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Journal of Sociology

Aims and Scope

Journal of Sociology publishes world leading research across all fields of sociology. As the official journal of The Australian Sociological Association, it showcases vibrant research from the Asia Pacific region and the wider world. Tackling complex social problems and addressing the most current social issues and inequalities, Journal of Sociology is a leading source of cutting-edge sociological ideas and inquiry drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods. The journal also features interdisciplinary and applied research that is firmly anchored in the sociological imagination. The journal is relevant and accessible for both scholars and practitioners engaged in sociology.

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For further information on this journal, including submitting a manuscript, please go to the Sage website.

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The latest special issue: Towards a pedagogy of care in higher-ed institutions
Guest edited by Siddhi Bhandari and Riddhi Bhandari

Across the globe, universities and the state of academia have become common topics in news media. Journalists are tracking how politics and economics are making and re-making student-led activism and the universities’ response to it; interrogating the role of the university in shaping citizens and workers; critiquing the university as a place of work and learning, and charting the tensions that these confluences produce. These issues and debates, for us, centre around pedagogy and care, and comprise the praxis and affect that are crucial to teaching and learning, and that are traditionally thought to be embodied in higher-ed institutions.

Read more here

Artwork accompanying this special issue

Figure 1. Solidarity as Care, ink on paper 2026.
Figure 2. Recognition as Care, ink on paper 2026.
Figure 3. Care as Work, ink on paper 2026.
Figure 4. The Absurdity of Surveillance, ink on paper 2026.

Alongside Towards a pedagogy of care in higher-ed institutions, we are pleased to share artwork by Alaka Kavallur. The artist’s statement appears below.

Artist's Statement
This body of work emerges from my eight years of engagement with higher education as a facilitator and creative practitioner, alongside my own experiences as a student. Through four interconnected illustrations, I reflect on care not simply as an intimate or interpersonal act, but as something shaped by the relationships, structures, values and conditions within which we learn and work together. These concerns are not separate from pedagogy. I have come to understand care, critical thinking, academic rigour, responsibility and solidarity as deeply entangled practices. They shape not only what happens within a classroom but also the larger institutional cultures in which learning takes place. The illustrations are my attempts to think through its contradictions, possibilities and everyday manifestations of care. Together, they propose care as a practice of standing with, noticing, recognising, making space for and trusting one another, within and beyond classrooms, institutions, professional spaces and everyday lives. A pedagogy of care, for me, is ultimately about creating conditions in which people can participate with love, dignity, agency, courage, responsibility and a sense of belonging.

I approach solidarity, recognition, trust, labour and freedom as four ways of thinking through care. The first work reflects recent student protests in India, where young people came together to demand accountability around education and their futures. For me, solidarity is more than collective support for a cause. It is a practice of standing with others, particularly in moments of uncertainty and fear. It is also about sharing courage, hope and responsibility, and recognising that fear can become less isolating when it is carried collectively.

The second work considers recognition within institutions increasingly organised around numbers—student intake, publications, rankings, productivity, performance and revenue. Numbers have their place, but what happens when they become the dominant language through which value is understood? I am interested in the people, experiences, conversations, forms of labour and relationships that remain difficult to quantify. Recognition, in this context, becomes an act of care: noticing what might otherwise remain invisible.

The third work looks at gendered labour and the unequal distribution of care. Women and minoritised communities are often expected to occupy multiple roles, remain available, perform care and continue to be productive, while negotiating the persistent feeling of not being enough. The work reflects on how care itself can become labour, and how the expectation to care for others can leave little space for being cared for.

The fourth work turns towards freedom, accountability and surveillance within institutional spaces. Accountability is necessary, but I question what happens when accountability begins to rely increasingly on monitoring, measurement and surveillance. When people constantly have to prove their productivity and presence, what happens to trust, ownership and responsibility? Can ethical and meaningful participation emerge from being watched, or does it grow differently through being trusted?

