Critical Physical Geography is an emerging discipline that has the specific aim of bringing together social and natural science in the service of eco-social transformation, combining attention to power relations and their material impacts with deep knowledge of particular biophysical systems (Lave et al. 2014). Whilst it is a discipline that appeals strongly to geography, it reflects a wider sense in which the environmental challenges that we face today are too commonly framed by the academy in disciplinary and hence partial ways. A series of initiatives (conference sessions; workshops; opinion pieces; special issues) have mobilised researchers doing integrative interdisciplinary work to see CPG as a potential “home” for them. A major publication (The Handbook of Critical Physical Geography) appeared in 2018 (Lave, Biermann and Lane, eds.), setting out CPG’s core tenets and genealogical origins, illustrating these through a series of case examples, and reflecting upon the pedagogic implications for practicing CPG. This book series aims to provide the resources necessary for CPG to pass to its next phase of development by providing: (1) a focal point for research monographs that involve integrative, transformative, environmental research; (2) a set of shorter texts that address key environmental concerns through the lens of CPG; and (3) edited volumes that consider the practice and methods associated with CPG, where there is a need to bring together a wider spectrum of researchers to advance particular themes.

Formats

The series will publish books in three formats: monographs, shorter books (e.g. 25-40,000 words), and occasional edited volumes. We expect each book to be accessibly written, with deep empirical grounding that gives it not just academic, but broad intellectual interest.

Readership

There is a pressing need for classroom materials that not only promote but demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches. Thus we expect that many series books will be adopted in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in geography, environmental science, and environmental studies, as well as in the fields specifically addressed in each book (e.g. hydrology, ecology, remote sensing, etc.). In addition, because of the emphasis on clear and accessible writing, we expect many of our books to cross-over to critically-minded environmental science practitioners and advocates.

Unique Selling Points

There has been an explosion of interest in interdisciplinary work in recent decades. The concept of the Anthropocene, in particular, has drawn attention to the long-standing claim that the material environment is now characterized by the deep intermingling of social and biophysical processes. Yet relatively few researchers have followed this claim to its logical conclusion: if the biophysical world that surrounds us is now an eco-social hybrid, our research must be, too. Even as interdisciplinary work is lauded and students flock to interdisciplinary environmental science and environmental studies programs, there is comparatively little substantively interdisciplinary research being conducted, and much of that is scattered across fields and thus difficult to find.

Our goal with this series is to create a go-to place for interdisciplinary work that engages seriously with both physical and critical social science, enabling a deeper understanding of the complex power relations that shape and are shaped by the biophysical world. Taken together, the books in this series will not only rethink and break down the divides between conventional disciplines but also engage with fundamental questions about the conditions within which we find ourselves as a society and the role of scientific inquiry in shaping those conditions.

Why Is a New Series Needed?

A new series is needed because whilst there is a growing number of researchers involved in the kind of environmental research that CPG advocates, their work is disparately distributed, and so hidden, without the kind of coherence that can come when books are presented together in a series. We think that bringing the proposed books together will create a series that not only orients the academy to what this kind of work can do, but changes conversations about the environment more generally.

Editorial Board & Editorial Operations

Series editors Stuart Lane, L’Université de Lausanne stuart.lane@unil.ch

Rebecca Lave, Indiana University rlave@indiana.edu

Advisory Board

• Javier Arce Nazario, University of North Carolina
• Nubia Beray Armond, Indiana University
• Christine Biermann, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
• Diana Davis, University of California at Davis
• Salvatore Engel-DiMauro, SUNY New Paltz
• Mike Hulme, Cambridge University
• Lisa Kelley, University of Colorado-Denver
• Michelle Kooy, UN-IHE Delft
• Katie Oven, Northumbria
• Bruce Rhoads, University of Illinois
• Adam Romero, University of Washington-Bothell