journal

Settler Colonial Studies is a peer reviewed academic journal, which is published four times a year. We have established it to respond to what we believe is a growing demand for reflection and critical scholarship on settler colonialism as a distinct social and historical formation. We aim to establish settler colonial studies as a distinct field of scholarly research. Scholars and students will find and contribute to historically-oriented research and analyses covering contemporary issues. However, we also aim to present multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, involving areas like history, law, genocide studies, indigenous, colonial and postcolonial studies, historical geography, anthropology, economics, politics, sociology, international relations, political science, literary criticism, cultural and gender studies, and philosophy.

This journal will be considering original feature articles, review articles, and proposals for thematic issues.
Settler colonialism is a global and transnational phenomenon, and as much a thing of the past as a thing of the present. There is no such thing as neo-settler colonialism or post-settler colonialism because settler colonialism is a resilient formation that rarely ends. Not all migrants are settlers: they are founders of political orders who carry with them a distinct sovereign capacity. And settler colonialism is not colonialism: settlers want Indigenous people to vanish (but can make use of their labour before they are made to disappear). Sometimes settler colonial forms operate within colonial ones, sometimes they subvert them, sometimes they replace them. But even if colonialism and settler colonialism interpenetrate and overlap, they remain separate as they co-define each other.
The articles should be framed in one of the following ways:
  • Single case-studies, preferably research aimed at furthering theoretical analysis;
  • Contributions to a theoretical appraisal or description of settler colonialism (how it works, where it appears, etc.);
  • Applications of critical theory, or a particular thematic approach, to one or more settler colonial place or idea;
  • Comparative or transnational analyses involving two or more settler sites;
  • Research focusing on evolving relationships between settlers and indigenous peoples;
  • Analyses of legal and political ramifications of settler colonial phenomena.