environment, Climate and Ecological Justice
• Environmental degradation, pollution and livelihood loss
• Climate change and gendered vulnerability
• Extractivism and ecological dispossession
• Gender, community agency and environmental governance
7. Decolonising Development: Knowledge, Power and Agency
• Decolonial approaches and epistemic (in)justice
• Southern epistemologies and African philosophies of development
• Relational ontologies — ubuntu, buen vivir and ujamaa
• Gendered power, constrained agency and “beyond empowerment”
• Collective action, resistance and social movements
8. Human Flourishing and Alternative Development Futures
• Human flourishing as a development horizon: dignity, agency, relationality
• Wellbeing beyond income; the capability approach
• Flourishing as an unfinished process of becoming
• Alternative indicators: measuring what matters to communities
• Post-development, pluriversal and community-centred futures
• Institutions, policy and praxis for a flourishing life
The volume welcomes multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and polytheoretical contributions
What We Are Looking For
We seek chapters that offer a clear intellectual contribution rather than merely descriptive accounts.
Strong proposals will:
• Identify a well-defined research or conceptual problem;
• demonstrate engagement with relevant scholarship;
• clearly explain the chapter’s central argument;
• connect explicitly to gender, space and/or livelihoods;
• engage meaningfully with the question of human flourishing;
• demonstrate relevance beyond the immediate case study; and
• contribute to wider debates about development in the Majority World.
We particularly welcome provocative, theoretically ambitious and conceptually innovative contributions that challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about development.
Abstract Submission Guidelines
Abstracts of 300–500 words should include the following elements:
• proposed chapter title; • author(s) and institutional affiliation(s);
• an author biography of approximately 100 words;
• the central research question or problem;
• the chapter’s main argument;
• theoretical/conceptual framework;
• methodological approach, where applicable;
• empirical context, where applicable; and
• expected contribution to the volume.
Please also indicate which of the eight thematic areas above most closely aligns with your proposed chapter.
Key Dates
- Abstract submission deadline- 10 October 2026
- Notice of Abstract acceptance- 25 October 2026
- Full chapter submission- 1 April 2027
- Proposed completion- 1 November 2027
For more details, refer here
