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
Policing Desire and Governing Death: The Necropolitics of Sex Work in India
Author: Saptadha
Affiliation: London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract:
This paper examines how the Indian state enacts gendered necropolitics through the criminalisation of sex work, focusing on the solicitation provisions of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA). The central argument is that the state produces ‘death worlds’, which are zones of legal, spatial, and economic abandonment, by designating sex workers as victims in law while simultaneously criminalising their survival strategies...
Keywords: sex-work, necropolitics, criminalisation, decolonial feminism, ITPA, agency, carceral state
Students With ADHD And Their Connection To Dogs
Author: Abigail Richman
Affiliation: Cambridge Centre for International Research
Abstract:
There has been limited research on how to best support students with ADHD academically, socially, and psychologically through animal-assisted interventions (AAIs). This study explores how AAIs may serve as a supplemental therapy for individuals with ADHD, whether or not they take medication...
Keywords: component, formatting, style, styling, insert
Beyond Access: Rethinking US Immigrant Policy through Selectivity and Support
Authors: Carolina M. Florez, Dr. Changwok Ju
Affiliation: Montrose School
Abstract:
This paper examines the hypothesis that selective immigration policies, when combined with institutional support, lead to better immigrant integration and success than broadly inclusive, less selective approaches. While most of the existing literature emphasizes legal access as the key to immigrant integration, this study distinguishes between access and actual integration...
Keywords: Immigration policy, immigrant integration, policy selectivity, institutional support, naturalization, labor market outcomes, state-level governance, public policy analysis
Inequality in the Arts: How Race, Gender, and Location Shape Representation
Author: Anna Feng
Affiliation: St. Margaret’s Episcopal High School
Abstract:
Occupational discrimination and inequality have shaped the arts industry and its workers, disproportionately affecting certain minority groups. An analysis of the art industry’s workforce—categorized by race, gender, and county location across each decade from 1980 and 2000—shows that overrepresentation of white Americans has declined, while Black Americans and Hispanics remain underrepresented...
Keywords: Arts, Occupation, Inequality, Gender, Race
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.