PULSE – the Journal of Science and Culture

ISSN 2416-111X

VOL 13 (2026) CALL FOR PAPERS

Zines and STS: The Remix

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This special issue will explore the zine as a site, method, and epistemic form within science and technology studies. Zines, ephemeral, handmade, self-published works, are not simply artifacts of counterculture, but dynamic vehicles of situated knowledge-making. Emerging from punk, queer, feminist, and anti-colonial movements, zines resist extractive logics and hierarchies of expertise. They speak sideways, not upward. They do not translate complexity into consensus, they complicate, disrupt, and offer. In the context of STS, where questions of participation, knowledge production, and boundary-making are central, zines hold untapped potential. While STS has long been concerned with who produces knowledge, how it circulates, and whose voices are legitimized, the field has yet to fully examine zines as a tool for reconfiguring power in knowledge production.

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Contributors to this issue will examine how zines operate as both media and method: as tools of public engagement, of research dissemination, of reflective practice, of community resistance. We will explore zines made by scientists, educators, artists, sex workers, students, and climate activists, and we examine how these tactile, often anti-institutional publications challenge assumptions about whose knowledge counts, how it circulates, and where it settles. This special issue builds on recent calls within STS for new modes of inquiry and more inclusive, experimental methods, feminist citation politics, research-creation, public scholarship, and collaborative ethnography. Zines offer a space where STS can be felt as well as read. They embody friction, partiality, care, and refusal. They are also playful and subversive, inviting us to rethink the aesthetics, materials, and publics of scientific knowledge.

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We encourage contributions that explore zines and STS:

• What forms of critique and care do zines make possible within STS?
• How do zines trouble dominant narratives of scientific authority and legitimacy?
• In what ways can zines function as relational tools of pedagogy, activism, or co-creation in science education or science communication?
• How might zines reshape what counts as scholarly output/research, and for whom?
• What can zines teach us about knowledge-making in, around, and beyond the academy?
• How do zines circulate scientific knowledge differently from peer-reviewed publications?
• What insights do they offer about identity, access, resistance, and relationality in technoscientific discourse?
• And how might zines contribute to more inclusive, reflexive, and pluralistic STS practices?

We aim for this issue to bring together scholars, artist-researchers, community practitioners, and zinesters to trace the uses and politics of zines in feminist science, decolonial practice, disability justice, environmental knowledge, speculative design, critical pedagogy and open science. Ultimately, this issue positions zines not only as objects of study, but as collaborators in the ongoing effort to unsettle, reimagine, and democratize knowledge practices within and beyond STS.

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SUBMISSIONS: Contributions may include traditional articles, zine scans, photo essays, or multimodal submissions, in line with Pulse’s commitment to methodological openness and epistemic pluralism. To this end, this issue will not only examine zines as objects of study, but as methodological tools, pedagogical strategies, and collaborative practices that reorient STS toward more embodied, insurgent, and intimate ways of knowing. For information on article lengths please check our Submission Guidelines.

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TIMELINE:

• Submit title, abstract of 200-500 words, author names and affiliations by 1st August 2025 to the guest editors, Dr Eleanor S Armstrong and Dr Autumn Brown, at: browna3@tcd.ie and ea377@le.ac.uk
• Papers submitted to the journal by 31st January 2026 to be sent out for peer review
• Publication anticipated in August-October 2026 following peer review and production process