Neue Kulturgeographie XX, 30th September – 2nd October 2025 in Augsburg
Call for submissions NKG 2025 in Augsburg: For further informations read the text below.
Speculative Geographies of the New Climate Regime
Conference announcement
Background
In recent years, speculative thinking – generally understood as systematic reflection on fundamental questions of human existence (e.g. knowledge) and the nature of things (e.g. reality) – has experienced a renaissance and developed into a dazzling field of academic debate across large parts of the social sciences and humanities. Whether in the form of ’speculative realism‘ (Bryant et al. 2011), ’speculative pragmatism‘ (Stengers 2011), ’speculative empiricism‘ (Debaise 2017) or ’speculative research‘ (Wilkie et al. 2017), all these interventions share the aim of creating space for alternative futures by emphasizing the principles of contingency over necessity, novelty over stability, symmetry over anthropocentrism, and plural rather than complete forms of knowledge (Williams & Keating 2022).
At the “Neue Kulturgeographie” (NKG) conference, held at the University of Augsburg from 30th September to 2nd October, 2025, we aim to collaboratively explore what this new speculative thinking might mean for geography. In light of the New Climate Regime (Latour 2018), but also due to the progressive breaching of the human-machine divide through AI and the global rise of undemocratic structures, we want to further ask how speculative thinking could better equip us to confront these developments.
We invite contributions from all disciplines to engage with these questions. To foster a structured discussion, the conference theme is grouped into three thematic categories: Ontologies, Epistemologies, and Geographies.
Ontologies
In geography it has long been commonplace to focus attention on discourses, practices, and materialities. In the face of the looming planetary crisis (cf. NKG 2024), however, a new group of thinkers have expressed their doubts on the question of whether such ‚abstractions‘ (Williams & Keating 2022) equip us well enough to counter its consequences. In response to the New Climate Regime (Latour 2018), this group of thinkers has come up with a meanwhile highly diverse set of writings that turn once more toward reality itself. With the notion of speculative philosophy, they argue against “the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other” (Meillassoux 2008: 5). In this context, the first block of sessions will focus on the ontologies underlying new speculative thinking. The focus of interest is on the speculative pragmatism of Isabelle Stengers (2011) and Didier Bebaise (2017), the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman (2018) and Timothy Morton (2013), as well as other varieties of speculative realism formulated by authors like Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Maurizio Ferraris and others. The aim is to critically examine the logic and argumentation of these thinkers and to reflect on what they imply for central notions of geography such as “space”, “nature” and “society”.
Epistemologies
The second block of sessions takes up many of the lessons from recent research on ‚futures‘ (Jasanoff & Kim 2015, Beckert 2016), but at the same time departs from them in a fundamental sense. While such studies are concerned with the imaginaries at play in shaping societal developments, they view futures as yet another empirical object of investigation. Speculative methods, in contrast, are used to explore possible futures through creative experimentation in the context of actual empirical research. The key question is “What if?”, and storytelling, as Donna Haraway (2016) has made clear, plays a crucial role in co-creating worlds in the research process itself, which are only fragile possibilities from the outset. Queer theory and speculative fiction are important allies of this experimental practice (Turnbull et al. 2022), which can be realized through art-based methods such as photo-response fabulation (Willemin & Backhaus 2021), comics (Aalders et al. 2020), serious games (Flood et al. 2018), and many more (Rusca et al. 2024). The aim of this block is to present speculative methods and to debate about strengths and limitations in their attempt to realize an “empiricism for which each experience, both human and other-than-human, simultaneously constitutes a perspective of the world while operating as a novel component of a world that transcends it” (Wilkie et al. 2017: 10).
Geographies
The third block of sessions provides space for the presentation of specific case studies that focus either on a critique of hegemonic techniques of future-making such as forecasting and risk management as probabilistic measures and non-speculative factors in the constitution of the yet-to-come, or on speculative thinking and experimental methods as deployed in specific empirical contexts. While the first strand of contributions might seek to extend current studies on the entanglements of financialization and digitalization in speculative urbanism (Leitner & Sheppard 2023, Leszczynski 2016, Wilkie et al. 2015), the second strand of contributions might emphasize the role of speculative data (Bergmann 2016), speculative heterotopias (Cotsaftis 2022), postqualitative geographies (Boyd 2022), and speculative political ecologies (Harris & Santos 2023). Yet, many more topics are conceivable. The aim of this block is to discuss specific case studies in their respective situatedness and to reflect on the role of such studies for the academic field of geography.
Call for Contributions
We are looking forward to submissions and contributions that reflect the main theme of the conference conceptually, methodologically and/or empirically. Submissions from the broader field of cultural geography that do not directly address the central theme are also welcome and will be included in a dedicated fourth block of sessions.
