Call for Papers for the 2027 Issue of Tabula

“The body is man's first and most natural instrument. Or more accurately, not to speak of instruments, man's first and most natural technical object, and at the same time technical means, is his body.” / Marcel Mauss /

European ethnology has recently moved away from viewing the body as a passive object, focusing instead on how the body is actively "done" or enacted through daily routines and healthcare practices. This thematic issue explores how health and illness are physically performed in an age of shifting medical, cultural, and political landscapes. We welcome papers from different fields of the social and cultural sciences that look at the everyday realities of care, bodily boundaries and somatic techniques. 

We invite related theoretical and methodological papers, analytical and critically oriented case studies, photo essays, debate papers, reviews of academic books, exhibitions or conferences, as well as interviews with professionals in the field. 

Tabula is an open-access, indexed (CEEOL, DOAJ) journal of the Museum of Ethnography, published since 1998 and archived in the MTA REAL repository. The journal welcomes submissions from early-career scholars, PhD students, junior and senior academics, as well as museum professionals. We also warmly encourage submissions in English or Hungarian on topics beyond the anthropology of body and health. 
 

To publish in Tabula: 

• Please send an abstract to tabula@neprajz.hu by 25 September. Abstracts should briefly introduce the proposed contribution in 10–15 sentences. 

• Following a positive evaluation, the editorial team will recommend publication in either English or Hungarian. All completed manuscripts should be submitted by 11 December. The manuscript guidelines are available at the Tabula webpage. If the editorial team or the author recommends publication in Hungarian but the manuscript has been submitted in English, the editorial team will arrange for the translation and professional language editing of the manuscript. 

• Following a double-blind peer review process, authors revise their manuscripts considering the reviewers' comments.  

• Both the Hungarian- and English-language issues are expected to be published by the end of 2027. 

We look forward to receiving your proposals and working with you. 

The editorial team of Tabula