Forced Marriage: A Multidisciplinary Response to a Global Issue

The International Labour Organization, Walk Free and the International Organization for Migration estimated that, in 2021, globally, at least 22 million people were in a marriage they did not freely and fully consent to. Forced marriage is a human rights violation that is illegal in 52 countries. States have committed to ending this harmful practice by 2030 as part of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5.3. But forced marriage is not just a legal, policy, and development issue. In the context of our project ‘Drawing on Forced Marriage: Teaching Tough Topics Through Comics’, we came across examples of forced marriage in literature, fine art, TV, and pop culture. We wrote about some of them on our WordPress blog. This sparked the idea to work with people across a range of disciplines and expertise to write a book that explores forced marriage from different angles, breaking down disciplinary silos and divides between academia and practice. The aim is to bring together a wide range of contributors to generate new conversations about forced marriage, building a fuller understanding which might lead us to new research ideas and/or responses in practice.

We strongly encourage submissions from all interested parties, including but not limited to researchers and practitioners. The list is non-hierarchical and not exhaustive but contributions from any of the following areas would be particularly welcome:

• Area Studies
• The Arts
• Cultural Studies
• Education
• Health
• History
• Psychology
• Social Work
• Sociology

Theology

Starting questions to explore include but are not limited to:

• Where do you see forced marriage?
• What does forced marriage look like in your area?
• How is it addressed?
• What are the blind spots?

Submission specifics:

• Expressions of interest should mention the topic or title of the proposed chapter.
• Abstract submissions should be no more than 300 words in length. The word limit excludes the title of the proposed chapter, and your name, affiliation, and email address.
• Full chapters will be 6,000 – 8,000 words, excluding OSCOLA references.
• Please email abstracts and full chapters as Word or pdf documents to h.baumeister@ljmu.ac.uk .

Important dates:

• Expressions of interest: Monday, 2 April 2024
• Abstract deadline: Monday, 15 April 2024
• Decision notification: Monday, 22 April 2024
• Full chapter to be submitted for peer review: Monday, 30 September 2024
• Feedback returned: Monday, 16 December 2024
• Final version to be submitted: Monday, 17 March 2025

Interested publisher: Routledge

Please feel free to email me at h.baumeister@ljmu.ac.uk for informal inquiries.