Call for articles for Themed Issue - Academia: crisis, struggle and resistance

Across the globe higher education and academic institutions are increasingly sites of

political attack and resistance. The multifaceted and intertwined crises facing academia play out differently in different geographic contexts. Examples include ideological / political

attacks through culture wars rhetoric and constraints on the curriculum; and economic

through threats of defunding and the fallout from the marketisation and financialisation of

higher education. Struggles over what should be taught, the purpose of universities and

how they should be run raise fundamental challenges for education and research, and

consequently, they have much broader political and cultural implications. Those who work

and study within higher education are at the forefront of the crisis.

This themed issue invites articles from international contexts by academics, students and activists which explore experiences and critical analysis of areas including, but not limited, to:

• the role of state, funding and regulatory frameworks in academia

• attacks on critical scholarship, teaching and research

• attacks on freedom of expression and speech within academic institutions

• academic and student responses and experiences of resistance, for example, protests, industrial action and strikes

• higher education as capitalist accumulation and an opportunity for profit extraction

• inequalities in access to higher education and learning

• the impacts on students of the marketisation of academia (eg student loans, mental

  health and experiences of learning)

• precarity and casualisation in the academic workforce

Please submit a detailed abstract (500 words) outlining the article’s focus and arguments by

1st September 2025. Email to articlescsp@gmail.com with TI Academia in the subject

heading. Decisions will be communicated by end of September and first drafts of full article

to be submitted by 2nd February 2026.

Critical Social Policy is a highly ranked, peer reviewed journal that provides an international

forum for advocacy, analysis and debate on social policy issues. CSP aims to develop an

understanding of welfare from socialist, feminist, anti-racist, intersectional and radical

perspectives (see CSP aims and scope). We publish full articles, commentaries and

contributions from activists.