RE-DESIGNING SYSTEMIC TRAINING FOR A DECOLONISING ERA

Posted on 2026-05-27

EXTENDED DEADLINE - 15th SEPTEMBER 2026

RE-DESIGNING SYSTEMIC TRAINING FOR A DECOLONISING ERA

A special Issue of Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice

A fully open access independent journal for the systemic practice communities

 

Decolonising Systemic Training

This call is an invitation to share your thinking on how to render systemic trainings more culturally relevant and inclusive; suited to current times, institutional cultures, community needs and socio-geographic-political changes. Who is in control of the decisions we make as a community about the shape and intentions of systemic trainings going forward? What influences are at work? What do we need to do and who needs including in that “we”?

We welcome submissions from course leaders, tutors, trainees, external examiners, supervisors and institute directors discussing changes to decolonise the training of systemic practice. The term decolonising is being used here as a practice which challenges systematic exclusionary and negating theory and practice about people, places, communities and heritage. Those involved in systemic training courses are keen to respond to the challenges of social inequalities, new technology and staff and student overload/overwhelm...

Most systemic therapy trainings need not so much updating so much as an entire re-design. Do we tweak, amend, update, flush, rewrite, repair, extend? This is the moment for a paradigm shift, not a tweak in content or delivery, but for changes that make a difference that matters in a world split by colonising and decolonising intentions. The biggest challenge is how to think outside of the colonial mindset, outside of taken-for-granteds, and not feel obliged to what have been considered pillars of systemic theory and practice.

The following is not intended as an exclusive list so please expand this to be inclusive and address the needs and contributions from staff and students who are, for example, from LGBTQIA+, Asian, Black, Global Majority, traveller communities; who are neurodiverse, differently abled and disabled, living with health conditions; who have specific academic or social needs; who have personal, familial or community experience of being refugees, of displacement, migration, language differences; who experience age discrimination; whose experiences or needs are invisible or frequently overlooked; whose family or relationship forms and values are outside what gets acknowledged; whose experiences, identities and community membership are overlooked or not named - as will be the case for many readers of this list. Please find a way of speaking to your experiences.

An important thing to note about this invitation: people are not expected to be presented as or address a single aspect of self, as if "splintersectional" (Urbistondo Cano & Simon, 2019) but come to this party as intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989), multiply and fluidly layered members of many communities, where characteristics and experiences move in and out of play depending on the context. Systemic training is one such context. The shape of the portal for admission, the content and culture of programmes will shape who gets through the door, and how they are expected to develop in order to succeed in their training. This in turn shapes the kind of practice we develop as a systemic community. It is not difficult for training courses to reproduce what has always been done, to sideline or exclude aspects of staff and students so losing the opportunity to further our commitment to social justice and diverse inclusivity in the systemic community and for the wider communities.

Murmurations is a systemic practice journal. You need to show relationality and reflexivity, reveal who you are (in your many selves and how they are present and in play in the writing), ensure you have genuine permission to include the lives of others in your writing or media, and hold in mind the key ethic of “Nothing about us without us!”

Please read some of the papers in this journal to understand the unique contribution of this systemic practice journal.

 Suggestions of possible themes:

 

  • What are we training people to do and where?
  • Course participants as contextually situated community members
  • Owning our professional history and reparative action
  • Reflexivity for personal and socio-political change
  • Reading, listening and viewing as cultural interventions
  • Improving systemic articulation and representation in transdisciplinary teams
  • Creating inclusive course cultures
  • Re-thinking assessment
  • Embracing new technologies
  • Breaking with cultural compliance
  • Language Matters
  • Supporting change leaders
  • Transmaterial systems thinking
  • Teaching systemic research
  • Practitioner learning, the circulation of knowledge and assessment in communities

 

 

Submissions

Submissions in all formats should please observe the guidance for contributors to MJTSP: https://murmurations.cloud/ojs/index.php/murmurations/guidelines

  1. Papers which address systemic theory and practice in-depth in relation to this topic. (4000-7000 words). These will be peer reviewed and must be fully referenced.
  2. Papers which are theoretical, philosophical, arts oriented from outside the systemic field but with systemic implications and therefore potential usefulness. These will be peer reviewed and must be fully referenced.
  3. Practice or research notes up to 2000 words. These will be peer reviewed and must be fully referenced.
  4. Short stories of about 1000 words
  5. Poems – in any form
  6. Photo or video essays
  7. Audio recordings or videos

 

Timeframe

EXTENDED Submission date 15th SEPTEMBER 2026 (earlier submissions welcome). Publication in Winter 2026.

 Guest Editors: Shila Rashid, Hugh Palmer and Gail Simon.   If you have an idea about something you’re considering submitting, we’d like to hear from you.  editors@murmurations.cloud 

MAKE A SUBMISSION at  https://murmurations.cloud