Deadline: March 31
Contact: Allie Wist, PhD Student, Rensselaer Polytechnic; Part-Time Faculty, New York University
Email: wista@rpi.edu
Phone: 7247135997
World Futures Review – Special Issue
Title: Environmental Futures – advancing images of mutual human-nature relationships
March 31, 2024: Abstract submission (300-500 words) deadline
Call for papers:
Environmental futures describe how we envision the state of so-called nature and our human relationship with it in the future, including how “nature” or “natural” might be produced differently, and via what imaginaries. Their forms of expression may encompass, but not be limited to: data and GIS-based modeling (climate forecasts, ecosystem scenarios: see Alcamo, 2008); design-based futures (speculative design, design fiction); narrative/story-based approaches (climate fiction, solar punk); art-based approaches (speculative artifacts, soundscapes and sonic experimentation, performative futures); mixed-method, mixed-media approaches (games and world-building, sensory and immersive approaches). Prominent project examples enclose the IPCC Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, the IPBES Nature Futures Framework, SUPERFLUX, Burton Nitta, The Institute for Postnatural Studies, or the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes initiative.
The futures studies and foresight community has acknowledged environmental changes as major drivers of future-related events and developments in the Anthropocene (Slaughter, 2020). Consequently, environmental futures have been introduced to futures studies literature by conceptual papers (Kuosa, 2011; Granjou et al., 2017), theoretical reflections (Weh et al., 2023) and specific case studies (Berg et al., 2016). In recent years, futures studies methodology has been combined with environmental and socioecological research as well as art-as-research methodologies and speculative design to reach beyond the limitations of traditional Western approaches to assessing ecological change (which have the potential to reproduce the colonial, hegemonic, and capitalist worldviews which have exacerbated ecological demise in the first place).
While current epistemological traditions prioritize forms of Western academic knowledge production, ecological relationships and shifting environmental realities are inviting novel, alternative forms of inquiry e.g. in the fields of art and design. Creative methodologies for critical speculative work have earned tenacity in recent years for their attendance to alternative forms of knowledge-production—crucial for imagining just and alternative more-than-human worlds. These include non-Western and decolonial approaches, methodologies prioritizing sensory and embodied knowledge, and aesthetic or narrative forms. In light of the urgency and profundity of challenges presented by the Anthropocene, environmental futures are increasingly explored through research-creation, design research and science-art approaches (Bentz et al., 2022; Rogers, 2016; Springgay & Truman, 2018).
With signs of these communities converging (Cork et al., 2023; Moore & Milkoreit, 2020; Wyborn et al., 2020), this special issue explores further alignment, intersections and potential collaboration spaces between futures studies, artistic research, and environmental, climate and sustainability research. Contributions may reflect about novel ways of imagining, creating and communicating images of environmental futures. Beyond established practices, resulting project interventions may include non-Western ways of knowing as in Indigenous research, non-human, more-than-human or multi-species futures.
Aims of this special issue:
– promote and establish environmental futures further as a subfield of futures studies with strong multi-stakeholder and transdisciplinary applicability.
– further connect the futures field with environmental research, sustainability sciences, Posthumanist and postnatural studies, multispecies ecologies, STS, ecosocial design, art-as-research, and other related fields and disciplines.
– showcase the scope and diversity of environmental futures approaches in ways of knowing (epistemologies), methodical approaches (methodologies), procedural knowledge (frameworks, good practices / established research processes, alternative approaches) and results (ontologies).
– link these approaches to established knowledge bases and methods in futures studies and invite their revision, expansion and advancement.
– discuss futures studies as platform to link natural and social scientific assessment with arts- and design-based/speculative creation and experiential enactment of environmental futures.
– reflect on good practices, successful project implementations and case studies, decolonial and queer frameworks, grassroots / experimental approaches.
– weigh open, explorative approaches against normative, value-based and action-oriented approaches: under which circumstances should researchers take a critical position / active political stance when creating environmental futures?
– highlight aspects of relationality, reciprocity, responsibility and care in practicing environmental futures, e.g. in participatory or transformative research settings.
Accepted formats:
To account for the wide spectrum of disciplinary and methodical approaches to environmental futures, this special issue invites a variety of written formats with sufficient argumentative quality and scientific substantiation within their disciplinary contexts and respective forms, including but not limited to:
– reviews
– concept papers
– essays/opinionates and position papers
– frameworks and conceptual study designs
– study reports of ongoing research projects
– science-art, design-based and other mixed-method or multimedia project texts
– exhibit/performance catalogs and documentations
– descriptions of co-creative/participatory/transformative interventions
– perspectives and reflection papers
We welcome diverse, innovative, thought-provoking contributions to further establish, discuss and advance the environmental futures approach as nexus between the futures/foresight and related research and practice communities.
Guest Editors:
Ludwig Weh
Fraunhofer IMW Center for International Management and Knowledge Economics
Allie E.S. Wist
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Prof. Bethany Wiggin
University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Kasper Kok
Wageningen University
Dr. Manjana Milkoreit
University of Oslo
Accepted submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed.
All submissions must be submitted via Manuscript Central at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wfr
World Futures Review uses the Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date Style)* regarding orthography and word usage.
Posted on February 29, 2024
