Taking the proverbial reins from outgoing Journal of Social Issues (JSI) editor Martin Ruck means that we have been spending the past several months prepping for our first issues of JSI to be published in 2027. It’s an exciting time as we lay the groundwork for our term as co-editors, another first for JSI, which has always been led by a sole editor-in-chief. As longtime collaborators, we are thrilled and relieved (!) to embark on this journey at JSI together–and with you, the SPSSI community. 

We are especially pleased to announce the selection of JSI’s first editorial fellow, Minh Duc Pham, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University who will begin work with us this summer. We received an astonishing response to our call for applications and had the difficult choice of selecting just one fellow for this first round. Dr. Pham is an exceptionally productive and talented scholar whose work critically examines how and why people from dominant and marginalized groups engage in activism to advance equity. His perspective will greatly inform the work published in JSI in the coming year(s). Please join us in congratulating Dr. Pham on his selection! 

We are likewise thrilled to announce our first two calls for papers for proposed special issues of JSI. The first, “Toward a Psychological Study of Environmental Racism,” is led by Trevor S. Lies, Gloria Muñoz Romero, Syed Muhammad Omar, Harrison J. Schmitt, shola shodiya-zeumault, and H. Shellae Versey. The authors envision an expansive special issue that “can begin to formalize the psychological study of environmental racism in order to combat this wicked problem, to amplify the voices of those subject to environmental harms, and to imagine radical alternatives to the status quo of racialized violence.” With environmental justice at the center, they aim to produce an issue that will set an agenda for scholars within psychology and beyond whose work explains and intervenes in environmental oppression. The first deadline for submissions is June 25, 2026. 

The second call for papers is led by David Livert and Martina Arcadu on the topic of food, social justice, and psychology. Their proposed special issue, “Food Identities and Foodways as Social Issues: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Power, Belonging and Justice,” will investigate the complex ways that food identities and related processes inform and shape human experiences. In their call, they note that, “Food is not merely a means of fulfilling basic physiological needs; it also functions as a medium of communication, a marker of social status, a tangible cultural artifact, an expression of emotion, a physical and social practice, and a political and economic instrument.” They seek papers that engage this exciting and under-explored topic from a range of methodological, theoretical, and (inter)disciplinary perspectives. Proposals are due on July 31, 2026. 

Amid the turmoil, suffering, and conflict in our global society, it is so encouraging to see SPSSI scholars remain steadfast in their commitment to producing scholarship that makes our publications among the best in the world. We look forward to working with you to develop proposals for special issues of JSI that speak to the things that you care about and that we should all care about: new directions in psychology that will break tradition, catalyze new paradigms, and spark conversations that take us into spaces yet unanticipated.