All submissions must meet the following requirements.
Thank you for your interest in submitting an article to The Highlander, an academic, open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of highland communities historically situated at the margins of the state. Articles published in The Highlander contribute to interdisciplinary and comparative discussions on highland societies globally, engaging with historical, ethnographic, theoretical, and methodological debates.
Research Articles: Original, previously unpublished contributions based on original research from all disciplines. Articles should engage critically with theoretical debates, methodological approaches, or empirical case studies.
Word Limit: Up to 8,000 words, excluding title, abstract, notes, and references; up to 11,000 words inclusive of all content.
Abstract: A summary of no more than 300 words outlining the purpose, methodology, findings, and conclusions.
Keywords: Up to five keywords should be provided.
Biographical Note: A brief biography (100 words) should be included at the end of the submission.
Research Reports: Shorter reports that describe early findings or ongoing research, suitable for conveying time-sensitive material.
Word Limit: Up to 2,000 words.
Abstract: A summary of no more than 300 words.
Biographical Note: A brief biography (100 words).
Perspectives: Analytical or reflective pieces that take a particular stance or articulate a viewpoint.
Word Limit: Up to 6,000 words.
Abstract: A summary of no more than 300 words.
Biographical Note: A brief biography (100 words).
The Highlander follows The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition), Author-Date format.
British spelling should be used (per Oxford English Dictionary).
Endnotes: Use single-spaced endnotes, numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals.
References: A list of references should follow the body of the text, formatted in Chicago Author-Date style.
Page Numbers: All pages should be numbered at the bottom.
Quotations: Non-English quotations should be in single quotation marks (no italics), with translations in brackets or footnotes.
Diacritics: Use the Noto font family for diacritics in Asian and indigenous languages.
The Highlander follows a double-blind peer review process.
Authors must remove identifying information from their manuscripts.
Peer review typically takes 8–12 weeks.
All research must adhere to ethical guidelines for human subjects where applicable.
Authors must obtain permissions for copyrighted material and images where applicable.
Photography Submission Guide
The Highlander welcomes the submission of photo essays that critically engage with the
political, material, and social economies of our region of interest. We define photo essays as
submissions with between 5-15 images accompanied by up to 2,000 words of text and
references. The distribution of images and texts can be decided by the author. However, we ask
that images are central to the submission, not merely illustrative of the community, material, or
arguments, that feature in the text. We ask for critical submissions that aim to advance the
understanding of Highland Asia and the methods we use to engage with the region, be it the
nature of ethnographic fieldwork, photography as a documentation tool, or similar explorations.
Good submissions will be tightly focused on a single topic or defined geographical region. We
encourage authors to see their photographs as interventions in scholarly and regional debates
in the same way they would view written submissions. Furthermore, we expect that any images
submitted are the product of ethical research partnerships with the communities represented in
the images. If that was not possible for whatever reason, please raise this in your submission
and explain why your submission adheres to the ethics of social science research.
Submissions should follow these guidelines:
Advance conversations around Highland Asia by intervening in ongoing scholarly
debates.
Show a strong engagement with any community featured in the work.
Be tightly focused around a single topic. If the topic is regional, please limit the focus to a
small geographical entity such as a single city or a single village. If an author wishes to
submit a broader comparative photo essay we ask for a justification as to the merits of
the comparative piece for the specified subject.
The photographs should have some aesthetic merit, though this is secondary to the
content and structure of the photo essay as a whole.
Ethics and Engagement
We acknowledge that photography has had a complex history in Highland Asia. Photography
arrived in the region entangled with colonial projects of resource extraction and documentations
of racial difference.In the post-colonial period, this has been further complicated by othering
representations of national minorities. At the same time, however, photography has also been a
profoundly liberating medium, holding states accountable for human rights abuses and
advancing social justice. Given these histories, submissions must be sensitive to photography’s
multiple and difficult histories, and we will hesitate to accept any submission that cannot
highlight its academic value, regardless of aesthetics.
We also encourage submissions from researchers who have had a sustained engagement with
the communities or the regions that feature in their submissions. If you do not identify as being
connected with the community in your images and you have only recently started working with that community or in that region, we suggest that you wait and send us your submission at a
later date.
If your submission covers any of the following themes: ethnic festivals, public rituals, tattooing,
traditional material culture practices, we strongly suggest you narrow your focus to a specific
aspect of your subject matter and use your captions to inform the reader what your critical
contribution is to scholarly debates regarding contemporary or historic Highland Asia. We
acknowledge that many areas of erstwhile imperial interest, such as tattooing, are also of
increasing indigenous interest. However, due to the fraught photographic histories of these
subjects and the potential for misrepresentation, we ask for sensitivity from all submissions. To
this end we welcome critical notes by authors on the photographs they did not include, topics
they did not address, or voices that have been silenced through omission or erasure.
Submission Guide
We ask that the photographic essay be between 1,500 to 2,500 words. We ask for submissions
to be in the format of Microsoft Word, font Arial, size 11 text. The author should stick to the
broader citational guidelines for the journal [insert]. All submissions will include 50-100 words
specifying the author/authors affiliations and their relationship to any communities featured in
the submission.
The Highlander Journal invites reviews of books that engage the thematic and conceptual contours outlined in the journal’s Focus and Scope. We are interested in both ‘classic’ theoretical texts as well as recent empirically grounded works that have engaged the highland spaces and populations and overtly or implicitly figures the heuristic notion of ‘Zomia+’.
While our journal is broadly concerned with the study of Highland Asian communities situated at the margins of the state, we encourage reviews of books that allow discussions to unpack the relevance of received categories and tropes such as ‘highland space’, ‘margins/periphery’, ‘borders’, ‘frontiers’, ‘remote’, ‘backward’, ‘state evasion’, ‘stateless’ etc. We seek to inspire multidisciplinary Area Studies in its broadest sense, and thus, our interest goes beyond conventional Area based approaches restricted by ‘methodological nationalism’ in Asian Highland contexts. Moreover, books that illustrate the relations between Highland-Lowland dichotomies or those that identify the circulation of the Highland heuristics in other contexts outside of Asia (example, in the Americas, Oceania, Eurasia, and Arctic/Antarctica) are particularly welcome. The books we review are usually situated roughly from the Pre-Modern era to the Twenty-first century, but we are open to relevant books that fall outside of this temporal boundary. Our journal believes in supporting diversity in knowledge production, and in that spirit, we also welcome reviews of relevant and rigorous books by vernacular and less-visible local publishers whose merits deserve discussion.
We also occasionally welcome Review Articles which thematically discusses a set of inter-related 2-3 books which together provides a meaningful discussion of new trends or theoretical directions within a field (while adhering to the larger scope of the journal).
Book Review Submission:
All reviews must be approved in advance by the editors. Please email us your enquiries to aditya.kakati@iheid.ch. We also occasionally solicit reviews of books that are of specific interest.
Content: The book review should be an engaging, informative, and critical discussion of approximately 700-1000 words. Review articles are longer and can range from 2000-2500 words.
A review should be submitted through the article submission portal as an MS Word file, should be typed double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins on all sides, and should conform to The Highlander Journal Style Guidelines. References to other works should be kept to a minimum. Page number citations of the specific book under review should be made in-text under parentheses.
At the end of each review, please include your name and institutional affiliation (if none, then as an independent scholar), email address and mailing address.
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.