Transitional justice scholarship has traditionally focused on institutions, legal mechanisms, and state-led processes such as truth commissions, trials, reparations, and peace agreements. While these approaches remain central, recent research has emphasised the need to understand transitional justice as a lived and socially embedded process, shaped by everyday experiences, local contexts, and unequal power relations. In particular, women’s perspectives on reconciliation, justice, and accountability often remain marginalised, despite the fact that women are deeply affected by conflict, political violence, displacement, and post-conflict reforms.
We invite proposals for chapters for an edited volume planned with an international academic publisher, including a tentative title and a short abstract (no more than 400 words). Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to prepare draft chapters of approximately 2000 words, which will be presented at a hybrid/online (tbd) workshop in September 2026.
The planned edited volume, Transitional Justice: Women’s Narratives of Reconciliation, seeks to bring together scholars from all backgrounds, particularly those from underrepresented groups and early career researchers, to critically examine transitional justice in both paradigmatic and aparadigmatic contexts. We aim to move beyond strictly institutional and doctrinal approaches by foregrounding women’s lived experiences of reconciliation, justice, and repair. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore how women understand, negotiate, resist, or reshape transitional justice processes in their everyday lives.
We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from law, sociology, political science, anthropology, gender studies, social work, peace and conflict studies, and related fields. Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- Women’s narratives of reconciliation, justice, and repair
- Gendered experiences of truth commissions, trials, and reparations
- Everyday and local experiences of transitional justice
- Intersectionality, race, migration, and colonial legacies in transitional justice
- Transitional justice beyond the post-conflict paradigm
- Informal, community-based, or non-state justice practices
- Memory, testimony, and narrative as forms of justice
- Critiques of reconciliation and the politics of forgiveness
- Socio-legal, feminist, and decolonial approaches to transitional justice
- Transitional justice in welfare states
- Transitional justice in ongoing conflicts
Submission
Scholars are invited to submit the following in a single Word-file by 15 May 2026:
- Abstract (max. 400 words)
- Keywords (5-8 keywords)
- Full name, institutional affiliation, and email address
- ORCID identifier, if applicable
- Short bio (max. 100 words)
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2026
Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to participate in a digital workshop 24 September 2026.
Participants will be asked to:
- submit a draft chapter of approximately 2000 words by 1 September,
- circulate drafts among participants for discussion,
- present their work at the workshop,
- submit a full manuscript after the workshop for inclusion in the edited volume.
All manuscripts will undergo editorial review, and a book proposal will be submitted to an international academic publisher based on the submitted manuscripts.
Submissions and questions should be sent to: jessica.jonsson@oru.se and carola.lingaas@vid.no with the subject line ‘Reconciliation 2026’.
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