Omran is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. It is registered under print ISSN 2305-2473 and electronic ISSN 2789-3286. Its first issue was published in the summer of 2012. Omran is overseen by a specialized academic editorial board, supported by an active international advisory board. The journal adheres to an open access policy, stemming from a commitment to make academic knowledge available to all and to facilitate its dissemination. It also abides by a Charter of Publishing Ethics consistent with the international standards followed by other peer-reviewed academic journals, as well as Publication Standards that regulate its evaluation and peer review procedures. It has a dedicated policy on the use of Artificial Intelligence in academic research, ensuring that these tools are used responsibly, transparently, and with academic integrity.
The journal focuses on sociology and anthropology. Its name is inspired by medieval Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldoun’s concept of ilm al Omran, reflecting its enduring legacy and continually renewing influence. The idea for the journal emerged from a set of questions and challenges reflecting a methodological impasse in the Arab social sciences and their role amid ongoing social transformations in the Arab world. With this vision, it joined the ranks of social science and humanities journals around the world, seeking to establish itself as part of a tradition of that has shaped academic and intellectual currents, movements, and schools of thought. It aspires to represent a qualitative leap by approaching the social sciences as an integrated whole, advancing “integrative” perspective that transcends disciplines in pursuit of their ultimate aim: freedom – the essence of thought and, in turn, humanity.
Aims and Scope
Omran is dedicated to the production, dissemination, circulation, and advancement of specialized knowledge in the fields of sociology and anthropology within a scholarly framework that considers the breadth of both disciplines, their many subfields, and their interdisciplinary intersections. Its scope encompasses topics in economic and political sociology, the sociology of culture and knowledge, family, rural and urban life, environment, education, and youth, as well as the sociology of literature, arts, languages, religions, work, development, health, communication, media, law, institutions, and organizations. It also covers subjects related to social classes, categories, structures, social categories, inequalities, social movements, migration, social work, and social demography. The journal’s scope also extends to the theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and historical issues in sociology, alongside topics in social, economic, cultural and political anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, sociography, and related studies on education, health, art, the family, religion, the environment, language, social systems, structures, and expressive practices.
The journal’s scholarly approach emphasizes the principle of interdisciplinarity as a vital conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework for understanding social, cultural, and human phenomena in their totality and in their historical and contemporary complexity. Accordingly, the journal welcomes original studies that draw on innovative field research, renewed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies, approaches with solid conceptual and theoretical foundations, and innovative interdisciplinary and comparative analytical methods. It also publishes research that helps broaden the horizons of academic debate in the fields of sociology and anthropology, developing related theoretical and practical tools, and exploring issues common to them and to adjacent fields of knowledge, including, but not limited to:
- Protest, collective action, and social movements.
- Social inequalities, classes, categories, and marginalization.
- Social justice; issues of liberation and equity.
- Violence, vulnerability, conflict, and restoring social cohesion.
- Work, employment, the informal economy, and livelihoods.
- The environment, natural resources, and society.
- Urban and spatial studies; spatial and social transformations.
- Population, demography, and family transformations.
- Health, illness, and care systems in various social and cultural contexts.
- Gender, sexuality, the body, and identity.
- Religion, religiosity, symbolic practices, and value shifts.
- Local knowledge and experience, and the production of meaning in social life.
- Migration, asylum, and cross-border human mobility.
- Language, discourse, and expressive practices.
- Education, schooling, and institutions of socialization.
- Childhood, youth, and generational shifts.
- Digital technologies, social transformation, and everyday life.
- Artificial Intelligence and the resulting social and cultural transformations.
- Science, technology, and society.
- Crime, delinquency, and social control.
- Theoretical, conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues in the social sciences.
