Time leaves traces—on institutions, on disciplines, on the stories we inherit and the futures we imagine. As UCL marks its 200th year, we find ourselves invited into a rare temporal vantage point: a moment suspended between retrospection and possibility. It represents a chance to reflect on the Anthropology department, and on the discipline itself, through time.
For this year’s edition of the Anthropolitan Print Issue—our department’s very own annual publication—we turn our gaze toward Temporality, the elusive architecture of time that shapes our bodies, our politics, our intimacies, and our imaginations. This issue is both a snapshot and a slow unfurling; a container for the moments we hold, and the moments that insist on letting go. Anthropology, after all, is a discipline preoccupied with time: its rhythms, its ruptures, its colonial residues, its emancipatory potentials.
In wanting to bring together works that explore these layered temporalities, we invite contributors to reflect, unsettle, and reimagine. What does time mean, who does it belong to, and what does it carry? How do beginnings endure? How do institutions remember—and forget? What forms of anthropology become possible when we attend carefully to time’s uneven textures?
We offer three cues to help you find your way in. Consider them as starting points, not boundaries:
Inheritance
What is carried forward, by whom, and at what cost? We invite work that traces the passage of trauma, land, language, memory, and obligation – asking not only what we receive, but what we are bound to transform or refuse – or, sometimes, rekindle into something new.
Waiting
Waiting is time made political. How do communities inhabit suspended time – persisting through bureaucratic neglect, unresolved grief, chronic anticipation? It asks what suspension reveals about structure and agency – and what unexpected forms of creativity, solidarity, and meaning-making emerge in the waiting itself.
When
Deceptively simple, analytically rich. When does a story begin? When does a people exist? When is now? The question of when is never neutral – to ask when is to ask whose clock we are reading from and whose temporality counts.
The theme is wide and non-exhaustive – if your work engages with it in a register of its own, we want to hear from you.
This year, we are inviting both written submissions and visual works that will be showcased in two streams:
Anthropolitan Print Magazine
We welcome submissions across all formats for the Anthropolitan print magazine: ethnographic essays, creative non-fiction, poetry, photography, illustration, and experimental work that defies easy categorisation. Work that sits between disciplines, genres, or registers is especially encouraged. Word count for articles should be limited to 1,500 words and should be accompanied by at least 1 visual element (in high resolution jpeg format).
Anthropolitan x The Creative Collective Picture Competition
All visual art submissions will be entered in a competition to select the cover image for this year’s Anthropolitan print. Shortlisted pictures will be showcased during the AnthroShow on June 9 2026, and selected submissions will also be exhibited in the department, framed and displayed in the coming academic year.
In this way, visual works will be able to shape the department’s visual identity and its evolving legacy. Visuals should be of good quality resolution ( 2339 x 3307 pixels per inch), ideally to be printed in A3 and A4 formats and submitted as jpeg files.
Some guidelines and things to keep in mind before you submit:
- Both written and visual submissions must speak to the chosen themes and must be anthropological/ethnographic.
- We welcome submissions across all formats: ethnographic essays, creative non-fiction, poetry, photography, illustration, and experimental work.
- All visual work submissions must be in digital format.
- You must have consent of any collaborators or people featured in photos.
- The deadline for all submissions is the 10th of May 2026. Please submit entries to anthro.cc@ucl.ac.uk , indicating in the subject line whether you are submitting for the Anthropolitan Print Magazine or the Anthropolitan x The Creative Collective Picture Competition.
For questions or to discuss a piece in progress, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
We look forward to your submissions!
Anthropolitan 