Annual Review of Critical Psychology

Annual Review of Critical Psychology (ARCP) is an international peer reviewed open access publication developing varieties of critical research concerned with language, subjectivity and practice. ARCP is an open-access journal, on this site; ISSN 1746-739X

Editorial Board

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ARCP 1: Foundations (1999)

Editor: Ian Parker

What are the necessary prerequisites for critical work in different areas of the discipline? What theoretical and methodological resources do we already have at hand for good critical practice? What are the conceptual and institutional foundations for critical psychology?

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ARCP 2: Action Research (2000)

Editors: Dan Goodley and Ian Parker

How can we change the world through varieties of action research? What is the role of critical-practical-theoretical interventions which include conscientization, cultural destabilization, education inclusion campaigns, feminist research, mental health intervention, practical deconstruction and radical therapeutic activities? How does psychology need to change to be up to the task?

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ARCP 3: Anti-Capitalism (2003)

Editors: Melancholic Troglodytes

Starting from a naïve position (that critical psychology can benefit the anti-capitalist movement) this issue gradually gravitates towards querying both ‘Critical Psychology’ and the ‘anti-capitalist movement’. The questionnaire and discussion sections (before and after the presentation of the main text) are intended to foreground the issue of class.

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ARCP 4: Feminism and Activisms (2005)

Editors: Alexandra Zavos, Barbara Biglia, Jude Clark and Johanna Motzkau

Interventions in the ways in which the exchange between feminist, activist and other critical practices and discourses can serve as a particular site for the deconstruction (and reconstruction) of dominant hierarchies of power and privilege across the socio-cultural spectrum broaching the broad question of the nature of social change.

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ARCP 5: Critical Psychology in a Changing World: Contributions from different geo-political regions (2006)

Editors: Manolis Dafermos, Athanasios Marvakis and Sofia Triliva

What is the difference between forms of ‘critical psychology’ in various cultural-political contexts? What can we learn about ‘critical psychology’ in different traditions? What resources are there for challenging the homogenisation of contemporary ‘critical psychology’ from around the globe?

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ARCP 6: Globalisation, Migration & Asylum: The Peril of the Alien and the Safety of the Familiar (2008)

Editors: Jane Callaghan and Rose Capdevila

This issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology is devoted to critical work around globalisation and two of its emergent progeny: migration and asylum. The papers included in this issue engage with the questions that arise around how we might theorise, understand and engage with the varying instantiations and positionings of these phenomena critically.

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ARCP 7: Lacan and Critical Psychology (2009)

Editor: Carol Owens

This issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology mobilises an exploration and consideration of the utility of Lacan’s psychoanalysis for critical psychology in particular, and for critical research/theory/practice in general. As such, contributors to this issue tease out the problematics and the potentialities involved in such a project. A framework is imposed according to which the reader may refer in their engagement with the work herein.

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ARCP 8: Psychologisation under Scrutiny (2010)

Editors: Ángel Gordo and Jan De Vos

This issue represents a collaborative effort to continue unravelling the modern, and ever expanding, tendency to manage non-psychological issues in psychological terms. The most important challenge, here, lies in probing the boundaries between the non-psychological and the psychological and exploring ways to transcend them. For, if today it seems that there no outside of psychology and psychologization, the question seems to have become: are we lost in psychologisation? These are questions and dilemmas that are shared by the contributors in this issue, whether they focus on the foundations and exemplifying logics of psychologisation and the legal and institutional bases (Part I), or envisage strategies and actions to render visible the socio-political investments behind psychologisation processes (de-psychologised) as a powerful syntax of neoliberal language (Part II). The debate is still open. Each of the articles in this issue can be classified as an attempt to realize a critique of psychologisation beyond its deadlocks.

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ARCP 9: Marxism and Psychology (2011)

Editor: Michael Arfken

This issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology (ARCP) explores issues that emerge at the intersection of Marxist scholarship and psychological practice. Given the ongoing global financial crisis, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on the role that modern psychological research and practice play both in reproducing and in legitimizing one of the dominant features of modern society. We hope that the articles in this issue will persuade scholars, students, and activists that Marxism remains a potent tool for interrogating the economic and political foundations of modern psychology. It should be noted that the papers included in this issue were originally presented at the first Marxism and Psychology Conference held at the University of Prince Edward Island in August of 2010.

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ARCP 10: Critical Psychology in a Changing World: Building Bridges and Expanding the Dialogue (2013)

Editors: Manolis Dafermos, Athanasios Marvakis, Mihalis Mentinis, Desmond Painter & Sofia Triliva

This issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology is devoted to critical work around the world. This journey began in 2006 with ARCP 5: Critical Psychology in a Changing World. In this leg of the journey, the 49 papers of this issue will take the reader on a very informative tour around the globe, visiting psychological scholarship in places such as Aotearoa-New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Flandern, France, German Speaking countries, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latin America, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, and USA.

