New Frontiers (Environmental Change and Human Experience for Oxford Intersections)

Kemp, Sandra and Endfield, Georgina and Holm, Poul, eds. (2025) New Frontiers (Environmental Change and Human Experience for Oxford Intersections). Oxford University Press. (Submitted)

Abstract

This editorial project commissions original research articles and outputs for a section of the new online and interdisciplinary publishing programme Oxford Intersections (OUP). New Frontiers is part of the Intersection Environmental Change and Human Experience which examines human-environmental relationships throughout history. It draws on research from across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities Within this, I am the editor of a new interdisciplinary sub-section, New Frontiers. This section will examine how humanity’s systematic transformation of both society and the environment has led to emerging frontiers in these relations, re-evaluating humanity’s place in the biosphere, and recalibrating perspectives. As a starting point for commissioning articles on radical shifts in socio-ecological consciousness and the emergence of alternative ontologies, ‘New Frontiers’ is subdivided as follows, broadly within three areas: (1) Rewilding: present day initiatives, including alternative social, political, ecological, economic and cultural approaches to the climate crisis, the impact of industrialisation and the recovery of the natural world. (2) Transitioning: transitional spaces, including movement, migration, adaptation, sparsely populated and uninhabited lands; protection and utilisation of the Arctic and Antarctic, deserts and rainforests, and governance challenges to globally important ecosystems. 3) Uncharted: intersections between future humanity and future spaces and human/environmental resilience and vulnerability, including new urban environments and space expansionism; geo-engineering and biofabrication; cyborgs, ‘extremophiles’ and post-humanism in changing environments. Contributors will consider their chosen topic across these three thematic areas through the lens of environmental futures, and to reflect upon how approaches and methods may advance new directions within this field through alternative social, scientific, cultural and economic paradigms and spatial imaginaries.