About the Journal

PluriMed: Critical Studies in Medicine, Healing & Health is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal and living archive dedicated to critical, comparative, and ethnographically grounded studies of medicine, healing, and health across diverse cultural, historical, ecological, and political worlds.

Rooted in medical anthropology, history of medicine, public health, Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, medical humanities, and critical global health, PluriMed examines how therapeutic knowledge is made, contested, translated, authorized, and lived across plural worlds. The journal is especially concerned with medicine not only as a clinical practice, but also as a field of knowledge, power, infrastructure, care, evidence, embodiment, ecology, and political life.

PluriMed welcomes scholarship that foregrounds the Global South, Highland Asia, Indigenous and non-state knowledge systems, postcolonial health ecologies, and communities whose healing practices are often marginalized by biomedical dominance. While medical pluralism remains central to the journal’s intellectual genealogy, PluriMed’s broader focus on medicine, healing, and health reflects a commitment to studying the full range of practices, institutions, substances, rituals, environments, relations, and imaginaries through which people understand and pursue well-being.

The journal provides a rigorous interdisciplinary platform for scholars, practitioners, and independent researchers to engage with the coexistence, entanglement, and contestation of multiple medical traditions in a rapidly transforming global landscape.

Aims and Scope

PluriMed publishes theoretical, ethnographic, historical, and experimental work on medicine, healing, and health. We are interested in scholarship that challenges disciplinary boundaries, develops new conceptual vocabularies, and critically interrogates what counts as medical knowledge in different sociopolitical contexts.

The journal welcomes work on topics including, but not limited to:

Medical pluralism and therapeutic entanglement – How biomedical, Indigenous, ritual, religious, pharmaceutical, ecological, and vernacular healing systems interact, coexist, compete, or transform one another.

Critical studies of medicine – Medicine as institution, knowledge system, infrastructure, political technology, moral field, and site of epistemic authority.

Healing practices and lived therapeutics – Ritual healing, care, embodiment, affect, spirit, landscape, diagnosis, recovery, plants, substances, and the everyday work of making health possible.

Health, environment, and ecology – Climate change, toxicity, more-than-human health, microbial and fungal worlds, environmental illness, disease landscapes, and multispecies medicine.

Indigenous, local, and non-state health systems – Traditions and practices that persist, adapt, and resist within or alongside biomedical and state health regimes.

Colonial and postcolonial medicine – Histories of encounter, extraction, translation, governance, missionary medicine, development, and the afterlives of empire in contemporary health systems.

Pharmaceuticals, bioprospecting, and political economy – The commodification, standardization, circulation, and scientific reconfiguration of medicines, plants, substances, and therapeutic knowledge.

Evidence, legitimacy, and epistemic justice – The politics of proof, efficacy, expertise, skepticism, recognition, marginalization, and the unequal authority granted to different forms of medical knowledge.

Speculative and emerging medical worlds – Neglected conditions, uncertain disease ontologies, mycological and microbial pathologies, experimental methods, and future-oriented health imaginaries.

Methods, archives, and collaboration – Fieldwork, translation, collaborative research, oral histories, visual and sensory methods, conference proceedings, and alternative scholarly formats.

PluriMed is particularly committed to work that attends carefully to place, language, history, and practice. We encourage submissions that combine conceptual ambition with grounded empirical research, and we welcome scholarship that moves between anthropology, history, public health, environmental studies, religious studies, Indigenous studies, science and technology studies, and the medical humanities.

Article Types and Formats

PluriMed supports a broad range of scholarly and experimental formats. In addition to conventional peer-reviewed articles, the journal provides space for materials that document emerging conversations, collaborative research, field-based knowledge, and the intellectual life of conferences, workshops, and research networks.

We welcome:

Research Articles
Full-length peer-reviewed articles based on original ethnographic, historical, theoretical, archival, or interdisciplinary research.

Theoretical and Conceptual Essays
Essays that develop new concepts, frameworks, or critical approaches for the study of medicine, healing, and health.

Ethnographic Essays
Focused, field-based essays that explore lived therapeutic practices, healing worlds, clinical encounters, ritual life, health infrastructures, or everyday experiences of illness and care.

Historical Studies
Research on histories of medicine, healing, public health, colonial encounter, missionary medicine, pharmaceutical circulation, Indigenous knowledge, or postcolonial health systems.

