CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – Special Issue

2026-01-23

The editorial team of Transformative Social Work invites submissions for its 2026 special issue on the theme, Artificial Intelligence and social work in Canada: Exploring intra- and interdisciplinary opportunities, tensions, and challenges. The rapid growth of the multiple forms of artificial intelligence (AI) presents opportunities, tensions, and challenges across all sectors of public and private life. Professional disciplines such as social work are grappling with the benefits and impingements of AI in the domains of education, policy, research, and practice. This proposed special issue is an outcome of a two-day interdisciplinary conference conducted in 2025, which offered a pan-Canadian dialogue focused on the specific concerns of social work, notably those central to our values-based profession: ethics, social justice, service user-focused equity, diversity, and inclusion and culturally responsive practice, and community-based research.

This call for submissions focuses on the intersection of AI and social work in Canada, with a special interest in papers/research that consider connections and impact internationally, particularly within the global south in relation to the focal topics of the conference:

  • AI, social work, and indigenous knowledge
  • Ethics and epistemic and social justice
  • Service user-focused equity, diversity, and inclusion
  • Social work education
  • Cultural humility and culturally responsive practice
  • Community-based research

Submissions may be made in form of original manuscripts, brief notes, voices from the field or letters to the editor, and should be received by April 15, 2026. All submissions should be made via the journal’s OJS website at https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/tsw/submission/wizard

The proposed special issue will be guest edited by Dr. Katherine Maurer, Research Chair, Systems Transformation and Family Justice, Centre for Transformation and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, Email: katherine.maurer@mcgill.ca; Dr. Lea Tufford, Professor in the School of Social Work, Laurentian University, Email: ltufford@laurentian.ca; and Dr. Nicole Ives, Professor in the School of Social Work, McGill University, Email: nicole.ives@mcgill.ca.