Call for Papers

Themed Issue

Masks Without Faces: Non-Human Persona


Editors: Christopher Moore and Jasmyn Connell, University of Wollongong
Persona studies has developed frameworks for understanding how individuals construct and manage identity across media environments, yet the field’s focus has remained largely on human subjects. Non-human entities routinely operate through the logics of persona: brands speak, algorithms recommend, cities welcome, and animals accumulate social media followings. Persona Studies invites submissions for a themed issue examining the persona of non-human agents, welcoming contributions that expand connections to broader fields, such as, but not limited to, science and technology studies, actor-network theory, posthumanism, animal studies, brand and consumer culture theory, platform studies, narrative theory, and many others.

Scope and Themes


Contributions are encouraged to address any entity, system, or phenomenon to which a persona is attributed or performed. The following categories are indicative; proposals that identify new categories or challenge the framing are encouraged. Brands, institutions, and organisations where corporate identity parallels individual self-presentation, yet processes of co-creation and contestation differ. Digital platforms and AI systems that develop recognisable personas through interface design, anthropomorphic features, and the gap between design intent and user perception. Places, environments, and the natural world attributed persona through placemaking, environmental rhetoric, and legal personhood; contributions from Indigenous perspectives are particularly welcome. Animals, fictional characters, and cultural phenomena where persona is constructed through media representation, transmedia storytelling, fan practice, and personification.

Additional categories are welcome, including algorithms, collectives and social movements, objects and artefacts, mythological entities, nations, and economic systems. The issue welcomes diverse methods: case studies, discourse analysis, ethnography, digital methods, historical analysis, philosophical inquiry, creative practice research, and comparative studies.

A more detailed version of this CFP is available here.

Submission Details


Abstracts of no more than 300 words, with a short biographical note, should be submitted by 30 April 2026 to personastudies@gmail.com.

    • Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit full papers (6,000–8,000 words) by 30 June 2026.
    • All submissions undergo double-blind peer review. Papers should follow the Persona Studies style guide.
    • Peer review reports will be returned by September 2026, and revised papers will be due in early December 2026.
    • Publication of the themed issue is scheduled for February 2027.

 

Open Submissions

The journal welcomes abstract, full manuscript and creative practice submissions on a rolling basis submitted to personastudies@gmail.com, and in response to calls for papers around a central theme. We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines and Peer Review process. Submissions will be vetted by an editor, and if your proposed paper is considered a fit for the journal, you will receive log-in details for the website via email to allow you to submit to the journal website for peer review. Those submissions accepted for publication after peer-review, but which do not fit into a themed issue, will be published in the rolling issue. 

Issue Proposals 

If you would like to propose an issue theme, either for public call for submission or stemming from an event or research group, please contact us at personastudies [at] gmail [dot] com for further details. We recommend allowing 12 months for the issue development process.