Methodological Reflections
Essays on fieldwork, collaboration, translation, ethics, archives, sensory methods, oral history, visual practice, interdisciplinary research, and the challenges of studying plural healing worlds.

Field Notes and Research Reports
Shorter pieces that document ongoing fieldwork, preliminary findings, emerging questions, research collaborations, or local health concerns.

Conference Proceedings and Workshop Abstracts
Programmes, abstracts, session reports, and proceedings from relevant workshops and conferences. These materials are clearly marked as non-peer-reviewed unless they undergo formal review.

Interviews and Conversations
Dialogues with scholars, practitioners, healers, clinicians, activists, artists, archivists, and community knowledge holders.

Translations and Annotated Texts
Translations of relevant primary materials, oral histories, healing texts, historical documents, or field-based materials, accompanied by scholarly commentary.

Book, Film, Exhibition, and Archive Reviews
Critical reviews of books, films, exhibitions, archives, digital projects, and other materials relevant to medicine, healing, health, and medical anthropology.

Special Issues and Themed Collections
Curated collections on specific themes, regions, concepts, methods, conferences, or collaborative research networks.

All submissions should clearly indicate their intended format. Materials that are not peer-reviewed will be identified as such, allowing PluriMed to maintain rigorous editorial standards while also supporting open documentation of scholarly exchange.

Workshops, Networks, and Living Archives

In addition to peer-reviewed scholarship, PluriMed serves as a living archive for critical studies of medicine, healing, and health. The journal publishes workshop programmes, paper titles, abstracts, field reports, conference reflections, project notes, interviews, translations, and collective statements, while clearly distinguishing peer-reviewed scholarship from non-peer-reviewed archival or network materials.

This model reflects an older and broader understanding of journals as spaces not only for finished articles, but also for proceedings, debates, correspondence, field reports, and emerging intellectual communities. PluriMed seeks to revive this tradition for contemporary medical anthropology, critical health studies, and research on plural healing worlds.

Our inaugural collection grows out of the Entangled Medical Futures workshop at the University of Edinburgh, held from 8–10 October 2025. The workshop brought together scholars and practitioners working across Nepal, Bhutan, India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and helped establish PluriMed as a platform for collaborative research, comparative inquiry, and field-building around medicine, healing, and health.

Workshop and conference materials are made available with contributor permission and are intended to support dialogue, citation, visibility, and future collaboration. Inclusion in PluriMed’s living archive does not preclude later publication in journals, edited volumes, monographs, or other formats.

By combining peer-reviewed scholarship with carefully curated archival and network materials, PluriMed acts as a commons for critical studies of medicine, healing, and health: an open space where ideas, debates, practices, and collaborations can be documented and shared as they unfold.

Open Access and Copyright

PluriMed is committed to making scholarship freely available to researchers, practitioners, students, and communities worldwide. As an open-access journal, PluriMed does not place its published content behind paywalls and supports the broad circulation of research across academic, professional, and public contexts.

All peer-reviewed articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, commonly known as CC BY 4.0, unless otherwise stated. This license allows others to read, download, share, cite, distribute, and reuse published work, provided that proper attribution is given to the author or authors and to the original publication in PluriMed.

Authors retain full copyright of their work. They are encouraged to share their articles through institutional repositories, public archives, personal websites, teaching platforms, and scholarly networks in order to maximize accessibility, citation, and public engagement.

For archival, conference, translated, or collaborative materials, copyright and permissions may vary depending on the nature of the material and the consent of contributors. Such cases will be clearly indicated in the relevant publication record.

Peer Review and Editorial Standards

Submissions identified as research articles, theoretical essays, historical studies, methodological reflections, or other scholarly articles normally undergo a double-anonymous peer review process. This process is designed to ensure rigorous, fair, and constructive evaluation by experts in relevant fields.

PluriMed is committed to maintaining high editorial standards while supporting intellectual generosity, interdisciplinary dialogue, and inclusive scholarly practice. Reviewers are asked to evaluate submissions for originality, analytical depth, methodological care, conceptual clarity, ethical responsibility, and contribution to the study of medicine, healing, and health.

The journal encourages inclusive citation practices and seeks to recognize scholarship from underrepresented regions, languages, institutions, and knowledge traditions. We are especially attentive to the unequal politics of academic visibility and to the ways in which knowledge from the Global South, Indigenous communities, non-state health systems, and practitioner traditions is often marginalized.

