Events and Activities

Each year, the Martial Arts Studies Association holds or participates in a number of events across the UK and internationally.

3 Jan 2025

Special Issue Call for Papers: Theoretical and Conceptual Development in and through Martial Arts Studies

As the field of martial arts studies continues to grow and mature, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks informing its constitutive work must evolve to keep pace with the changing landscape of the knowledge it creates. To date, many key efforts in the field have drawn on and applied existing academic ideas to the subject matter of martial arts. However, constructing original models and perspectives, purpose-made for analysing our object of study, may hold great potential for developing the field in its own right and on its own terms. Such work might demonstrate not only that ‘martial arts’ can be most fruitfully explored within the specific field of ‘martial arts studies’, rather than other disciplines and fields, but also that such dedicated study can create concepts and paradigms which may enrich other fields besides.

As such, this special issue of Martial Arts Studies asks: what specific theoretical developments can the field of martial arts studies produce? It invites papers that engage with new theories developed in the field, from novel adaptations of existing theoretical frameworks to the construction of entirely new perspectives and approaches. Articles that report on empirical research, literature reviewing, and/or theoretical argument are also invited, provided that they address the core question of the development of new conceptual ideas from/within martial arts studies, and not simply the application of existing models to the study of martial arts.

Full article submission is due by 30th April 2025. We expect to publish this special issue as either our autumn/winter issue for 2025, or spring/summer issue for 2026.

Submissions will be treated as normal ‘research articles’ as per submission instructions found on the MASJ website (https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/about/submissions). They should be no longer than 8,000 words inclusive of references and be formatted using APA 7th edition style guidelines.

To enquire or register interest please email Alex Channon (a.channon@brighton.ac.uk). See more details here.

1 Jan 2025

We have grown and moved!

The Martial Arts Studies Research Network has grown and moved! For the Martial Arts Studies Association, please visit our new website at: www.martialartsstudies.org

The old website can be accessed here.

6 November 2024

The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence: A one-day symposium of current research (Cardiff University, School of Journalism, Media & Culture)

What are the ethics and ideologies of self-defence? Self-defence has a variety of legal and ideological cultural histories, shapes and forms (Bowman, 2023; Dodsworth, 2015). Scholars have shown that, in different countries, at different times, the right to self-defence has been heavily allocated to certain subjects (e.g., white, propertied, male) and withheld from others (Light, 2017). Others have shown the extent to which women’s self-defence was a significant element of the first wave of the feminist movement in the UK (Dodsworth, 2019; Godfrey, 2012), and argued that learning how to fight and be aggressive may be an enabling and potentially emancipatory element of physical feminism (McCaughey, 1997).

But, as philosopher Elsa Dorlin asks (Dorlin, 2022), is self-defence ethical? Is teaching self-defence ethical, and who can or should teach whom? What should be taught, to whom, and based on what qualifications? Where does self-defence begin and end? Where does the ‘self’ to be defended start and end, and what are the limits of ‘defence’ – the body, the mind, clothing, technology, architecture, or the physical management of space? Ultimately, as philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has argued, almost everything that humans have done to ward off one or another kind of threat might be viewed as self-defence (Sloterdijk, 2013).

This symposium starts from the most conventional understanding of ‘self-defence’: as learned, taught and practised interpersonal, face-to-face, body-to-body skills, training, techniques, tactics, strategies, rationales, outlooks and ideologies. See more details here.

See more previous events and activities here.