Cripping and Queering Age(ing)

Notions like queer time (Halberstam 2005) or crip time (Kafer 2013) have proven highly generative forqueer and crip communities. Centering non-normative bodies, minds and/or sexualities may suggest the subversion of normative time frames such as the myth of a normal lifecourse, which can be and feel liberating. This special issue explores the potential of crip and queer time – as well as their context in the broader emancipatory thinking of cripping (McRuer 2006) and queering (King/Cronin 2010) – in relation to a field of research that inherently deals with time: ageing studies.

Activists and scholars have long called for an affirmative understanding of difference – we reinforce this call and invite contributions on affirmative, inclusive, and emancipatory understandings of ageing across difference. Following Queer Studies and (Critical) Disability Studies as standpoint epistemologies that rather question their central topic than take it for granted (Boger 2017), we seek to analyze compulsory normative assumptions in relation to (old) age and processes of ageing.

To center marginalized subjectivities beyond cis-hetero and able-bodyminded positionalities challenges dominant frameworks in ageing studies such as the notion of successful ageing (Rowe/Kahn 1987). We long to imagine futures of ageing differently, by widening the horizons of ageing research ontologically and epistemologically through queer and crip lenses (Sandberg/Marshall 2017). These futures acknowledge intersectional subjectivities in processes of ageing and changes in health status – textured by sexualities, corporeality and their socio-cultural contexts. Here, queer and crip interrogations also signal the value of decolonial frameworks that are often silenced in mainstream conversations about ageing.

This special issue explores age(ing) through critical queer and crip perspectives and asks what it can mean to crip and queer (research on) age and ageing. We seek to understand how queer spacetime and crip spacetime diverge from (cis-hetero-able-bodyminded) idealised trajectories into ageing. How then do cripping and queering become emancipatory strategies to expand understandings of ageing, health and care? Finally, we are interested in the ways in which queering and cripping of ageing research practices and methodologies inform the study of age(ing).

In light of these anchoring questions, we welcome contributions that address – but are not limited to – these critical issues:

• Acknowledging difference in age(ing)

o Queer age(ing)

o Disabled age(ing)

o Post- and decolonial age(ing)

o Intersectional age(ing)

• Critiquing normalism(s) in (the study of) age(ing)

o Critical gerontology, e.g. the questioning of notions like successful ageing

o Deconstructions of heteronormativity and ableism of ageing

• Valuing the subversive potential of age(ing) differently

o Queering and cripping methods and methodologies in ageing studies

o Transgressing the compulsory able-bodymindedness and compulsory heteronormativity of ageing

o Futurity and utopias about queer and crip age(ing)

For the double-blind peer-reviewed section of this special issue, we invite full research papers with a theoretical-conceptual or empirical orientation ranging from 35,000 to a maximum of 45,000 characters (including spaces). We also ask for short papers from diversity research and practice: outlines of research projects, pointed comments and (preferably provocative) positions, as well as practice insights, for example on diversity work in counselling and psychotherapy, social work, social services management, nursing homes and elderly care, self-advocacy organizations, community care or public health management. Such contributions should be between 12,000 and 15,000 characters (including spaces). We strongly encourage contributions in English, but also accept submissions in German.

Contributions will be selected through a two-stage review process: For all categories of papers, we first request the submission of short abstracts of 400 words (without references) by October 31, 2025. You will receive feedback from the editors on the submitted paper proposal by November 30, 2025. Full length research papers must then be submitted by April 30, 2026, and short papers by August 1, 2026.

Please send all submissions for this special issue, paper proposals as well as full-length and short papers, per email to the special issue editors. Please also direct any questions regarding the focus topic “Cripping and queering age(ing)” to Moniq Muyargas (M.M.Muyargas(at)sms.ed.ac.uk), Yvonne Wechuli (wechuli(at)uni-kassel.de) and Marianne Hirschberg (hirschberg(at)uni-kassel.de).

On the website zdfm.budrich-journals.de under “Manuscript Submissions” you will find author guidelines with further information on how to structure your article. There you will also find in-formation on how to submit manuscripts for open-topic articles for this and other issues of ZDfm.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

The special issue editors

Moniq Muyargas, Yvonne Wechuli and Marianne Hirschberg

Call for Papers and References (PDF)