Not all materials published by PluriMed are peer-reviewed. Workshop programmes, abstracts, conference reports, project notes, interviews, translations, and other archival or network materials may be reviewed editorially rather than through double-anonymous peer review. Such materials will be clearly marked so that readers can distinguish peer-reviewed scholarship from non-peer-reviewed documentation.

PluriMed does not treat peer review as a gatekeeping mechanism alone, but as part of a broader commitment to careful scholarship, ethical collaboration, and the cultivation of an intellectually serious and generous field.

Archiving and Digital Preservation

PluriMed is committed to the long-term preservation, accessibility, and citability of the materials it publishes. The journal seeks to ensure that articles, proceedings, reports, and archival materials remain available to future readers and are protected against loss, removal, or technological instability.

Published materials are assigned stable citation information, and where possible, digital object identifiers are provided through appropriate repositories and preservation systems. PluriMed also supports the deposit of published work in institutional repositories, public archives, and other preservation platforms.

Because PluriMed functions both as a peer-reviewed journal and as a living archive, digital preservation is central to its mission. Conference programmes, abstracts, project reports, and other time-sensitive materials often disappear from institutional websites or informal networks. By preserving such materials in a stable and citable format, PluriMed helps document the intellectual and collaborative life of an emerging field.

The journal’s preservation strategy reflects its broader commitment to open knowledge, scholarly memory, and the long-term accessibility of research on medicine, healing, and health.

Editorial and Institutional Support

PluriMed is published by Highlander Press, housed at the Highland Institute, an independent research center dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship in anthropology, history, environmental humanities, medical humanities, Highland Asia studies, and Global South research.

The journal is supported by an international editorial network of scholars, practitioners, and collaborators working across medical anthropology, history of medicine, Indigenous studies, critical global health, environmental humanities, religious studies, science and technology studies, and plural healing traditions.

PluriMed’s editorial vision grows out of the Highland Institute’s commitment to collaborative scholarship, regional depth, public knowledge, and critical engagement with communities and knowledge systems often overlooked by dominant academic and biomedical institutions.

The journal welcomes partnerships with workshops, conferences, research networks, field schools, archives, and collaborative projects that share its commitment to critical, ethical, and accessible scholarship on medicine, healing, and health.

History of the Journal

Founded in 2025, PluriMed emerged from the Highland Institute’s long-standing work in medical anthropology, Highland Asia studies, environmental humanities, and critical research on Indigenous and plural healing traditions. Its launch was shaped by the Entangled Medical Futures conference in Edinburgh, where conversations among scholars and practitioners working across medicine, ritual, ecology, care, and political life pointed toward the need for a more open and experimental scholarly platform.

Originally conceived around the field of medical pluralism, PluriMed has since expanded into Critical Studies in Medicine, Healing & Health. This broader formulation better reflects the journal’s commitments to ethnographic depth, historical critique, ecological attention, epistemic justice, and collaborative field-building.

From the beginning, PluriMed was designed not only as a venue for peer-reviewed scholarship, but also as a living archive of the field itself. By publishing workshop programmes, conference reports, paper abstracts, project notes, and other scholarly materials alongside full articles, the journal documents the evolving intellectual life of research on medicine, healing, and health.

This hybrid model reflects PluriMed’s commitment to keeping knowledge accessible, citable, and in dialogue with ongoing events, networks, and collaborations. The journal aims to serve as a commons for critical medical anthropology and related fields: an open space where ideas, debates, and practices can be documented and shared as they unfold.

Privacy Statement

PluriMed is committed to protecting the privacy of authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and contributors. Names, email addresses, affiliations, biographical information, and other personal details provided to the journal will be used only for the stated purposes of editorial communication, peer review, publication, indexing, and journal administration.

Author and reviewer information is handled securely and will not be shared with third parties without explicit consent, except where required for the normal operation of the journal, the publication process, or legal compliance.

Reviewer identities are treated as confidential in accordance with the journal’s double-anonymous peer review process. Editorial correspondence, review reports, and submission materials are handled with appropriate care and are not made public without permission.

PluriMed does not sell, rent, or commercially distribute user information. By submitting to or registering with the journal, users consent to the collection and use of their information solely for legitimate scholarly, editorial, and publishing purposes.