Call for Contributions/Abstracts for the next issue of Practice Insights Magazine

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS/ABSTRACTS

for the next issue of

Practice Insights Magazine

Theme: Professional Careers in Community Development

Practice Insights, the bi-annual publication of the International Association for Community Development (IACD), invites practitioners to contribute to its next issue, focusing on the theme of Professional Careers in Community Development.

Aims and Focus of this Edition

This edition will explore the diverse employment pathways Community Development practitioners have taken in their professional careers. The goal is to showcase different paths one may take in the field of Community Development (CD) with the aim of highlighting the widest diversity of career paths as possible across international contexts.

Community Development is a professional field of practice and a way of working with communities towards social change. It is also an approach that may be utilised in other social professions including health, social work, economic regeneration, adult education, and sustainable development.

While there are multiple entry points into CD careers, we consider the following features characterise a ‘professional’ CD practitioner:

Having the required professional qualification,
Practice that aligns with the IACD definition of Community Development, informed by the relevant national and International Standards for Community Development,
A career that reflects a commitment to the discipline and the values which underpin it.

What do we mean by Community Development?

Collectively, we subscribe to the following definition agreed in consultation with our members, in 2016;

“Community Development is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, human rights, economic opportunity, equality and social justice, through the organisation, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.”

What to Include in your Submission

We are seeking submissions that explore how individuals move into paid roles, and the diverse roles, contexts, and environments in which CD practitioners are working, or using CD values and methods to work with communities. The focus should be on the career path, rather than the individual, but of course it may highlight contributions of the individual as examples.

In outlining your career path, contributors are asked to highlight who and what has supported them in their professional development. Also of interest are opportunities for professional development such as CD education and training, professional networks, supportive policy environments, and so forth.

Submission Guidelines
We invite contributors to submit a 500-word abstract by 15 December 2025.

The abstract should outline the intended topic, framing, and scope of the article. Abstracts will undergo an editorial review process led by Guest Editors Huston Gibson, Ciara Shanahan, Jean McEwan Short, and Laurie Cook with Daniel Muia (IACD Chair) as Managing Editor. Feedback will provide feedback to support alignment with the issue’s theme. Please send abstracts and related questions to Huston Gibson at [email protected].

Authors of accepted abstracts will receive further guidelines and are invited to submit full articles of up to 1,500 words by 15 February 2026.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts and learning from your professional career tracks in community development. Please share this call with your networks to help us reach a broad community of contributors!