Bridging Horizons
innovation, Identity and Global Futures
Volume 1, Issue 3 — March 2026
Published July 2026
ISSN: 3069-8200
The Princeton Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (PJIR) proudly presents Volume 1, Issue 3 (2025), Bridging Horizons: Innovation, Identity, and Global Futures — the third installment of our inaugural publishing year.
Building upon the foundations of Voices in Convergence and Frontiers of Inquiry, this issue deepens PJIR’s commitment to rigorous, cross-disciplinary scholarship that confronts both emerging and enduring global questions. The research featured in this edition traverses scientific innovation and technological transformation; re-examinations of social, cultural, and political identities; ethical dimensions of public policy and governance; and evolving intersections between health, economics, and global development.
Two Best Paper selections exemplify this breadth: "Deepfakes On Trial: A Mixed-Methods Study of Student Perceptions and Regulatory Concerns about Non-Consensual Deepfakes at the London School of Economics and Political Science," which interrogates the ethical and regulatory implications of emerging synthetic media technologies. Meanwhile, "Interpretable Transfer Learning with EfficientNetB0 for Automated Detection of Rare Anemia Morphologies in Peripheral Blood Smears" demonstrates how advances in machine learning and biomedical imaging can be translated into clinically meaningful diagnostic tools, highlighting the growing convergence of computational innovation and medical practice.
Alongside the two Best Paper selections, this volume features contributions addressing religion and social meaning, structural inequality, developments in the life sciences, and more. We hope these studies encourage readers to draw connections across fields and to approach complex contemporary questions with intellectual openness.
All accepted articles are published online under ISSN 3069-8200.
Editor’s Note
Serious scholarship often begins with a single, well-defined question. Yet the moment we follow that question far enough, we find it rarely stays in one place. Questions about attention become questions about education and equity. Questions about algorithms become questions about trust and accountability. Questions about biological systems quickly intersect with questions about human experience. This issue brings together work that reflects precisely this movement across boundaries.
In this volume, we are proud to feature research on ADHD, the effects of racial bias in dermatology datasets on convolutional neural networks, the emerging legal terrain of deepfakes, sustainable building materials, structural inequality, developments in the life sciences, and more. The issue also includes work engaging questions of religion and belief, examining gender and social identity, and exploring problems in linguistics, and more.
We celebrate interdisciplinary scholarship not as a slogan, but as a practice. The work collected here demonstrates careful technical reasoning alongside ethical awareness and social sensitivity. It shows that strong research does not dilute disciplinary rigor; rather, it is often strengthened when scholars remain attentive to the wider implications of their methods and findings.
PJIR Editorial Team
Articles in This Issue
Is the Gut Microbiome the Answer to All Our Problems? Critical Review
Author: Rishi Vijay
Affiliation: Cambridge Centre for International Research
Abstract:
This paper is a review of the bidirectional relationship between the gut microbiome and neurological diseases, focusing on Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Huntington’s disease (HD), and the impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI), cerebral palsy (CP), and stroke on gut microbiota...
Keywords: Neuroscience, Gut Microbiome, Gut-Brain Axis, Neurological Diseases
Negotiating Discipline: A Foucauldian Analysis of Narrative Strategies in High-Performance Sports
Author: Lilliana Qian
Affiliation: The Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University
Abstract:
This paper explores the narratives that shape the identity and well-being of high-performance athletes. It examines the desirability of alternative narratives (the growth narrative, the relational narrative, and the restitution narrative) over the performance narrative by situating existing narrative research in sports psychology within Foucault’s framework of disciplinary power...
Keywords: narratives, sports, high-performance athletes, disciplinary power, docile bodies
A Pirate’s Life for Me: Maritime Folkloric Practices as Religious Syncretism during the Golden Age of Piracy
Author: Narcissa K. Thomas
Affiliation: Honors Transfer Program, Citrus College
Abstract:
Historians and anthropologists analyze the accounts of folkloric practices in seafarers’ diaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a way to understand the prevailing cultural practices at sea. During this time period, historians note a political dichotomy between Christian and Muslim ships and crews as well as accounts from sailors of religiously mixed crews...
Keywords: Religious Syncretism, Seafaring, Folklore, 17th Century, Spiritscape
Efficacy and Safety of Anifrolumab in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE): A Systematic Review of PubMed Literature
Author: Vaanya Gupta
Affiliation: University of Leeds
Abstract:
Systemic lupus erythematosus is a heterogeneous autoimmune disease characterized by loss of immune tolerance, widespread inflammation, and multiorgan damage. Despite advances in treatment, many patients remain restricted to standard therapies. Type I interferon signaling has been identified as a key factor leading to the development of more targeted therapy...
Keywords: Anifrolumab, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), Type I interferon, interferon signaling, multiorgan damage, autoimmune disease
Citation for This Issue
Princeton Journal of Interdisciplinary Research. (2026). Volume 1, Issue 3 — Bridging Horizons. PJIR.
https://www.princeton-press.com/pjir/issues/vol-1-issue-3
Open Access Statement
This journal is fully open access. All articles are freely available to read, download, and share without subscription or access barriers. We encourage scholars to cite and engage with the research published here, as such scholarly exchange plays an important role in supporting emerging and early-career researchers and advancing ongoing academic conversations.