Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS

Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies
A Quarterly, Peer-Reviewed e-Journal

INAUGURAL ISSUE

“Rethinking the Neighbourhood”

About the Journal

The Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies (IJNS) invites original, unpublished manuscripts for its inaugural issue, “Rethinking the Neighbourhood.” IJNS is a new, interdisciplinary e-journal that examines India’s neighbourhood as the tangible community of neighbouring states, each with its own borders, sovereignty, and national identity — and, within that framework, as a space also shaped by history, political economy, ecology, culture, and the everyday practices of the people who inhabit and cross those borders. We invite scholars, practitioners, and doctoral researchers, from India and abroad, to contribute to this inaugural conversation.

IJNS seeks to fill a significant gap in existing scholarship by treating neighbourhoods as analytical frameworks in their own right, rather than as derivative extensions of foreign policy analysis, area studies, or security studies. The journal is interdisciplinary by design — drawing on international relations, history, political economy, anthropology, and ecology — and is India-anchored while remaining globally engaged. It does not offer a single, unified framework; rather, it invites multiple perspectives on the neighbourhood as an evolving, variegated space, and foregrounds borderlands as a critical vantage point, alongside field-based, ethnographic, and subnational approaches that complement official archives. IJNS is a platform open to scholars and practitioners from within India and abroad, positioned at the intersection of policy relevance and conceptual inquiry.

Its contents will include peer-reviewed Research Articles, Conceptual Interventions, Perspectives and Policy Essays, and Neighbourhood Briefs. Apart from these, the Journal will carry innovative features such as an Oral Histories Segment and an Infographics Initiative that translates regional dynamics — maps, timelines, trade flows, and satellite imagery — into visual narratives. As an e-journal, IJNS will also make active use of multimedia, including audio and video embeds, and will carry a dedicated, curated Book Review section spanning India’s neighbourhood, South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and wider Asia.

Theme of the Inaugural Issue

Building on this framing, the inaugural issue welcomes contributions that read the neighbourhood through both long-term structural change and its current moment. Submissions grounded in recent political, economic, and social developments across the region — interpreted through the conceptual lens of the theme, rather than as day-to-day commentary — are particularly encouraged. Contributions engaging with the following guiding questions are welcome:

• What constitutes a “neighbourhood,” and how might it be theorised as a category distinct from area studies or strategic-perimeter framings?
• How do neighbourhoods evolve over time, and through whose agency — states, institutions, or non-state and borderland actors?
• How is the neighbourhood being reshaped by larger geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts, and by national and sub-national impulses? What underlying factors are driving the current churn in the region, and with what consequences?
• How is the neighbourhood mediating between the local and the global, and between formal diplomacy and informal, everyday cross-border life?

Indicative Sub-Themes

Submissions are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

• Conceptualising the neighbourhood: theoretical and methodological foundations of neighbourhood studies.
• Borderlands as vantage points: state authority, identity, and everyday life at the margins.
• Historical memory, partition legacies, and the politics of belonging.
• Political economy of connectivity: trade, infrastructure, and development partnerships — and the paradox of deep informal connectivity alongside limited formal economic integration in South Asia.
• Ecological interdependence: shared rivers, resources, and climate vulnerability across borders.
• Migration, mobility, and diaspora and migrant networks.
• Political transitions, popular mobilisation, and youth-driven social change: reading recent state–society churn across the neighbourhood.
• Great-power competition and shifting external alignments in the neighbourhood.
• “Neighbourhood First” in practice: possibilities and limits of India’s regional policy framework.
• Comparative and transregional perspectives: India’s neighbourhood in wider Asian and global context.
• The state, regional institutions, and non-state actors in the making of neighbourhoods.
• Oral histories and visual/data narratives of the neighbourhood — diplomats, traders, migrants, peacekeepers, and border communities — captured through interviews, maps, and satellite imagery.

Country-specific studies are welcome where they engage one or more of the above thematic clusters and explain their wider relevance to neighbourhood studies.

Sections Invited

Submission and Research-Integrity Requirements

• Submit an anonymised manuscript and a separate title page containing the article title, author names, affiliations, corresponding-author details, and ORCID iDs.
• Include a 150–200-word abstract stating the research problem, approach or method, principal findings or argument, and original contribution, followed by five to seven keywords.
• Use in-text citation with references in Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (author–date). Submit in Microsoft Word with consecutively numbered tables and figures, complete captions, sources, and permissions where applicable.
• Provide declarations on funding, conflicts of interest, research ethics or consent, and data availability, where applicable.
• Ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.
• Disclose any use of generative AI or automated tools in writing, translation, coding, data analysis, or image preparation. Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, citations, originality, and integrity.
• All manuscripts will be screened using plagiarism-detection software, with a permissible similarity index of up to 15 per cent, subject to editorial scrutiny. The use of AI tools must comply with Chanakya University norms and be appropriately disclosed.
• Manuscripts must be original, unpublished, not under review elsewhere, and compliant with recognised publication-ethics standards.

Peer Review and Editorial Decision

All submissions undergo an initial editorial screening for fit, originality, methodological adequacy, and academic integrity. Research Articles undergo double-blind peer review, normally by two independent reviewers; other sections receive editorial review, with external expert consultation where appropriate. The indicative first-decision timeline is 4 weeks, with decisions of Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, or Reject. The Editors may waive double-blind review for select invited contributions to the inaugural issue.

Key Dates

How to Submit

Submissions will be accepted through the IJNS Online Submission Portal.

Editorial correspondence may be addressed to [email protected]. Please use the subject line: “IJNS Inaugural Issue – [Section Name]”. For queries, write to [email protected] with copy to [email protected].

Editorial Team

Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies is a flagship initiative of the Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations, Chanakya University, Bengaluru.