History of the Human Sciences

History of Human Sciences is an international journal of peer-reviewed scholarly research, which provides an important forum for contemporary research in the social sciences, in the humanities, and in human psychology and biology. It is especially concerned with research that reflexively examines its own historical origins and interdisciplinary influences in an effort to review current practice and to develop new research directions.

Critical Examination

In recent years we have witnessed a significant convergence of interest between the social sciences and the humanities - as well as in relation to the psychological and biological sciences. Scholars are critically examining their traditional assumptions and preoccupations about human beings, their societies and their histories in light of developments that cut across disciplinary boundaries.

An Interdisciplinary Approach

History of the Human Sciences aims to expand our understanding of the human through a broad interdisciplinary approach. The journal publishes articles from a wide range of fields - including sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, literary criticism, critical theory, art history, linguistics, and the law - that engage with the histories of these disciplines and the interactions between them.

The journal does not restrict its remit to any particular theoretical, historiographical or methodological orientation, but rather seeks to expand the analytical frameworks used to understand the histories and epistemologies of the human sciences.

That said, a successful article will typically:

• address at least one of the modern human sciences broadly conceived (including psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, history/historiography, medicine, sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, political economy, human biology, neuroscience, critical theory, linguistics, literary theory). By 'modern', we generally mean post-Cartesian, though we are not averse to submissions on ancient human sciences (e.g., Ancient Greek psychology, medieval medicine) if the approach has significance for modernity or is interpreted from a modern point of view (as in, for example, Foucault).

• take an intellectual-historical or an interdisciplinary approach (or in the best-case scenario, both of these) to open up epistemological and/or historiographical questions relating to the chosen topic or problematic.

• address questions of method.

In general, we avoid publishing:
• Strictly disciplinary histories and/or case studies that focus on one human science and do not open up wider epistemological questions of interest to those working on other human sciences.

• Articles that use methods that are unusual in the humanities and interpretive social sciences without explicitly reflecting on the epistemological implications of such methods.

• Articles that address fields outside of the human sciences without considering the implications of the argument for the history of the human sciences.


Editors

The Editors are: Professor Felicity Callard (University of Glasgow) [Editor-in-Chief], Dr Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Sarah Marks (Birkbeck, University of London), Dr Chris Millard (University of Sheffield), Dr Amanda Rees (University of York), and Professor Chris Renwick (University of York). Dr Hannah Proctor (University of Strathclyde) is the Book Reviews Editor and the Web and Social Media Editor of the journal's para-site Histhum.com

The editors come from a range of disciplines - geography, history, German/ comparative literature, sociology - and all have strong cross-disciplinary interests. They continue the journal's rigorous interdisciplinary investigation of the human condition. Their incoming editorials can be read here and here.

Regular Special Issues

The journal provides comprehensive coverage of a range of themes across the human sciences. Special issues and sections have been devoted to:

Socialist Governmentality? Healthcare and Subjectification in European State Socialism

Recovery and Rehabilitation in Mental Health: Historical Perspectives

The Material Force of Categories

In the Shadow of the Tree: The Diagrammatics of Relatedness in Genealogy, Anthropology and Genetics as Epistemic, Cultural and Political Practice

Film, Observation and the Mind

Sexology and Development

Archiving the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mass Observation and Middletown

The Hoffman Report in Historical Context

Normality: A Collection of Essays

Histories of Sexology Today: Reimagining the Boundaries of Scientia Sexualis

Knowing Savagery: Humanity in the Circuits of Colonial Knowledge

The Future of the History of the Human Sciences

The Total Archive: Data, Subjectivity, Universality

Psychopathological Fringes: Knowledge Making and Boundary Work in 20th Century Psychiatry

Psychology and its Publics

Psychotherapy in Historical Perspective

The Frankfurt School: Philosophy and (Political) Economy

Social and Human Sciences across the Iron Curtain

Visibility Matters: Diagrammatic Renderings of Human Evolution and Diversity in Physical, Serological and Molecular Anthropology

Vygotsky in His, Our and Future Times

Norbert Elias and Process Sociology– Across Disciplines

Historians in the Archive: Changing Historiographical Practices in the Nineteenth Century

Inventing the Psychosocial: Stress and Social Psychiatry

Relations between Psychical Research and Academic Psychology in Europe, the USA and Japan

Foucault Across the Disciplines

Neuroscience, Power and Culture

Intimacy in Research

Sociology and its Strange ‘Others’

Reflexivity in the Human Sciences

Holocaust Studies

Glimpses of Utopia

The Archive

The New Art History

Coverage of the Latest Literature

History of the Human Sciences publishes review essays and review symposia.

Regular book reviews are now published on our complementary and freely accessible para-site Histhum.com. Reviews receive the same levels of editorial oversight as they did when published in the journal.

"History of the Human Sciences has become essential reading for anyone interested in those intersections linking theory, critical history and the human sciences as disciplines. The articles are distinctive and stimulating, and the reviews are indispensable." William Connolly

History of the Human Sciences is available on SAGE Journals Online.

Submit your manuscript today at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hist_hum_sci