Submission Guidelines

Practical Theology Hub publishes short essays for a popular audience on inter-disciplinary theological reflection and research on religious practice, experience and learning; therapy; chaplaincy; and public life. Whilst we accept essays pertaining to all aspects of practical theology and from authors from all faith backgrounds, we are particularly interested in encouraging potential authors to submit essays that are experiential and encourage discussion both within and across different traditions. Below you can find some general instructions for submitting your essay.

  1. Submissions can be made by email to the editorial team at editor[at]biapt.org.
  2. Essays will typically be between 500 and 2,000 words in length and can be written by a single or multiple authors. We may also be willing to accept essays that fall outside of this word limit as standalone pieces (in the case that they are less than 500 words in length) or as serialized essays (in the case that they are over 2,000 words in length). Those wanting to contribute an essay outside of our recommended word limit should contact the editorial team.
  3. Practical Theology Hub caters to a popular audience and therefore we recommend that authors limit their use of specialized terms and jargon. We also encourage authors to adopt a relatively informal writing style.
  4. Links to other materials, sites, or resources should be used freely.
  5. Authors may use images and figures within their essays. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that they have the relevant permissions to reprint the images or figures in Practical Theology Hub. This will mean that the image was either taken by the author or that it has a Creative Commons license. The author should note the license types (see Creative Commons for more information) beneath each image or figure. Resources such as CC Search may be good places to locate potential images.
  6. Authors should provide one image to appear at the head of their essay following the rules outlined in Point 5 of this document.
  7. Authors should provide a short (one to two line) summary or description of their essay.
  8. Authors should include a short, third-person biography with any links to current projects, social media etc. that they would like to promote.
  9. Authors will retain the copyright of their essays, which will be licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
  10. For most contributions references will not be necessary, however, we understand that in some cases authors may need to reference the work of others (for instance, when quoting). Please give references in footnotes and adopt the following style:

Books:

  • The name of the author, the title of the work (the publisher, year of publication),relevant page numbers.
  • Eric Stoddart, The Common Gaze: Surveillance and the Common Good (SCMPress, 2021), 1-3.

Journal Articles:

  • The name of the author, “the title of the work,” title of the journal, volume, number (year of publication): relevant page numbers.
  • Nigel Rooms, “English and Christian? Negotiating Christian Cultural Identity through Imaginative Theological Pedagogy,” Practical Theology, vol. 3, no. 1 (2010): 69-80.

Online Material:

  • The name of the author (if available), “the title of the online material (including a hyperlink),” title of website (date of publication).
  • Ian Bradely, “The musical is the message,” The Guardian (09/10/2004).

If you have any questions about the submission process and guidelines for Practical Theology Hub, please email the editorial team at editor[at]biapt.org.