JHDC Special Issue Call for Papers:

The Anthropocene Reframed: from human impact to human agency for just and sustainable futures

Call for Papers and Further instructions for Authors

Topics:

We welcome papers that will seek to:

Assess the Anthropocene experience across different human development levels, including contemporary environmental challenges in relation to human development and the prospects for, or constraints upon reversing current negative environmental trends.

Move beyond human-nature dichotomies, which are prevalent in many social science fields, and advance towards unifying concepts that embed human development, human capabilities and agency within our planetary system, including considerations for future generations.

Explore relational approaches to human development, conceptually and empirically.

Investigate how people and societies seek to achieve positive relationships with nature, at what scale, under which conditions, and by which means/tools (for example through codifying rights of nature and future generations in law), as well as critically examining barriers to positive human-nature relationships.

Explore how diverse actors and institutions are mobilizing their agency to enable stewardship of nature in the Anthropocene, including how local and bottom-up initiatives might be scaled up.

Propose new ways of measuring human development and human agency in the Anthropocene, including assessments of positive human-nature relations at scale as well as metrics that transcend human-nature dichotomies and consider future generations.

Leverage novel technologies or assess how novel technologies may be leveraged to advance human development.

Proposed process and timeline:

• Call for Papers: Beginning of March 2025
• Abstract submission deadline: 18 May 2025
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 22 June 2025
• Tentative online workshop with authors: September 2025
• Final papers due: 19 December 2025
• First round of reviews: January–April 2026
• Second round of reviews: April–July 2026
• Third round of reviews: July–late August 2026
• Guest Editors’ introduction to the Special Issue: Second half of August 2026
• All final copies sent to production: September 2026
• Publication of the issue: November 2026