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ARCP 12: Marxism & Psychology II (2015)

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ARCP 13: Discourse Unit Global Seminar (2017)

Editor: Ian Parker

This special issue of Annual Review of Critical Psychology comprises papers by participants at an international meeting of the Discourse Unit in June 2017. Participants, including these contributors, have, at different points in their careers, intersected with the work of the Discourse Unit since 1990, either as academic colleagues, postgraduate students, postdoctoral visitors, external examiners, or co-authors or co-editors on joint publications. The June 2017 meeting in Manchester University was designed to collectively take stock of a variety of different conceptual, methodological and practical projects, and to discuss the very different directions our work has taken from our first encounters with ‘discourse’ and our meetings together. These papers were gathered together with the primary aim of facilitating this discussion among ourselves, and they together provide a window on the range of work produced in and alongside the Discourse Unit over the last thirty years; other strands of work are represented in other special issues of ARCP.

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ARCP 14: Putting the Deleuzian Machine to work in psychology (2018)

Editor: Maria Nichterlein

This issue of ARCP introduces Deleuze’s project on a philosophy of difference in its critical intersection with psychology. After a general introduction, this special issue employs the distinctions Philosophy/Science/Art articulated in his later work with Felix Guattari – What is Philosophy? – to frame an interrogation of the ways in which his project makes psychology rethink many of its disciplinary foundations and brings a gust of fresh (and critical)  air to its practices.

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ARCP 15: Sex and Power in the University (2018)

Editors: Karuna Chandrashekar, Kimberly Lacroix and Sabah Siddiqui

This special issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology on Sex and Power in the University emerges in response to the series of debates and discussions that followed the #MeToo movement. In this volume, our contributors have come together to knit a feminist undertaking to critique and challenge the University.

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ARCP 16: Kritische Psychologie (2019)

Editors: Athanasios Marvakis, Sertan Batur, Shose Kessi, Desmond Painter, Ernst Schraube, Eva Strohm Bowler and Sofia Triliva

Within the polyphony of Critical Psychologies, Kritische Psychologie represents a substantial and distinct voice. It has its origins in Germany, especially at the Free University Berlin, and developed over the years to a tradition of thought flourishing at various places around the world. This special issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology brings together current research of Kritische Psychologie as well as work inspired by or developed in response to it. Scholars are presenting in 63 articles how they are working in and with this tradition of thought. They describe, how they explore the problems people are confronted with in their everyday world, they share how they rethink and expand psychological theory, methodology and empirical research, and they are discussing, applying, criticizing, elaborating, linking or comparing Kritische Psychologie with other theoretical and geopolitical approaches, often going beyond disciplinary boundaries of psychology.

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ARCP 17: Critical Psychology in the Majority World (2024)

Editors: Sonia Soans, Yasuhiro Igarashi, Karolina Dalimunthe, Retno Hanggarani Ninin and Yuliana Hanami

The papers in this special issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology are assembled from the workings of three critical psychology conferences – Japan, with in-person attendance, and two virtual conferences that were held virtually via the medium of the internet and video conferencing systems. We aimed to decenter from western global-north voices in critical psychology and to organise amongst the global networks within the field.

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ARCP 18: (Critical) Psychology as Politics by Other means (2024) 

Editors: Sertan Batur, Peter Brook, Peace Kiguwa, Athanasios Marvakis, Desmond Painter, Suntosh R. Pillay, Daniel Schnur and Eva Strohm Bowler

More than a century after its establishment, psychology has burgeoned into a vast industry that produces and disseminates knowledge, interventions, and social outcomes. This industry often frames its practices as neutral technologies aimed at helping and improving individuals and society. However, this purported neutrality obscures the political nature of these practices, masking their role in social and societal control. The current issue of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology (ARCP) delves into the intricate relationship between psychology and politics, emphasizing that human action and agency are inherently political.

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ARCP 19: For Palestine, online resources (2025)

Curated by Ian Parker

This issue of Annual Review of Critical Psychology comprises academic articles that address the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people carried out by the settler-colonial state of Israel since its foundation in 1948. These articles either focus directly on the discipline of psychology or on what critical psychologists need to know about Palestine from work adjacent to the discipline. These are already-published articles available as open-access resources.

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ARCP 20: Child as Method in Movement: Work, Action, Subject (2025)

Editors: Luan Cassal and Artemis Christinaki

This issue of ARCP attempts to open socio-political questions around and about children and childhood through the research analytic of child as method. It engages with texts and narratives that foreground enlarged questions around the politics of childhood and discusses the three pillars of Erica Burman’s work on this topic: a) how ‘the child’ is understood as a figure or trope; b) how ‘childhood’ is understood as a social condition or category where different narratives about and for the child are produced; and c) whether and how ‘children’ as the living and embodied entities inhabiting these positions mobilise and contribute to a range of institutional practices across a range of geopolitical arenas.

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