Call for contributions to a Special Issue on TOUCH

This is a call for contributions to a special issue of Multimodality & Society on TOUCH,
edited by Lili Golmohammadi, Douglas Atkinson, Carey Jewitt and Sara Price to be
published in Volume 2 Issue 3 (August 2022).

The special issue will offer a holistic and exciting take on touch that critiques and
advances multimodal methods for researching touch and the societal and cultural understanding of touch. It will bring together leading edge methodological and empirical work on touch from across the plurality of multimodal theories and methods (e.g. multimodal ethnography, multimodal social semiotics, multimodal interaction studies or conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis), and innovative multimodal interdisciplinary methods (e.g. at the intersection of social science and art/design and beyond).

The editors welcome submissions that interrogate touch, a much-neglected resource within the multimodal repertoire. The special issue seeks to investigate key social and cultural debates around touch including those related to touch interactions (between people and with objects), the role of touch for learning, health and wellbeing, and communication, the commodification of touch in contemporary society, how touch resources are socially shaped and being reconfigured through digital technologies and cultural change, and design speculations on touch futures.

Submissions can be in one of three different format types: Original Research Papers,
with a theoretical, methodological and/or empirical focus (6–8,000 words); Multimodal
Sensations, short innovative multimodal pieces that extend the notion of the visual
essays); or Practitioner Reflections which engage with the ideas, practices and concerns
of practitioners (e.g. designers) working in fields where multimodal tools and practices
are central (1–2,000 words).

Papers will initially be reviewed by the editors, and if accepted for review will be
subject to double blind peer-review. Author guidance is available on the journal information page of the Multimodality and Society website https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/MAS

If you would like to submit a contribution please contact the editors to dicuss it in
advance of submission via Evy Samuelsson. The deadline for the full manuscript submission is Multimodality & Society 10th January 2022.