Proposals for sessions (90 minutes) should consist of three to four presentations or explore alternative formats such as plenary discussions, fishbowl sessions, or other innovative approaches. These session proposals will be published in advance, allowing interested contributors to apply with their respective presentations. Alternatively, pre-curated sessions, where all participants are determined beforehand, are also encouraged.
For individual contributions, participants are invited to submit paper proposals, which will be thematically grouped into open sessions by the organizing committee.
Deadline for submissions of (curated) sessions: 31st March 2025
Deadline for submissions of paper presentations: 31st May 2025
All submissions should be sent via email to nkg@geo.uni-augsburg.de
We are looking forward to receiving diverse and inspiring contributions that will enrich the debate and deepen our collective exploration of speculative geographies at NKG 2025.
Please visit the website https://kulturgeographie.org for further information.
Organizing Team
Markus Keck, Sebastian Purwins, Merle Müller-Hansen, Rouven Kaiser
Lehrstuhl Urbane Klimaresilienz, Institut für Geographie, Universität Augsburg
References
Aalders, J.T., Moraa, A., Oluoch-Olunya, N.A., Muli, D. (2020): Drawing together: making marginal futures visible through collaborative comic creation (CCC). In: Geographica Helvetica, 75(4): 415–30. DOI: 10.5194/gh-75-415-2020, 2020
Beckert, J. (2016): Imagined futures. Fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Bergmann, L. (2016): Toward speculative data: “Geographic information” for situated knowledges, vibrant matter, and relational spaces. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(6): 971–989. DOI: 10.1177/0263775816665118
Boyd, C. (2022): Postqualitative geographies. In: Geography Compass, 16(10): e12661. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12661
Bryant, L., Srnicek, N., Harman, G. (2011): The speculative turn. Continental materialism and realism. Re.press, Prahran
Cotsaftis, O. (2022): Contemporary urban heterotopias: from fiction to reality. In: Williams, N., Keating, T. (Eds.): Speculative Geographies. Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics. Springer Nature, Berlin: 51–67
Debaise, D. (2017): Speculative empiricism. Revisiting Whitehead. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
Flood, S., Cradock-Henry, N.A., Blackett, P., Edwards, P. (2018): Adaptive and interactive climate futures: systematic review of ’serious games‘ for engagement and decision making. In: Environmental Research Letters, 13(6): 063005. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aac1c6
Haraway, D.J. (2016): Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene. Duke University Press, Durham, NC
Harman, G. (2018): Object-oriented ontology. A new theory of everything. Pelican Books, London
Harris, D., Santos, D. (2023): A case for experimental and speculative political ecologies. In: Journal of Political Ecology, 30(1): 524–541. DOI: 10.2458/jpe.5589
Jasanoff, S., Kim, S.-H. (2015): Dreamscapes of modernity. Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Latour, B. (2018): Down to earth. Politics in the New Climate Regime. Polity, Cambridge
Leitner, H., Sheppard, E. (2023): Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations. In: Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(2): 359–366. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X231151945
Leszczynski, A. (2016): Speculative futures: Cities, data, and governance beyond smart urbanism. In: Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(9): 1691–1708. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16651445
Meillassoux, Q. (2008): After Finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. Continuum, New York, NY
Morton, T. (2013): Hyperobjects. Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
Rusca, M., Harris, D.M., Santos, D. (2024): Experimental and speculative political ecologies for an age of crisis, hope, and action. In: Progress in Environmental Geography, 3(4): 375–394. DOI: 10.1177/27539687241298719
Stengers, I. (2011): Thinking with Whitehead. A free and wild creation of concepts. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Turnbull, J., Platt, B., Searle, A. (2022): For a new weird geography. In: Progress in Human Geography, 46(5): 1207–1231. DOI: 10.1177/03091325221116873
Wilkie, A., Michael, M., Plummer-Fernandez, M. (2015): Speculative method and Twitter: Bots, energy and three conceptual characters. In: The Sociological Review, 63(1): 79–101. DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12168
Wilkie, A., Savransky, M., Rosengarten, M. (2017): Speculative research. The lure of possible futures. Routledge, London
Willemin, R., Backhaus, N. (2021): Future waterscapes of the Swiss Jura: using speculative photo-response fabulation techniques with farmers. In: Geographica Helvetica, 76(2): 147–58. DOI: 10.5194/gh-76-147-2021
Williams, N., Keating, T. (2022): From abstract thinking to thinking abstractions: Introducing speculative geographies. In: Williams, N., Keating, T. (Eds.): Speculative Geographies. Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics. Springer Nature, Berlin: 1–32