INTERNATIONAL MAD STUDIES JOURNAL
The International Mad Studies Journal provides a dedicated space for thinking, critiquing, exchanging ideas and debating a broad range of topics relevant to Mad Studies. The International Journal of Mad Studies values creativity and vision, and we strive to do things differently to more traditional journals. Our aim is to create a community of people with lived experience and those without who have a common interest in advancing our knowledge, understanding and respect for Mad Studies.
IMSJ is made possible thanks to an active and dedicated team of volunteers. Our first issue (IMSJ Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2023) was made available in December 2022 and we aim to publish a general issue annually. (We publish papers to our annual issue as they are ready.) Special issues are also forthcoming!
PUBLISH WITH US
Reflecting our vision and values, we welcome a wide variety of contributions relevant to Mad Studies, including and not limited to: original research, reviews, discussion papers, poetry, debates, interviews with leaders, cartoons, art, videos. We invite contributions from people whose voices have been marginalised by, and are not generally embraced by traditional academic and professional journals. Innovation and creativity are particularly welcomed. You can make a submission here.
This journal values academic freedom of expression. This includes the right to publish things that people may disagree with. We will publish content that appears to have conflicting perspectives. We will seek to publish commentaries and counter-perspectives especially in relation to a contentious issue. This is in the hopes of furthering the field of Mad Studies. However, we will not publish any material that is defamatory or discriminatory to any group. This means we will not publish writing that demeans people based solely on diagnosis, class, physical attributes, or any forms of identity.
IMSJ also will not publish any work that specifically names any individuals (other than the author), professionals, organizations, institutions, businesses, etc. All information that could be used to identify any individuals (other than the author), professionals, organizations, institutions, businesses etc. must be replaced by anonymised references. Under certain circumstances the Editors may determine that naming a person or organization is justifiable enough to make an exception to this policy of anonymity.
EDITORIAL TEAM
We have an editorial team with diverse perspectives who are all committed to the values and principles of the journal. The current Editorial Team was selected through an expressions of interest that was widely circulated. We are open to expanding this team so contact us if you have experiences and skills that you believe are a good fit with IMSJ. We are all volunteers and this journal is not connected to any of our affiliations.
Founding Editor
Hamilton Kennedy: Ex-patient, working on the lands of the Kulin nation, sometimes working at University of Melbourne
Co-lead Editors
Jersey Cosantino (they/them) Syracuse University, New York, US. Jersey’s scholarship resides at the intersections of Mad studies and trans studies and, utilizing disability and transformative justice frameworks, their research centers the experiences and subjectivities of Mad, neurodivergent, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. More information about Jersey.
Adam Davies (they/them) is a queer, Mad, neurodivergent, white settler activist and academic who works and lives on the unceded lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit and is faculty member in Sexualities, Genders, and Social Change at the University of Guelph. Adam’s work engages with madness, queerness, and education as Adam seeks emancipatory futures within and outside of educational institutions and curricula. More information about Adam.
Jennifer (Jen) Poole (she/her) is a white settler and a faculty member at Toronto Metropolitan’s School of Social Work. Her life and work has been shaped by madness, grief and decades of community mutual aid. She is grateful for it all. More information about Jen.
Hel Spandler (they/she) is the current Editor of Asylum: the radical mental health magazine; Principal Investigator of the Madzines research project; and a Professor at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. More information about Hel.
Editorial Group
Kath Thorburn: (she/her), living and working on unceded Dharug Land. IMSJ Coordinating Editor. My personal (and later professional) experiences have long had me questioning dominant conceptualisations of distress and what these mean for responding to human experiences. I am energised by the counter-discourses of Mad Studies – their potential to radically transform knowledge, practice and systems, to confront injustice, explore meaning and create alternatives.
Rosiel Elwyn: (they/themme) living and working on the unceded Gubbi Gubbi Land of the Gubbi Gubbi and Jinibara people. As a child, adolescent, and adult, I found healing and refuge in the community wisdom of other Lived Experience folk. Engaging with and learning from mad folk, survivor/consumer/ex-patient, activists, scholars, LGBTIQ+, disabled and neurodivergent communities was a way to connect with social justice, understand interrelated systems, and find alternative paths. The IMSJ is part of building on and with this community knowledge and expertise to transform prevailing cultures and systems of epistemic injustice that pathologise diverse human experiences – to disturb those discourses and nurture growth for radical change.
Holly Kemp: Eora Nation. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to figure out how to live and how to connect, as a person with big feelings/a highly sensitive person in an often-insensitive world. I’ve spent a lot of my working life getting hired/fired by universities and mental health services, because I thought that’s where I would find the answers to what is going on for me. These days I’m part of this journal, and other efforts at healing dialogues, mutual aid and epistemic justice, because I’ve come to the conclusion that we are the ones we have been waiting for.
Chris Maylea: information to come!
Jo River: (they/them), living and working on the unceded lands of the Cadigal and Bediagal people of the Eora Nation, at the University of Technology Sydney and my home in the Inner West. I have travelled here through the grace of lived experience folks – friends, colleagues, activists, scholars, consumer/survivor/ex-patient, Mad and trans communities – who have shared their knowledge and expertise and clarified my commitment to epistemic justice doing. For me, IMSJ represents an epistemic shelter for community theory building that centres lived experience knowledges, disrupts reductive and pathologising metanarratives, and opens up possibilities for transformative practice.
Helena Roennfeldt: Quandamooka Country. Through my own experience, madness defies easy explanations. Mad Studies invite me to participate in ongoing scholarly conversations within a community of open-minded folk who seek to reconfigure and challenge entrenched perspectives while allowing space for wonder and uncertainty.
Brett Scholz: Ngunnawal Country, Studying psychology – even in a relatively critical faculty – made me want to seek out ways to be more just and inclusive (in theory, activism, and practice). Mad Studies excites me because of how it creates space to critique and re-construct.
Aimee Sinclair: Marya & Patel (2021:22) write about ‘deep medicine’ as healing that resists colonial medical and state power, and ‘repairs those relationships that have been damaged through systems of domination’. For me, Mad Studies is a potential tool of deep medicine. Its provides me the space and community to learn and develop ways of thinking and being that challenge the oppressive ways I have been taught to think about myself, my experiences and my peers.
Sonia Soans: After several years of training in conventional psychology I concluded psychology didn’t address political and local material conditions. Discovering critical psychology, feminist, queer theory and mad movements helped me change my trajectory. Mad Studies has helped me rethink power and various kinds of exclusions that have been reified against people. Working with intersectionality creates possibilities of addressing complexity of the human condition.
International Mad Studies Journal 