Teaching Notes

Nick Pendergrast and Garrity Hill, Teaching Notes Editors

Teaching Notes is a new special section of the Journal of Sociology for teachers and teaching focused sociology staff. While some sociologists are in research-only positions, the vast majority of us do at least some teaching as part of our job. Conversations reflecting on teaching practice are important but also relevant to nearly all sociologists. In Teaching Notes, we aim to create a dialogue among teachers to share ideas about teaching sociology, and insights and reflections that have come out of classroom experiences and practice.

In Teaching Notes, we invite you to consider the issues that are most pressing in our classrooms now.

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For example, such discussions are important in light of the decline of the lecture across many universities, with low attendance being common and some universities even removing in-person lectures altogether. We welcome any contributions from sociology teachers on their efforts to “do lectures differently” and the methods they employ to attempt to reverse the trend of declining lecture attendance. Conversations about the future of the lecture also point to the importance of other forms of teaching, and we strongly encourage contributions on how other formats can engage students in their learning.

In Teaching Notes, we also aim to challenge the dichotomy of teaching and research, showcasing examples of teaching as research. One example of this is curriculum design, where teaching staff carry out extensive desk-based research to update their subject materials to reflect current issues and developments in the field.

Lastly, we welcome contributions to the Teaching Notes section that speak to the idea of teaching as sociology in action. For example, what teaching practices and strategies are most effective for teaching the sociological imagination as a way of knowing and a distinctive disciplinary lens? How do we prepare students for applying their sociological imagination to wider public discourse and civic life outside of the classroom? What can sociology contribute to an understanding of teaching pedagogy in higher education more broadly?

Teaching notes have been set up as a space that aims to be more accessible to teaching-focused staff who often have limited time for research. The shorter, 4,000-word length for articles in this section should assist with this. We welcome empirical research, but we also encourage sociologists to share their first-hand teaching insights and reflections, grounded in the relevant teaching and sociology (and teaching sociology) literature. This is a space to inspire others with your ideas, as we all work towards best practice teaching and the best possible education for students. Even though the articles are shorter and do not have to include empirical research, they are still peer-reviewed publications.

We hope that Teaching Notes will be a space for sociology teachers to reflect on what it means to teach sociology, and also what it means to teach sociologically.

Call for Journal of Sociology Serial: Sociologies for the Future

What will be the future of sociology as a discipline? How can we ‘future-proof’ sociology to ensure its relevance in years ahead? Over the decades scholars and pundits have augured the demise of the discipline in the face of big data, political censorship, and most recently AI. Yet sociology has proven to be nimble and adaptive, shapeshifting to ever new social turns. What will be its next moves? Its new challenges? What sociological concerns does the future hold across subfields new and old? And how will we generate the methods and theories needed to meet them? In this serial we invite sociological thinkers to speculate on what the future might look like and require of us and to map out the disciplinary terrains and tools that loom on the horizon.

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The serial will take the form of a series of articles published across multiple issues of the journal in late 2027 and 2028. The first segment will focus on topics for the future: How might a substantive sociological topic remain relevant but require shifting orientations and which new topics demand attention in a given subfield? The second segment will focus on methods for the future: How does our established tool box hold up to social changes, and which approaches might we need to devise or develop to research emerging topics? The third segment will explore theories for the future: which concepts might help us make sense of the terrains outlined in the first segment? Unfolding across multiple issues, the serial will become a dynamic dialogue about how sociology might chart new paths.

We now invite proposed abstracts for the serial. Your proposal can be for any of the three segments outlined above, but not for more than one. We are looking for submissions that identify future paths, hurdles, and potentials for a particular subfield of sociology in ways that locate and inspire next steps for that field. Abstracts must be 350 words and accompanied by a two sentence biography. Full papers will be around 5,000 words and due with rolling deadlines. Papers for the first segment, topics, are due in April 2027.

Please send your abstract by email to amy.vanderharst@unimelb.edu.au by December 1, 2026.

Authors will be notified about the outcome before the end of the year.

