Current Call for Submissions

2026 Volume 43

Aesthetic encounters: Arts-based inquiry in/through critical times

We invite submissions for Volume 43 of the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education (jCRAE), a special issue dedicated to the possibilities of arts-based research and creative inquiry. This issue seeks contributions that explore how the arts function as rigorous and meaningfully expansive forms of theorizing, questioning, and knowing that are difficult to communicate through conventional academic discourse.

Informed by Rolling’s Arts-Based Research: A Primer (2013), we affirm that:
“The conventional and the rationally explicative cannot represent all that can be known.” (p. 6)

jCRAE welcomes work that demonstrates creative practice as a method of inquiry and an ethical, epistemological, and affective practice rooted in cultural production, community, and curiosity. Whether grounded in critique, speculation, healing, resistance, or imagination, arts-based research (ABR) can offer expansive ways of seeing and interpreting information.

Rolling reminds us:
“Arts-based research expands the scholarly imagination by inviting the emotional, the sensory, the intuitive, and the symbolic into the process of knowing.” (p. 9)

Guidelines for this issue

This special issue invites a broad range of arts-based methodologies, including but not limited to visual arts, poetic and narrative inquiry, performance, sonic practices, movement, storytelling, and digital/hybrid forms. We welcome submissions from scholars, artist-educators, community-based practitioners, cultural workers, and the range of practitioner-researchers working across diverse disciplines and traditions.

We especially encourage works that explore the role of aesthetic inquiry in relation to:

  • Complex social, political, or ecological conditions
  • Teaching and learning in formal or informal settings
  • Identity, embodiment, and relationality
  • Anti/decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-racist, or Indigenous frameworks
  • Imagination, futurity, and speculative practices
  • Collaborative, community-engaged, or participatory work
  • Critical reflection on arts-based research as a practice

Submission Details

We encourage submissions that stretch both the form and function of academic writing, welcoming works that challenge the boundaries of representation, research, and response. Submission formats include, but are not limited to:

  • Research articles
  • Visual essays
  • Poetic and narrative forms
  • Practice-based reflections
  • Experimental or multimodal works
  • Media reviews and responses related to arts-based scholarship

Manuscripts should adhere to the journal's guidelines for format and citation. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2026 by 11:59 PM.

Please submit your papers through the online submission system at https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jcrae/. 

Questions?

For inquiries and additional information, don't hesitate to get in touch with the Senior Editor, gloria j. wilson, and their team at jcrae1983@gmail.com.

Download a PDF version of the 2026 Call >

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Rolling, J. H. (2013). Arts-Based Research: A Primer. Peter Lang.