Agoriad (meaning Openings in Welsh) is an online open-access journal managed and edited by postgraduates and early career researchers with oversight and support from a managing editorial team. Agoriad publishes high-quality research on key theoretical debates in Geography and related fields as well as providing a supportive publishing process for researchers at all career stages. The journal is published by Cardiff University Press and supported by the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences.
Each issue of Agoriad is organized around a theoretical topic linked to the Gregynog Theory School, which is an annual postgraduate conference hosted by the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences. The inaugural issue of the journal was published in 2024, on the theme of ‘Indigenous ontologies,’ and the second issue, on the theme of ‘Thinking with fragments,’ was published in 2025. The third issue on ‘Geographies of the good: love and hate in a polarized world’ will be published in 2026.
Call for Papers: Special issue on ‘Anti-fascist Geographies: Empathy, Community and the Joy of Living the Anti-Fascist Life’ for Agoriad: A Journal of Spatial Theory
The editorial team of Agoriad is seeking submissions to a special issue on the theme of ‘Anti-Fascist Geographies: Empathy, Community and the Joy of Living the Anti-Fascist Life’ which we plan to publish in 2027 (see full Call for Papers below). This call is open to researchers at all career stages. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduates and early career researchers.
Editors:
- Tatiana Bodnar, Swansea University;
- Jill Gettrup, Cardiff University;
- Eleri Phillips, Aberystwyth University;
- Alys Samuel-Thomas, Swansea University;
Call for Papers
In February 2026, Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance expressed messages of community, joy, and love—echoing “God Bless America” to all the countries that make up the continents of the Americas, while amplifying the sentiment that “The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love”. In the UK this growing sentiment is echoed by key messages of love, unity, and hope in the Together Alliance’s March Against the Far-Right, taking place in London this March. A cultural zeitgeist is resurging in which empathy, joy, and community form the foundations of an ethical and political movement. Situated within atmospheres saturated by nihilism, doomerism, and apathy – and amid the new age of ‘fossil fascism’(Malm, 2021) and ‘techno-fascism’ (Coeckelbergh, 2026), marked by pervasive surveillance, drones, and AI powered by black fuel— we ask: What can we learn by taking empathy, affirmation, and joy as our geographical starting points, rather than fear, hate, and destruction?
This special issue of Agoriad: A Journal of Spatial Theory invites contributions that take anti-fascism as a lens for rethinking the role of geography in confronting the totalising logics that shape contemporary life. This call for papers and creative contributions contends with the possibility that “to think antifascistically is necessarily to think geographically; to think geographically ought to be to think antifascistically” (Philo, 2025: 1). Such a framing resonates with longstanding geographical critiques of authoritarian spatialities (cf. Arendt, 1951; Harvey, 1989; Massey, 2005), along with contemporary work that foregrounds affect, atmosphere, and more‑than‑human entanglements as key registers through which authoritarianism and its counter‑politics take shape (Braidotti, 2019; Closs-Stephens, 2022; Koch, 2022; Philo, 2025; Brigstocke, 2026). Geography is nuanced, and fascism resists nuance, instead opting for binary thinking.
In announcing this call for papers, we aim to expand upon an extensive and cherished canon of work exploring the facets of fascism from other epochs: from Adorno’s (1950) ‘F-Scale’ typology of fascistic personality traits in The Authoritarian Personality to Eco’s (1995) list of the 14 common principles of Ur-Fascism, scholars, cultural critics, and artists have theorised and defined the shape-shifting essence of fascism. While Eco pointed to nationalism, the cult of death and destruction, and rampant individualism as some of the key tenets of the fascist worldview, Deleuze and Guattari argued that fascism is fuelled by the everyday ‘microfascisms’ rooted in the ‘sad passions’ of anger, fear, and resentment, promoting an affective contagion of nationalistic and machismo energy that animates and affects those feeling disenfranchised and disheartened. Meanwhile, Bishop (2022: 49) traces the relations and aesthetic of Italian participatory theatre movements and fascist political motivations, where she paraphrases Walter Benjamin’s famous quote by quipping that “fascism is precisely the political formation that allows people to participate in, and enjoy, the spectacle of their own destruction”.
Rather than be seduced by fascistic destruction, this call for papers asks what type of politics, practice, and ethics allow people to participate in, and enjoy, the spectacle of their own creation? How can geographers and spatial theorists ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway, 2016) in order to embrace the anti-fascist life? This call for papers asks us to articulate what Philo (2025) calls ‘the antifascist geographical imagination’ through a new spatial politics of affect (Thrift, 2004), a politics of location (Braidotti, 2019), and its more-than-human implications. Together, these literatures invite contributors to consider how geographic thought, anti-fascist commitments, and affective politics might be mobilised to cultivate worlds animated by care, solidarity, and joyful resistance.
We use the phrase ‘antifascist geographical imagination’ (Philo, 2025) not as a narrow political label, but as a broad analytic stance: a commitment to resisting rigid, exclusionary, and hierarchical worldviews that claim singular truths, fixed foundations, and unquestionable authority. We encourage submissions from a variety of critical scholarship exploring ontologies and epistemologies, along with feminist, post-colonial, and indigenous philosophies. We welcome papers that engage with these anti-fascist considerations through empirical, theoretical, creative, and affective modes.
Contributions may explore, but are not limited to:
- Anti-fascism and the ‘antifascist geographical imagination’ as analytic, affective, or methodological orientation.
- Geographies of empathy, repair, care, joy, hospitality, and mutual aid.
- Interrogations of the spatial politics and affects of authoritarianism, nationalism, and techno-fascism.
- Emotional, spiritual, and theological landscapes of anti-fascism and fascism.
- Phenomenological explorations of empathy, joy, and/or the relation between individual and community.
- Theoretical analysis of non-fascism, anti-fascism, anti-authoritarianism, etc.
- The politics of place, scale, and relationality in resisting totalising logics.
- Creative, affirmative, and experimental engagements and ethos embedding anti-fascist ways of being.
- Critical cartographies of resistance within the anti-fascist imaginary.
We welcome submissions from Geography and cognate disciplines that explore how the ideas, concepts, and world understandings of fascism and anti-fascism open up complex conversations about love, hate, nationalism, politics, religion, and more. This issue will deepen our understanding of anti-fascism and its plural spatial arrangements.
Submissions can take the form of research articles (up to 10,000 words), short articles (up to 4,000 words), and creative contributions (up to 4,000 words). At this stage, we are happy to receive informal expressions of interest or indicative titles and abstracts for papers. This call is open to researchers at all career stages – we particularly encourage submissions from postgraduates and early career researchers. We are keen to support authors in their journey from initial submission through to final publication.
If you are interested in submitting an article or creative contribution to the issue, or have any questions or queries about this opportunity, then please contact the editorial team (agoriad@cardiff.ac.uk) in adequate time for us to respond to you before the deadline for expressions of interest.
Expression of Interest deadline: Friday, 1st May 2026
Submission deadline: Monday, 7th September 2026
Submission details: https://agoriad.cardiffuniversitypress.org/about/submissions
Agoriad: A Journal of Spatial Theory
Webinar – 22 November 2023