Trust and Extremism: Call for Chapters for an Interdisciplinary Edited Collection with UBC Press [Abstracts by 31 August 2026]

It might seem obvious that there is a relationship between lower levels of social and political trust and higher levels of extremism. The co-editors argue that there is nonetheless a surprising gap at the intersection of these two areas of research. Trust and Extremism is an inter and multi disciplinary edited collection, under advance contract with UBC Press, that sets out to fill that gap.

The volume brings scholars from anthropology, philosophy, political science, religion, criminology, and far-right and terrorism studies into conversation about the empirical and theoretical connections between trust and extremism. Most of the collection is already assembled; this call is for up to three further chapters that explicitly address both trust and extremism.

UBC Press is the scholarly publishing division of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It publishes academic books across law and legal studies, political science and governance, Indigenous studies, Canadian history and social policy, international relations, and refugee and migration studies, and its manuscripts pass through the Press's publications board and approval process. Publication here is a university press book chapter, not a paid or author-funded volume.

• Susan Dieleman, Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership and Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge. She has held the inaugural Jarislowsky Chair since July 2023 and works on pragmatism, feminist philosophy and epistemic injustice, and deliberative democracy.
• Amy Mack, University of Lethbridge, listed in the University's directory under the Faculty of Fine Arts, New Media department.

Both co-editors are listed on the University of Lethbridge staff directory at the email addresses given in the call, which is the check worth running before sending any manuscript to an edited volume.

Chapters may take up any of the following sorts of questions:

• What is dis/trust and how does it inform extremist movements?
• How do extremist movements leverage or weaponize dis/trust?
• How do social identities inform dis/trust of political and legal institutions?
• What is the interrelationship between dis/trust and the rise of extremism, radicalism, populism, fundamentalism, and violence?
• How do political and social actors respond to issues of dis/trust within or beyond democratic institutions?

Two of the volume's stated strands sit squarely in legal scholarship. The call asks directly how social identities inform distrust of political and legal institutions, and it names criminology and terrorism studies among the disciplines in the conversation. Work on institutional legitimacy, policing and public confidence, hate speech regulation, counter-terrorism law, or the legal treatment of radicalisation is within scope so long as the chapter engages trust and extremism together rather than one of them alone.

The call is open to scholars and researchers across the disciplines named above. It sets no restriction on the contributor's country, nationality or institution, so researchers based in India can submit on the same terms as anyone else. The single substantive requirement stated is that the chapter explicitly address both trust and extremism.

Only up to three chapter slots remain in the collection, so the call is competitive rather than open-ended.

• Submit an extended abstract of approximately 1,000 words.
• Send it as an attachment in DOC or PDF format. Text pasted into the body of an email is not what the call asks for.
• Email the abstract to both co-editors, at susan.dieleman@uleth.ca and ac.mack@uleth.ca.
• Use Submission – Trust & Extremism as the subject line.
• Contributors whose abstracts are accepted submit a complete first draft of approximately 7,000 words.

The call states no submission fee, no reading charge and no publication charge at any stage. Nothing in it asks a contributor to pay to be considered or to be published.

There is no form and no portal. Email the 1,000 word extended abstract as a DOC or PDF attachment to susan.dieleman@uleth.ca and ac.mack@uleth.ca together, under the subject line Submission – Trust & Extremism, on or before 31 August 2026. Decisions are announced on 14 September 2026.