Medicine Anthropology Theory is an English-language, fully open access journal hosted by the Edinburgh Diamond Hosting Service at the University of Edinburgh. It welcomes the submission of Research Articles, Position Pieces, Reviews, Field Notes, and Photo Essays related to the areas of medical anthropology, the anthropology of biomedicine, critical global health studies, medical humanities, and science and technology studies.
We accept submissions of original content (not published or under review elsewhere) on an ongoing basis. We are an open access journal, and we do not charge any fees to submit, publish, or view journal content.
Ahead of sending your submission, it is fundamental that you read in detail and follow our guidelines to prepare the manuscript. Authors should prepare their manuscripts in an anonymised form to facilitate blind peer-review. Any identifying reference to the author(s) ought to be removed prior to submission. All authors are expected to abide by our Authorship policy, which is intended to ensure all contributors to MAT published articles are credited appropriately for their work. To send your submission through our publications system or view an open submission, please login here. Note that the journal's publications system is the only means of submitting a piece for consideration in the journal. If you encounter any technical difficulties, please get in touch with us by email at MATeditors@ed.ac.uk for assistance.
Types of contributions
We welcome submissions for the following types of contributions (please note that journal sections were changed in April 2020):
Research Articles
Responsible editors: MAT editorial collective
Contact: MATeditors@ed.ac.uk
Original Research Articles comprise the core of the journal. MAT seeks to rethink health and medicine in local and global contexts within the broad fields of medical anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and global health. In line with our commitment to open access, accepted articles (up to 10,000 words including references) will be written in clear language that makes insights available to a wide readership. The editors seek to publish work that innovates both theoretically and methodologically, or that revisits classical anthropological debates through contemporary problems. We also seek work from ‘applied’ anthropologists and activists working in sites outside of academia. Research articles can include primary research (e.g., based on ethnographic fieldwork) or secondary research (e.g., based on a review of a particular field of literature). Please see here for further information about the journal’s scope and aims. Through the publication of original research, MAT aims to fulfil its mission to publish cutting-edge scholarship at the forefront of theoretical and methodological debates in the discipline.
Responsible editors: Jan Brunson and Dwai Banerjee
Contact: jbrunson@hawaii.edu; dwai@mit.edu.
Position Pieces are creative in genre and form, subvert disciplinary boundaries, and reflect upon their authors’ positions relative to the material and concepts they engage. We collect these works under the banner of ‘Position Pieces’ as a nod to the role of position in shaping our scholarly activities and professional practices. In other words, the writing collected under the banner of Position Pieces gestures to the reality that our own positions—in relation to our interlocutors, the field, the academy, and other disciplines—are always moving. Position Pieces aim to capture that momentum through texts that reflect ‘upstream’ thinking—that is, thoughts and conversations that are not yet formatted into academic publication conventions. These may be essays, theoretical forays, instigations, or other experimental texts with a tentative, unfinished edge. Position Pieces provoke debate, unearth hidden assumptions, and contribute to the decentring and deprovincialising of medical anthropology. In this way, they advance MAT’s broader mission to explore how culture, politics, and social norms bear on medicine, illness, and health—and vice versa. We are particularly keen to publish essays written by public health workers, patients, medics, social workers, psychologists, bioethicists, nurses, and clinical practitioners of all stripes, in addition to medical anthropologists. The word limit for a Position Piece is 3,000 words, not including references.
Responsible editor: Luisa Enria and Matthew Thomann
Contact: Luisa.Enria2@lshtm.ac.uk; mthomann@umd.edu.
Field Notes is a space to innovate with ethnographic writing. These more creative and journalistic pieces engage with field research and ought to dwell on the empirics of fieldwork. Let this be a space to try out a new ethnographic style, to hone one’s creative writing skills, or publish those indelible bits of field research that just don’t fit anywhere else. Submissions should be forthrightly empirical and are expected to have few, if any, citations. The word limit for a Field Notes piece is 3,000 words, though shorter submissions are encouraged.
Responsible editor: Felicity Aulino and Jerome Crowder
Contact: felicity@anthro.umass.edu; anthro@jeromecrowder.com
Given the centrality of observing, seeing, and representing to ethnographic projects, MAT provides a forum for researchers to present a set of up to 10 photographs that critically engage with these issues. Submissions should include an accompanying textual comment of under 1,000 words (excluding references) reflecting on how photography shapes the ways in which ethnographic subjects are approached, collaborated with, framed, and presented as objects of research, science, and art. Longer pieces that include photos in the text can be submitted to any of the other sections. Authors should also bear in mind that less is often more when it comes to the number of images included in photo essays. We encourage authors to carefully consider the value of each image before submitting it. Please note: images should be between 1800 and 3000 pixels on one side, and must be uploaded through our OJS portal as ‘supplementary files’ during stage four of the submission process.
Responsible editor: Marlee Tichenor
Contact: marlee.tichenor@ed.ac.uk
MAT invites reviews of books, films, podcasts, conferences, and exhibits. Reviews should be in essay form and entail a discussion of at least three different reviewed works (which need not all be of the same medium). Many Review essays will be commissioned, but we also welcome suggestions and recommendations. The word limit for Reviews is 3,000 words.