Call for papers: Museum International

Call for papers: Museum International

Contemporary Professional Challenges in Museums:

Working Conditions and Ethical Dilemmas

Vol. 77, No. 306-307

ICOM is preparing an issue of Museum International on the theme of 'Contemporary Professional Challenges in Museums: Working Conditions and Ethical Dilemmas' (Vol. 77, Nº 306-307). All proposals submitted will be assessed for suitability, and if chosen, the subsequent articles will go through a double-blind peer review process. The issue is expected to be published, in collaboration with Taylor & Francis/Routledge, in December 2026.

Deadline: 5 January 2026

Museum visitors and staff have perceived museums as a relatively 'safe space for unsafe ideas' (Heumann Gurian 2006). So much so that in 2022, after much consultation and deliberation, ICOM updated its museum definition to include the notion that museums had the responsibility to 'foster diversity and sustainability'. These are terms that explicitly recognise the nature of the politics of representation, support pluralism and nod to the importance of the current climate crisis and the need to change how we live in the world. Museums thus bear the burden of our shared histories and allow us to encounter themes that encourage us to think in new ways.

Museum professionals today face challenges - even threats - that undermine, or even jeopardise, their working conditions and the values they uphold. The lingering effects of the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, wars, growing economic disparities, and authoritarian regimes that view the principles upheld by museums as 'woke', ultra-liberal', and a waste of taxpayer money all pose threats to the values and practices museums uphold. Increasingly, uncertainty and fear are replacing creative and critical discourses.

In this issue we would like to get a sense of the conditions worldwide in which museum staff have to work and the ways in which their agency enable the assertions of their professional practice.

Museum Professional Challenges are experienced differently among museum workers and visitors, based on their environmental and cultural contexts. We would like to encourage authors to express a range of ideas on their views of the situation that create stresses in their practice and points of view, including their critique, and how they are organising their working conditions given the pressures they are experiencing.

We welcome a diversity of submissions that can inform the sector on what is being done or emerging in this sphere and develop inspirational ideas for future processes of work. We encourage authors to share different perspectives on museum practices and actions that contribute to or even drive the shift towards managing contemporary challenges in their places of work or those known to them. We welcome contributions that address the following non-exhaustive list of topics:

• Political intervention disrupting museum workers' work programs
• Precarity and difficult working conditions
• Care practices building solidarity within the museum and with society
• Museum workers navigating threats to their professional integrity
• Strategies for continuing to address issues of diversity, inequality, inclusion and sustainability within the museum itself (and also as themes addressed by the museum)
• Preserving museums as 'safe spaces for unsafe ideas'
• Staff retention strategies in times of precarity
• Good practices and innovative initiatives in staff recruitment and management

Abstracts of between 250 and 300 words, written in English, French or Spanish, should be submitted for selection to [email protected] in a Word (.doc) document (if you do not receive confirmation of receipt within 2 weeks, it is possible that your e-mail did not reach us - do not hesitate to write to us again).

Contributions will be on a voluntary basis.

The following information should be included with the abstract:

• Title of submitted paper
• Name(s) of author(s)
• Professional background

The abstract submission deadline is 5 January 2026.

The abstracts received will be examined on a blind review basis by a panel of experts on the topic.

Museum International is published in English. However, proposals in the other two official languages of ICOM (French and Spanish) will also be considered. If your abstract is selected, we will provide guidelines for your full article, and you'll have approximately two months to complete it. You may also submit your full article in either English, French or Spanish.

An abstract is a summary of the journal manuscript.

It should be no longer than 250-300 words (excluding selected references) and provide a succinct overview of the article. Please send your abstract in a word document. The abstract should be read as a standalone document and the document should not contain images or footnotes.

The abstract should read as a standalone document.

Abstracts sent to Museum International should include the following sections (not necessarily presented in this way, but all elements need to be included):

1. Introduction: one or two short sentences to describe the overall topic dealt with in the article and provides background to the study.
2. Research question(s)/Critical issue(s): explains the key research question or critical issue, by stating the problem addressed. It should also highlight the gap in existing research on the topic.
3. Innovation: explains the approach to the research question/issue, and the new perspective adopted.
4. Methodology: explains how the research was carried out (e.g. case studies, interviews, etc.) or the means used to address the critical issue.
5. Conclusion: outlines the impact of the research or the outcome of addressing the critical issue, and why the findings/outcomes are important.
6. Selected references: a selection of the references that will be cited in the article (only your main sources).
7. Keywords (maximum of 5).