About the Journal

Focus and Scope

  • Fostering scholarly and creative work that explores the relationship between human culture, natural history and global ecologies
  • Sharing information and ideas about how the arts and humanities are responding to global climate change and loss of bio-diversity
  • Encouraging discussion, publications and practices responding to environmental issues and natural history; and
  • Promoting the interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities.
 

Peer Review Process

Swamphen ensures a blind peer review process. Two reviewers will assess the submission and make suggestions, corrections, and recommendations as they see fit. Reviewers look for a knowledge of the field; confidence in topic and expression; adherence to copyright, referencing, and stylistic guidelines. Once a reviewer has agreed to review a submission, it might take as long as 6 weeks to receive an assessment. Please note that it is considered bad faith for an author to utilise the expertise of the journal team and of the reviewers, and then to publish the annotated submission elsewhere.

Reviewers rate a submission with one of the following:

  • Accept Submission
  • Revisions Required
  • Resubmit for Review
  • Decline Submission

Publication Frequency

Swamphen publishes a regular issue containing items primarily from its ASLEC–ANZ biennial conference. The conference issue is thematic, following the conference theme. Swamphen also publishes special editions, with guest editors.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology

Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology encourages critically creative responses to the sentient habitats of the world. We publish scholarly articles, lyrical essays, creative works and reviews of relevant scholarship, amplifying work that attends to human encounters with other species. Our journal emerges from the air, lands and seas that formed the first peoples of our region and we attend to these communities’ narratives as a first principle. While the journal primarily offers  literary insights into the unsettled territories many know as Australia and Aotearoa, we also look to other ecologies in formation during this time of critical environmental change. Swamphen, previously known as AJE, is peer reviewed. We welcome proposals for special issues.

Sponsors

ASLEC-ANZ

Journal History

Swamphen came into being in 2019, following the biennial conference "Grounding Story", under the editorship of  the Swamphen Collective. Our refreshed name refers to the Australasian swamphen (Porphyrio melanotus), known as the pūkeko in Māori language and the kwilom in Noongar language. Under its previous name, AJE: the Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, the founding editors were CA. Cranston, with Barbara Holloway, and Lorraine Shannon. CA. Cranston also took on the Journal Manager role. The contents of that first issue of AJE (2011) were papers from the 'Sounding the Earth' Conference, Launceston, Tasmania (2010). Prior to April 2016, AJE was hosted by the National Library of Australia. It now resides at the University of Sydney Library.