Call for applicants: Journal of Sociology 2027 ECR Mentoring Program: ‘Developing a research article’

The Journal of Sociology (JoS) is launching a new mentoring program for Early Career Academics. This program will provide structured support from the Editors-in-Chief and senior mentors to help ECRs develop a research article for consideration for publication in Journal of Sociology. The program is aimed at scholars who have recently completed a PhD, are precariously employed, and have little access to the support and feedback needed to write articles from their own thesis or related research. The program is designed to support ECRs to publish that first sole-authored contribution to sociology in a discipline-wide journal like JoS.

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The program will consist of 3 group writing workshops and 3 one-on-one mentoring meetings. All will be online to facilitate access. The first (February) and second (April) writing workshops will be led by the EiCs, A/Profs Signe Ravn and Ashley Barnwell, and the third (June) will be co-led by the EiCs and senior mentors. In the latter half of the year, ECRs will meet with their assigned mentor independently.

Due to limited resources, this program is limited to 10 places. We invite applications from ECRS who have completed their PhD in the past 3 years and who are precariously employed. We will prioritise those applicants who have not already published any or many papers, and will not accept candidates for co-authored papers.

Papers will still be subject to peer review, so there is no publication guarantee, but authors will receive EIC support throughout the submission and peer-review process. Papers that are accepted and published in JoS will receive international promotion to assist with building networks and citations.

We will reserve at least one place for an Indigenous ECR to be placed with an Indigenous mentor.

While the general criteria is 3 years maximum post PhD, we will of course take into account career interruptions or complexities around career stages if outlined in the application.

To apply, please send a 2 page CV, a half page biography, and a half page rationale for why you would benefit from the mentoring program, to the JoS Managing Editor Dr Amy Vanderharst (amy.vanderharst@unimelb.edu.au). Due to limited places, please address how you will be able to commit to completing the full program within the timeline indicated above.

Application deadline: November 15, 2026.

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Current Editorial Team

Editor in Chief:
Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn, The University of Melbourne

Managing Editor:

Amy Vanderharst, The University of Melbourne

Editors:

Dominica Meade (Book Review Editor), University of Melbourne
Eibhlis Moore (Book Review Editor), University of Melbourne
Lyn Craig, University of Melbourne
Kirsten Deane, University of Melbourne
Karen Farquharson, University of Melbourne
Belinda Hewitt, University of Melbourne
Garrity Hill, University of Melbourne
Nicholas Hill, University of Melbourne
Max Holleran, University of Melbourne
Quentin Maire, University of Melbourne
Nikki Moodie, University of Melbourne
Nick Pendergrast, University of Melbourne
Joshua Pocius, University of Melbourne
Sophie Rudolph, University of Melbourne
Megan Sharp, University of Melbourne
Dan Woodman, University of Melbourne
Jens Zinn, University of Melbourne

The National Expert Advisory Board can be viewed on the Sage website here.

Introducing the New Editorial Team

Welcome to the second issue of the Journal of Sociology for 2025! Because the first issue of the year was a Special Issue curated by a team of guest editors, the current issue is the first standard issue published under our editorship and we wanted to take the opportunity to introduce our team and our ambitions for the next four years in a bit more detail. A list of the Editorial team is available here. The team is based at the University of Melbourne, where we will work closely together to edit JoS from 2025-2028.

Taking on the editorship of JoS, we hope to continue the great work of previous teams and further develop the journal. One of our key aims is to embrace our position in the Asia-Pacific and connect with sociological communities and encourage more contributions from scholars in our region. To support this aim we are in the process of renewing the wider Editorial Board to ensure better representation of Asia-Pacific sociologists. Another central aim is to diversify the publication formats offered by JoS to allow for a broader range of academic contributions, such as photo essays, roundtables, and interviews, in addition to the conventional research article. We hope this will stimulate the sociological imagination of readers and help make the journal a vibrant and lively outlet for high-quality sociological work, conversations and debate.

One such new format is Teaching Notes, a section of the journal specifically dedicated to short, peer-reviewed articles on teaching sociology - and teaching sociologically - and our section editors, Garrity Hill and Nick Pendergrast, have written a short Call for Contributions which you will find below this editorial. Finally, this editorial and newsletter are also examples of new initiatives that we hope can contribute to creating a renewed sense of community. While the days of everyone gathering in the staff kitchen on publication day to unwrap the latest issue may be past, the newsletter and editorial, landing in your inbox quarterly, provide a thematic overview of each new issue and help to create the feeling of a reading community.

