Expanding Agency in Design 

field: Vol 12

Editors: Andrew Belfield, Hester Buck, Liam Healy, Beatrice De Carli

Agency is a multifaceted concept, understood as the capability to ‘make a difference’, which is governed by structural conditions and contextual factors.[1] In architecture, agency has been theorised as the collective capacity to act with and on behalf of others, a socially engaged spatial practice with the capacity to empower people towards socio-ecological justice.[2] Agency is not simply a human condition, expanding it to encompass the ‘more than human’, recognises how plants, animals, microbes, and other material actants affect change on one another, and are shaped through their interdependence with structural conditions.[3] Equally, we recognise that there is no singular definition of the term, ‘agency’ is situated and context-specific, ‘pluriversal’ framing recognises the co-existence of multiple worlds with ‘dignity and peace’ and therefore there are many intertwined agencies and understandings.[4] If we expand our understanding of agency to encompass a more plural ‘others’, what does this mean for design and socio-ecological justice in built and natural environments? 

This special issue seeks to expand and deepen the theorisation and practice of design and its intersection with multiple ‘other’ agencies. It aims to respond to the urgency of climate breakdown, social and epistemic injustice, and dominant extractive structures - by expanding our ‘articulation of the human world’ to include a more plural interpretation of designing with others.[5] We see design as integral to how human and more-than-human intersect: through the production of built environments, impacting vulnerable/minoritised communities and natural habitats, or in kin-ship with each other and other species.  

Design can never be neutral, it can limit and constrain the ability to act (intentionally and unintentionally). It mediates different forms of agency during the design process, and through its outputs. This mediation requires skills, capabilities, and structures that enable plurality of voice and ensure meaningful participation, of people, and non-human actants. This brings unavoidable complexity, messy entanglements, and the negotiation of contradictions and disagreements; this requires skill, care, and methods that enable positive outcomes. 

For this field journal special issue, we invite submissions that seek to expand the notion of agency in design. We welcome a range of contributions including reflections on design practice and design-research, historical/critical/ perspectives and theoretical contributions that address two main tracks :

1. More than human agency and entanglement: Papers which unpack and explore multi-species and/or more than human agency and their interrelation with design. In particular how design(ers) are creating nature-culture entanglements, de-centreing the human, and enhancing ecological justice and planetary wellbeing.
2. Situated and plural agency: Papers which foreground underrepresented voices and pluriversal understandings of agency from situated contexts, in particular with emphasis on the role of design in the formation of collective and civic agency towards socio-spatial justice. We would particularly like to expand our understanding of agency from global majority perspectives and overlooked contexts.

We welcome cross disciplinary submissions from the intersection of design with built and natural environments (including but not limited to: design-research, service design, spatial planning, policy design, participatory design, multi-species anthropology, ecology and many other disciplines). We encourage activist and practitioner submissions that may take alternative formats rather than peer review journal articles e.g. dialogues, auto-ethnographic reflections, critical positions. etc

Process

Call for Paper proposals by 22 April 2026. Proposals will be submitted for editorial selection review. 

Proposal to consist of:

a 100-word author bio(s)

300-word abstract, including key references and to identify which paper track they are responding to.

Notification of selected paper proposals on 13 May 2026.

Selected authors will be invited to share work-in-progress papers in a collaborative half-day, developmental workshop (online). This session is designed to provide constructive peer feedback and interdisciplinary input on early-stage drafts (approx 2-3000 words), prior to formal submission. Dates TBA (July 2026)

Full paper submission by 04 October 2026

Double blind-peer review for academic journal articles, editorial feedback between November and December 2026.

January-March 2027 - Paper revision and editorial.

Intended publication in May 2027.

Questions by email to andrew.belfield@sheffield.ac.uk 

Please upload your submission using the 'Start Submission' option above.

[1] Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge, England ; Polity Press.

[2] The University of Sheffield has been at the forefront of research on agency within architecture. In 2008, the then School of Architecture (now School of Architecture and Landscape, SAL), hosted the international  Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) 'Agency' conference which led to significant publications in the field of architecture, including:  Kossak, Florian, Doina Petrescu, Tatjana Schneider, Renata Tyszczuk, and Stephen Walker. 2010. Agency Working with Uncertain Architectures. Routledge; Awan, Nishat, Tatijana Schneider, and Jeremey Till. 2011; and Spatial Agency : Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Routledge. This call is a deepening of this existing work within the department, aiming to expand the horizons of agency in an expanded field of design and practice beyond architecture.

[3] Bennett, Jane, 2010. Vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. Duke University Press, Durham.

[4] Kothari, Ashish, et al., editors. Pluriverse : A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books, 2019.

[5] Kirksey, Eben. 2014. The Multispecies Salon. Durham: Duke University Press.