Call for Papers: Experiencing Environments

The Waves team is excited to announce an upcoming special issue, “Experiencing Environments.” We invite undergraduate authors to submit projects centering on human experience in natural, built, or digital environments.

We hope this issue will represent what’s trending in academic research while showcasing work grounded in tangible, lived experiences. We’re less interested in theoretical discussions than in practice-based, experiential, and actionable forms of environmental knowledge.

One way to approach this is to ask how experiences in various environments can become actionable: how can authors represent their own or others’ experiences in ways that move readers—that stir them to action? How might humanistic or experiential modes of expression—e.g., storytelling, case studies, or visual art—help carry forward more formal investigations of the environment?

As always, Waves will consider submissions from any discipline and from a wide range of genres as long as they have a humanistic dimension. Examples include:

  • Place-based narratives that weave personal, communal, or ecological stories to show the connections between place and environmental or eco proactivity

  • Projects that bridge the sciences and humanities - e.g., using storytelling, creative nonfiction, autoethnography, visual art, or photography to explore how human experience connects with / informs / impels scientific investigation

  • Architecture, interior design, or urban planning projects that bring user experiences to life through renders, flythroughs, case studies, etc.

  • Visual texts such as photo or video essays, interactive story maps, digital posters, or infographics

  • Education or advocacy projects such as policy briefs

  • Original fiction or poetry, or literary analysis with an emphasis on place / the environment

Submissions will be reviewed and published on a rolling basis until June 1, 2026. Please send your submission and an accompanying writer’s memo to waves.uj@gmail.com. Check out our website for additional submission guidelines.