Coastal Studies & Society
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It is our ambition that Coastal Studies and Society will be the leading hub for world research in coastal studies. The journal will be the forum for a wide-ranging cooperation between coastal humanities and social science research and other fields of human knowledge, promoting new alignments able to challenge older agendas and methodologies, and propose new ones. It will cater to a growing and vibrant area of scholarly work that is currently scattered and will find here a common place for shared encounters and synergies.
Coasts are, by definition, adjacent to large bodies of water. This has made it difficult to carve out a space for discussion of coasts as distinct from oceans, and of coastal studies as something distinct from maritime studies. We aim to coordinate and direct sustained attention to the relationship between the land and sea and society, that comprises a nature-culture hybrid territory which has appeared at the periphery of so many academic inquiries, but at the centre of too few. The new approaches to the coast are diverse, but they share an enhanced concern for the local, the adjacent, or the domestic, discriminating between the fine gradations of coastal experience. They may also approach local specificities as the basis for the travelling ideas, people, animals, plants and assets that explain the role of coasts as open global interfaces. All of these themes can be considered across disciplines, and at different temporal and spatial scales. Therefore, we will seek comparisons when possible, without assuming that all coasts should necessarily resemble each other.
We take the concept of ‘coastal’ at its broadest sense, potentially including estuaries, major rivers and inland seas, archipelagos and interstitial ecotones, as well as communities, spaces and people connected to the coast, and concepts of identity, nationhood and interconnectivity across all forms of watery borderlands. Rather than positing a single ideal ‘coast’, we will emulate the field of island studies and assume that there will be many different coasts in different contexts, shaped by human agency and by more-than-human influences, requiring multi-lens perspectives.
The editors are open to submissions from across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. We are also particularly interested in interdisciplinary collaborations that overcome customary academic and institutional barriers and stimulate dialogue and exchanges across different knowledge domains, encouraging contributions that holistically address the complex interactions of the coastal realms. While we expect to publish an eclectic range of articles with varied themes, methodologies and approaches, subject matter might include: port towns and urban cultures; built environment and urban planning; rural coasts; littoral societies; fisheries; indigenous contexts; traditional knowledge; “more than human” or animal-centered interpretations; wet ontologies; risk, vulnerability, and resilience in the anthropocene; “coastal squeeze” in the context of sea level rise and other pressures; coastal management; sustainability and conservation; structural inequalities; migration; gender and sexuality; leisure and sport.
In the spirit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we will welcome submissions that deepen our understanding of coastal pasts, but also those that confront the challenges of the coastal present, or explore possible coastal futures in an era of sea level rise and climate crisis.
| Joana Gaspar de Freitas | School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Portugal |
| Robert James | University of Portsmouth, UK |
| Isaac Land | Indiana State University, USA |
| João Alveirinho Dias | Center of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Algarve, Portugal |
| Melanie Bassett | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth, UK |
| Brad Beaven | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth UK |
| Karl Bell | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth, UK |
| Gerald Bigelow | Institute of Archaeology, University of Highlands and Islands, UK |
| Cristina Brito | Center for Humanities, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Portugal |
| Young Rae Choi | Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, USA |
| Sharika Crawford | United States Naval Academy, USA |
| Elsa Devienne | History, Northumbria University, UK |
| Hanna Hagmark-Cooper | Aland Maritime Museum, Aland Islands, Finland |
| Matthew Heaslip | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth, UK |
| Daisuke Higuchi | Literature, Kobe University, Japan |
| Poul Holm | Trinity College Dublin, Ireland |
| Tara Inniss | Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Barbados |
| David Jarratt | University of Central Lancashire, UK |
| Kirsi Keravuori | History, Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, Finland |
| Silja Klepp | Department of Geography, Kiel University, Germany |
| Julia Leikin | History, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia |
| Judy Mann-Lang | Conservation Strategist, South African Association for Marine Biological Research, Durban, South Africa |
| Steve Mentz | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. John’s University, USA |
| Jenia Mukherjee | Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India |
| Rudolph Ng | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth UK |
| Tomas Nilson | History, Halmstad University, Sweden |
| Antonio Ortega Santos | Contemporary History Department, University of Granada, Spain |
| Giacomo Parrinello | Sciences Po, Paris, France |
| Christopher Pastore | History, SUNY-Albany, USA |
| Cathryn Pearce | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth, UK |
| Helen Rozwadowski | Department of History, University of Connecticut, USA |
| Lise Sedrez | History Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Mathias Seiter | Port Towns and Urban Cultures, University of Portsmouth UK |
| Philip Steinberg | Department of Geography, Durham University, UK |
| Johnathan Thayer | Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY, USA |
| Jamin Wells | History, University of West Florida, USA |
| David Worthington | History, University of the Highlands and Islands, UK |
Manuscript submission guidelines can be accessed on Sage Journals.