Soon we will circulate the Call for Proposals for the 2027 Special Issue of the journal, so keep an eye out for that if you have a topic in mind. However, please also note that beyond entire Special Issues we also publish Special Sections as part of standard journal issues, as a ‘mini’ Special Issue. For these we have no set deadlines, but encourage authors to get in touch with proposals as ideas develop. In short, a Special Section consists of 3-5 articles focused around a particular topic as well as a short section introduction.

Our first year as new EiCs and editorial team coincides with a special anniversary for the journal – this year JoS celebrates its 60th birthday. To mark this event, we are planning a birthday section for the last issue of 2025 with a few special pieces lined up. If you have something you wish to contribute, please get in touch with us asap.

As we are working to achieve quicker paper processing times and solicit quality and rigorous peer reviews, you might notice some changes in the day-to-day running of the journal. We have also created new submission guidelines which we hope you will consult. JoS already boasts numerous high-quality articles but of course also competes with highly ranked Sociology journals based outside of Australia. It is our hope that new and dynamic formats, increased visibility and a clear sense of sociological community will help make JoS the number one choice for more and more sociologists. We are excited about taking on this role and look forward to receiving your next paper :)

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Previous Editorial Teams

2021 - 2024:

Editor in Chief:
Helen Forbes-Mewett, Monash University

Managing Editor:
Faiza Yasmeen, Monash University (Allegra Schermuly was at the start of the editorial term)

Editors:
JaneMaree Maher, Monash University
Neil Selwyn, Monash University
Bronwyn Carlson, Macquarie University
Yolande Strengers, Monash University
Brady Robards, Monash University
Nicholas Hookway, University of Tasmania
Naomi Pfitzner, Monash University
Charishma Ratnam, Monash University (Book Review Editor)
Claire Tanner, Monash University

2017 - 2020
Editors-in-Chief:
Kate Huppatz, Western Sydney University, Australia and Steve Matthewman, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Editorial Board Members:
Sara Amin, The University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Marcelle Dawson, University of Otago, New Zealand
Catriona Elder, University of Sydney, Australia
Joshua Roose, Australian Catholic University, Australia
Shawna Tang, University of Sydney, Australia
Holly Thorpe, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Robert van Krieken, University of Sydney, Australia
Maggie Walter, University of Tasmania, Australia
Robert Webb, University of Auckland, New Zealand

2013 - 2016
Editor-in-Chief: Alphia Possamai-Inesedy

Managing Editor: Dr Alex Norman

Editors:
Dr Rebecca Olson, Professor Adam Possamai, Professor Kerry Robinson, Professor David Rowe, Professor Deborah Stevenson, Professor Rob Stones, Professor Bryan Turner

Book Review Editor: Dr Kate Huppatz

2009 - 2012
Editor-in-Chief:
Andy Bennett, Griffith University

Managing Editor: Russell Brennan

Editorial Board Members:
Sarah Baker, Griffith University
Margaret Gibson, Griffith University
Ian Woodward, Griffith University
Malcolm Alexander, Griffith University
Simone Fullagar, Griffith University
Suzanne Goopy, Griffith University
Georgina Murray, Griffith University
Russell Brennan, Griffith University

Book Reviewer: Young-Sook Lee, Griffith University

2006 - 2009
John Scott, University of New England

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Best Paper Award

The Sage/TASA Best Paper Award for the Journal of Sociology (JoS) is an annual process that uses academic peer review to select papers of outstanding quality published in JoS.

The prize is awarded to the paper judged by the panel to be the best published in the previous year of the Journal of Sociology. Symposia or parts of symposia, replies or rejoinders, notes and book reviews (but not review essays) are excluded from consideration.

The JoS BP Award is presented every year at the TASA annual conference. The Award is sponsored by Sage. The full details are available here. .

