For Issue 9 of ALRA, we invite you to consider the future of labor in the academy.
We are seeking proposals for projects that investigate the future of labor in higher education. As the landscape of higher education continues to evolve, it is crucial to understand the changing nature of labor within academic institutions and how such labor is structured, compensated, and valued. Understanding these changes, alongside the challenges and opportunities they present, is critical for charting new futures for academic labor. We see this work building on the white paper by Thomas Miller and Charles McMartin, “The Path Ahead for Recent PhDs” that was published in Issue 8 of ALRA. Proposed research and artistry topics may include, but are not limited to:
We encourage research-based, essayist, creative, and interdisciplinary approaches and welcome proposals from scholars, practitioners, community members, and policymakers. Proposals should clearly outline the scholarly questions and methodologies that will be used as well as potential contributions to our understanding that the manuscript offers for the future of academic labor.
– Co-Editors Bruce Kovanen and Sue Doe
March 1, 2025: Proposals (not more than 300 words) sent to Sue Doe and Bruce Kovanen
March 15, 2025: Invitations and regrets sent to authors in response to proposals
June 1, 2025: Completed articles due to the editors. Peer Reviewing begins.
July 1, 2025: Peer review process completed. Decisions sent to authors.
August 1, 2024: Revised final draft articles due to the editors
September 1, 2025: Copyediting
Late Fall 2025: Publication
Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (ALRA) is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal launched in 2016 by the Center for the Study of Academic Labor (CSAL) at Colorado State University. ALRA is supported by a generous grant from the WAC Clearinghouse. The journal encourages ongoing research on matters relating to tenure and contingency in the academy, both nationally and internationally. Along with our center and website, we offer a research home for those undertaking scholarship in areas broadly defined as tenure studies, contingency studies, and critical university studies. To meet this objective, we invite a wide range of contributions, from the statistical to the historic/archival, from the theoretical to the applied, from the researched to the creative, and from empirical to essayist forms. Our editors and reviewers include social scientists, artists, and theorists specializing in labor issues.
The Center for the Study of Academic Labor and ALRA welcome varied genres, such as scholarly articles, reports, policies, position statements, essays, organizing and advocacy toolkits, photographs, photographic essays, personal narratives, social science research, original art, artifacts of curated performance art, op-eds, reviews in print and multimedia formats, etc., so long as they associate favorably with the Center and Journal’s theme. We also welcome histories of academic labor efforts; for instance, if your institution or program has engaged in efforts to establish or improve practices and policies and would like to have a backup location for archiving the papers, please send them our way and we will work with you on creating a secure, digital file. If you do not see a genre mentioned that you are interested in pursuing, please contact the lead editors, Bruce Kovanen and Sue Doe (bruce.kovanen@ndsu.edu;sue.doe@colostate.edu). ALRA has no minimum required word count; given ALRA’s mission to encourage conversation among a broad range of stakeholders, we welcome shorter pieces, including briefs, on topics aligned with the journal’s mission and aims. Maximum word counts are 10,000 words.