Re-designing Systemic Training for a Decolonising Era - Call for Papers

EXTENDED DEADLINE

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 experience systemic trainings more culturally relevant and inclusive. We welcome submissions from course leaders, tutors, trainees, external examiners, and institute directors discussing changes to decolonise the training of systemic practice. Those involved in systemic training courses are keen to respond to the challenges of social inequalities, new technology and staff and student overload/overwhelm.

 

Creating a fresh context

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 an exclusive list but could address the needs and contributions from staff and students who are 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 write 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 and 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 and the content and culture of programmes will shape who gets through the door, how people are expected to be and how they are expected to exit. This 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 and so sideline or exclude parts of staff and students so losing the opportunity to live our commitment to social justice and diverse inclusivity and also the potential for systemic practice and the systemic community to be more inclusive and diverse.

Suggestions of possible themes:

  1. What are we training people to do and where?
  2. Creating inclusive course cultures
  3. Course participants as contextually situated community members
  4. Embracing new technologies
  5. Re-thinking assessment
  6. Teaching the practice of systemic research
  7. Transmaterial systems thinking
  8. Reading, listening and viewing as cultural interventions
  9. Reflexivity for personal and socio-political change
  10. Improving systemic articulation and representation in transdisciplinary teams
  11. Owning our professional history and reparative action
  12. Breaking with cultural compliance
  13. Practitioner learning, the circulation of knowledge and assessment in communities
  14. Language Matters
  15. Supporting change leaders

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 relational implications and therefore potential usefulness. These will be peer reviewed and must be fully referenced.

3. Poems – in any form

4. Short stories of about 1000 words

5. Practice or research notes up to 2000 words. These will be peer reviewed and must be fully referenced.

6. Photo or video essays

7. Audio recordings or videos

MAKE A SUBMISSION at  https://murmurations.cloud 

Murmurations is a systemic practice journal. You need to show relationality, 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.

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. Email any questions to editors@murmurations.cloud 

Website: murmurations.cloud and check the website for dates of sessions with the guest editors to discuss your ideas for a submission.