CfP: Special Issue on ‘Dehumanization and Violence’ in the Journal of Perpetrator Research

Dehumanization as a social, cultural, and political practice, as well as a mode of cognition and perception, is often theorized to inform and be transformed by violence. Accordingly, references to dehumanization abound in literatures concerned with harm and violence, including in sociology, political science, history, psychology, philosophy, and across the humanities. To date, however, this literature remains fragmented across disciplinary boundaries, with limited sustained dialogue between fields in the social sciences and humanities. Much of the existing work on dehumanization also tends to adopt a static and ahistorical framework, obscuring the empirical, structural, and conceptual heterogeneity of dehumanization as a social phenomenon.

Despite important advances, the lack of dialogue has constrained our understanding of how shifting conceptions of humanness and “the human” shape dehumanization across cultural, political, and ideological contexts. The common treatment of dehumanization as a static or abstract process also tends to overlook its emergence through everyday interactions, institutional routines, and broader social structures. Crucially, the lived experience of dehumanization—whether as perpetrator, victim, bystander, or rescuer—remains largely marginal. As a result, current accounts often lack the theoretical precision, empirical breadth, and historical depth needed to grasp how dehumanization operates within and drives violence.

To address these shortcomings and advance the interdisciplinary study of dehumanization, this special issue invites papers that examine dehumanization in and across diverse local and global contexts of harm. We seek contributions that employ a range of methods, offer rigorous analysis, and push theoretical and methodological boundaries. In particular, we aim to foster sustained dialogue across disciplines that too often remain siloed, bringing together insights from sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, political science, and beyond. By bridging these fields, we hope to generate more integrated and expansive understandings of how dehumanization takes shape, is contested, and unfolds across time, space, and structure. We especially welcome contributions that explore:

• Papers focussing on dehumanization during armed conflict past and present (e.g. genocide, conventional and civil wars, colonial violence, terrorism, and various forms of extra-lethal violence during conflict (e.g., sexual violence, torture)
• Papers considering dehumanization outside of wartime contexts, e.g., in policing and police violence, concerning houselessness, gender-based violence, gang violence, migration/deportation regimes, and more.
• Papers that consider dehumanization of participants in violence, self-dehumanization, how it feels to be a victim of dehumanization, mutual dehumanization, and so on.

Further details:

We invite the submission of abstracts of approximately 350 words outlining the key arguments and focus of the proposed article by Thursday 16 October 2025.

Selected authors will then be invited to submit a full-length article (8000 words max in length; due date for the full article to be expected around April 2026).

Please send your abstract (or any related questions/queries) to torsten.michel@bristol.ac.uk.

General Information on the Journal of Perpetrator Research can be found here.

Submission Guidelines for preparing your manuscript can be found here.

Guest Editors

Dr Jonathan Leader-Maynard, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, King’s College London

Dr Aliza Luft, Assistant Professor in Sociology, UCLA (aluft@soc.ucla.edu)

Dr Torsten Michel, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Bristol (torsten.michel@bristol.ac.uk)