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Special Issues

2000: Special Issue: Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the human service professions (possibly the first special issue)
2001:none
2002: none
2003: Commercializing Emotions
2004: Fear and Loathing in the New Century
2005: Special Issue: 'Life pathways: insights from longitudinal research' ; Guest edited by: Janeen Baxter and David de Vaus
2006: none
2007: none
2008: Special Issue: Cultural Sociology: Australian Perspectives and Themes
2009: Special Issue: Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the human service professions
2010: Special Issue: Sociology of food and eating
2011: Special Issue: Youth: Identities, Transitions, Cultures
2012: Special Issue: Sociology’s object(s) and the discipline’s relevance
2013: Special issue: Teaching Sociology: Reflections on the Discipline & Special issue: Antipodean Fields: Working with Bourdieu
2014: Special issue: Migration and Multiculturalism: Australia and Europe
2015: Special issue: Sociology of bio-knowledge at the limits of life
2016: Special issue: Sociology of the military & Special issue: Chinese sociology
2017: none
2018: none
2019: Special issue – Gendered and Generational Inequalities in the Gig Economy Era
2020: Special Issue - Indigenous Sociology & Special issue – Asylum Seekers in the Global Context of Xenophobia
JOS_57_1 March 2021
Special Issue: Post-national formations and cosmopolitanism
Guest editors: Associate Professor Farida Fozdar and Professor Ian Woodward.
JOS_57_3 September 2021
Special Section: Hospitality and Hostility: The intimate life of borders and migration
Guest editors: Associate Professor Fataneh Farahani, Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam and Associate Professor Suruchi Thapar-Björkert
JOS_58_2 June 2022
Special Issue: Imagining Rural and Rural Sociology Futures in Times of Uncertainty and Possibility
Guest editors: Dr Christina Malatzky and Dr Kiah Smith.
JOS_58_3 September 2022
Special Issue: Education and the Production of Inequalities: Dialogues from the Global South and North’
Guest editors: Dr Denisse Sepúlveda Sánchez, Dr Manuela Mendoza Horvitz, Dr Sara Joiko and Francisca Ortiz Ruiz
JOS_59_2 June 2023
Special Section: Fields, Capitals, Habitus: What Next? A Review Symposium
Guest editors: Emeritus Professors Tony Bennett and David Rowe
JOS_59_3 September 2023
Special Issue: What do misinformation practices feel like? Wellness culture and digital health in a post-COVID world.
Guest editors: Dr Naomi Smith and Dr Clare Southerton
JOS_59_4 December 2023
Special Issue: A Basic Income for a Complex Society
Guest editors: Dr Fabian Cannizzo and A/Prof. Ben Spies-Butcher
JOS_60_3 September 2024
Special Issue: The Digital Welfare State: Contestations, Considerations and Entanglements
Guest editors: Dr Georgia van Toorn, Professor Karen Soldatić and Professor Paul Henman.
JOS_60_4 December 2024
Special Issue: Decolonising Truth Globally: Challenges and Possibilities
Guest editors: Professor Yin Paradies, Dr Vanessa Barolsky and Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro

We are thrilled to celebrate Tanya Zivkovic and Simone Marino, the recipients of the prestigious Journal of Sociology Best Paper Award for 2025.

Their award-winning paper, “The clock is ticking”: (dis)orientations to ageing and end-of-life care in advanced capitalism and care directives, is a compelling and deeply thoughtful contribution to sociological scholarship. Drawing on ethnographic research with Italian migrant families in Adelaide, the article offers a critique of neoliberal anticipatory logics of ageing and care, while highlighting relational and alternative futures through the concept of sistemazione. It is a rich, inventive, and theoretically sophisticated piece of research that exemplifies the strength and originality of contemporary sociology.

Read the paper here

Journal of Sociology features high quality sociological scholarship in all its forms. We are dedicated to showcasing theory as well as applied sociology, quantitative and qualitative research. Interdisciplinary pieces are welcome, as are submissions from outside the academy. Based in the Southern Hemisphere and committed to intellectual works from the Asia-Pacific region, including Indigenous scholarship, we also encourage submissions from across the globe.

The full-text of over 90 peer-reviewed Sage journals encompassing over 63,000 articles are available online to TASA members.

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