The Polis Project is open to pitches from writers across experience levels and all over the world.
We accept submissions for both our politics and culture sections, though we don’t believe in air-tight distinctions between the two. Culture, after all, is inherently political. Please pitch: culture@thepolisproject.com or politics@thepolisproject.com with “PITCH” and the topic in the subject line. We prefer that you send a pitch rather than a finished piece so we can collaboratively discuss the direction to follow.
In no more than 400 words, explain:
The story
What is it about? Why is it important? Which of our format and subject categories does it fall under? What will the story add to the existing conversation? What are your main sources?
Your background
Tell us a little about yourself: How are you qualified to write the story? Please share your previously published work along with the pitch (links will do). All contributions are paid between $100 and $400, depending on word count and reporting demands.
Here’s what we’re NOT interested in:
- Uncritical reviews
- Book excerpts
- Anything centered on identity politics
- Timely pieces that need a quick turnaround
- Bare analyses, opinions, or op-eds
- Unfortunately, we are not yet publishing fiction and poetry.
Please read our subject and format categories thoroughly before submitting pitches.
Examples of published stories are hyperlinked.
1. State Violence & Carcerality
Structural violence manifests in exclusionary politics. Specifically, we are looking for stories about policing, demolitions, surveillance architecture, custodial torture, enforced disappearances, and the weaponization of law as everyday governance. For carcerality, we are interested in global stories that explore incarceration as state logic— from creating the “forever prisoner” through legislation like the UAPA, NSA, the Patriot Act, to the criminalization of dissent, political imprisonment, and caste- and class-based punishment regimes. We are keen to engage with global border regimes (including internal borders), occupation, paramilitary rule, migration, apartheid systems, and military governance enforced through surveillance tech and coercive control. We are also looking for work on the carceral state and state violence as a tool of anti-poor repression.
2. Narrative Control
In this category, we are commissioning work exploring censorship, propaganda, disinformation, digital repression, media complicity, erasure, algorithmic suppression, and cultural capture.
3. Dissent
This category documents and analyzes movements, ideas, and people that challenge power, from street protests and boycotts to everyday strategies of refusal. This category also includes our Profiles of Dissent series. We cover social movements, protest, organising, collective action, and cultural movements, and spotlight counternarratives and resistance in cinema, literature, and other art forms.
4. Majoritarianism & Mass Violence
This category examines how supremacist ideologies, hate infrastructures, and state power converge to oppress communities, incite massacres, and create and sustain systems of apartheid. We are interested in stories that explore, for example, Hindutva, Zionism, White supremacy, Buddhist nationalism, and Sinhalese supremacism. This category also includes all forms of supremacy, religious and ethnic nationalism, hate infrastructure, massacres, and mass violence.
5. Lawfare
Stories in this category investigate how the law is instrumentalized globally to criminalize dissent, strip rights, erode due process, grant impunity, dismantle institutions, and craft judicial doctrines that legitimize racism, supremacy, and the persecution of entire communities.
6. Hyperimperialism & Technology
Hyperimperialism and technology explores who rules and how. We are looking for work that analyzes and critiques structures of control, including the media, capitalism, patriarchy, and their impact on people, land, and freedoms (including reproductive freedoms). We are also interested in technology as the new frontier of domination, from tech feudalism, extractivism, and AI to the ideological apparatuses that shape our consent and suppress dissent.
7. Climate & Ecocide
Dispossession through ecological destruction, indigenous resistance, climate authoritarianism, and corporate greenwashing. And the impact of state violence on ecosystems.
8. Mind, Memory & Trauma
We’re looking for stories on psychological warfare, trauma, memory politics, psychiatric control, and the interior lives shaped by structural violence.
Polis Format Categories
- Reviews
Rigorous analysis of films, TV shows, books, art, and theater. Rather than exploring whether something is “good” or “bad”, we want reviews with a clear and sharp angle that are rooted in the sociopolitical context of the work.
- Cultural criticism
We are interested in cultural criticism essays that explore cultural phenomena, trends, and political themes. We are looking for strong arguments and a clear voice to anchor the story.
- Interviews
In-depth Q/A style conversations with artists, cultural figures, thinkers, and activists discussing their work, influences, process, and background. We welcome conversations across specialties and platforms, and are especially interested in spotlighting dissenting voices.
- Profiles
Profiles of relevant cultural or political figures. For our culture “Persons of Interest”, we are looking for nuanced explorations of people and their impact on society, politics, and culture. For “Profiles of Dissent”, we are interested in sensitive portraits of activists, journalists, and other people who have been incarcerated for their work.
- Reportage
Deeply researched, exclusive ground reports covering the life and politics of our times from around the world, particularly those affecting the people of the global majority (the global south), marginalized groups, and dissidents.
- Fieldnotes
Work-in-progress data collected from academic fieldwork or other long-term research engagement on the ground, and our ongoing demolitions data map.
- Personal Histories
Personal essays that illuminate key sociopolitical issues through first-person narratives. While we recognize that “the personal is political”, we are only looking for personal essays that explicitly reflect one of our subject categories, make a larger socio-political point, and include research and other sources
- Photo Essays
Reported pieces where the narrative and commentary unfold largely through photographs. We are not interested in “human interest stories” but want photo essays that clearly illustrate how social structures and modes of control affect people’s lives.
Terms and conditions
Exclusive License. When you grant to The Polis Project, Inc. (“Polis”) your work or content (together with any edits by Polis thereto that are made after reasonable consultation with you) for publication, you grant to Polis and its licensees and assignees the exclusive, worldwide, sub-licensable, transferable right and license to use, host, store, cache, reproduce, publish, display (publicly or otherwise), perform (publicly or otherwise), distribute, transmit, modify or adapt (including, without limitation, in order to conform it to the requirements of any networks, devices, services, or media through which the work is being made available) the work you created for Polis at http://www.thepolisproject.com and/or any other print or online media affiliated with Polis, as determined by Polis in its sole discretion, for a period of sixty (60) days following the date of its first publication by Polis (“Exclusive Period”). During the Exclusive Period, you agree not to publish or grant any licenses to any third party to publish the work in any media in any manner whatsoever without Polis’ prior written consent.
Non-Exclusive License. Following the Exclusive Period, after consulting with Polis, you will have the right to re-publish the work provided that Polis is accorded credit as the original publisher of the work in the main body of any such publication or article as follows: “This article was originally published in The Polis Project (link to the piece).” Notwithstanding your right to republish the work in other media following the Exclusive Period, Polis and its affiliates will continue to have the right to retain the work in their respective archives.
Original Work. You represent and warrant that the work is your original work and that nothing contained in it will infringe upon or violate any third party’s rights (including copyrights or trademark rights). You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless The Polis Project, its affiliates, licensees and designees and their respective shareholders, directors, employees, agents or representatives from any liability, damage or cost (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs) arising from any third party claim resulting from a breach of your representations and warranties herein or otherwise arising out of any submitted work.
Credit. You grant Polis the limited right to use your name and biographical information in connection with the work for the purposes of providing credit to you.
