We are hosting two sessions on the challenge of applying post-foundational geographies and post-foundational geographies in a turbulent and polarised world at RGS-IBG and Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM) respectively. Please do consider submitting. Full details are below.
Call for Papers
The Challenge of Applying Post-Foundational Geographies
Nordic Geographers Meeting 2026
Reykjavík, Iceland, 22-25 June 2026
Organised by Matina Kapsali and Joe Blakey (The University of Manchester)
Post-foundational geography is concerned with the contingency, partiality and provisionality of all spatial orders, differentiating between those orders of politics that regulate and delimit the parameters of social possibility, and the ever-present political potential for things to unfold otherwise. Doing so, it foregrounds the tensions between established power relations and alterity, structure and agency, and constraint and possibility. The field has moved beyond earlier preoccupations with post-politics (Dikeç, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2011) to considering the contingencies of social, spatial, and political life, opening conversations with allied fields (Blakey et al., 2022; Landau, Pohl, Roskamm, 2021), and exploring repoliticisation (Blakey, 2024). Consequently, productive exchanges with feminist, environmental, affective, relational, and negative lines of thought are developing (Kapsali, 2020; Kenis, 2025; Landau-Donnelly and Pohl, 2023; Nelson-Owens, 2025).
In this session, we aim to consider the challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities of applying post-foundational geography in practice, especially around making novel disciplinary links, becoming more attentive to diverse positionalities and political differences, and translating post-foundationalism’s assertion of absent grounds into modes of social intervention. In this regard, we also aim to explore how (and if) post-foundational geographers should respond to depoliticisation, right-wing populism, and ongoing social, environmental and economic crises. In this invitation to dwell on the doings of post-foundational geographies, we also invite reflections on its methodological and ethical challenges.
We are particularly interested in interventions exploring:
- The state and future trajectories of post-foundational geography;
- How we carefully apply post-foundationalism to channel its theoretical basis for geographical purposes;
- Ways of engaging post-foundationalism in applied or activist settings;
- Methodological and ethical challenges in practicing post-foundational geographies;
- The potential benefits, challenges or concessions necessary to bring other theoretical and conceptual arenas into conversation, such as feminist and post-colonial perspectives, minor and weak theories, everyday-situated (political) practices, care, affect, and embodied spatialities;
- Failures, limits, and moments of ‘negativity’ in post-foundational geographical studies;
- The contingency of post-foundational praxis itself and when, how and if we ought to defend contingent grounds;
- How we relate and respond to emergent political change that we might not support or agree with;
- The responsibilities and risks of working within the ontic world we can sense and analyse against the ontological backdrop of the political that is beyond grasp; and
- The positionalities of researchers and participants, and how these shape knowledge production, ethical engagement, and the enactment of post-foundational practices.
We not only welcome traditional paper presentations but also contributions that experiment with creative methodologies and formats – including video, performance, spoken word, or other non-traditional presentations. All contributions should be around 10 minutes to leave time for questions.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 200 words by the end of Friday 27th February 2026 to
Matina Kapsali (matina.kapsali@manchester.ac.uk) and Joe Blakey (joe.blakey@manchester.ac.uk). Please include your name, e-mail and any institutional affiliation.
We will be in touch to confirm acceptance by the end of Friday 6th March, ahead of the final deadline for abstract submission to the Nordic Geographers Meeting organising team on 23rd March.
Call for Papers
Post-Foundational Geography in a Turbulent and Polarised World
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 1st-4th September 2026
Organised by: Joe Blakey, Matina Kapsali and Niamh Nelson-Owens (The University of Manchester)
This session seeks to explore how the field of post-foundationalism geographies can attend to an era marked by intensifying turbulence and polarisation. The mid-2020s are increasingly characterised by escalating geopolitical conflicts amidst the fracturing of the post-Cold War order – what Francis Fukuyama now alleges is the ‘return of history’ – alongside proliferating and deepening culture-wars; ever-worsening environmental crises and the conflicts they generate; enduring populist campaigns from the right and resurgent populist gestures from the left; the normalisation of crisis; the consolidation of platform capitalism, AI and data-driven governance, and techno-optimistic narratives; and deepening wealth inequalities. Taken together, the present moment appears marked by profound instability, polarisation, and a sense that these differences are reaching boiling point.
Post-foundational geography is concerned with the contingency, partiality and provisionality of all spatial orders, differentiating between those orders of politics that regulate and delimit the parameters of social possibility, and the ever-present political potential for things to unfold otherwise. Doing so, it foregrounds the tensions between established power relations and alterity, structure and agency, and constraint and possibility. The field has moved beyond earlier preoccupations with post-politics (Dikeç, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2011) to considering the contingencies of social, spatial, and political life, opening conversations with allied fields (Blakey et al., 2022; Landau, Pohl, Roskamm, 2021), and exploring repoliticisation (Blakey, 2024). Consequently, productive exchanges with feminist, environmental, affective, relational, and negative lines of thought are developing (Kapsali, 2020; Kenis, 2025; Landau-Donnelly and Pohl, 2023; Nelson-Owens, 2025).
This session invites contributions that chart, theoretically, empirically, or otherwise, how post-foundational geography’s theoretical toolkit can be applied or adapted to attend to the turbulent and polarised present.
Contributions may consider, but are not limited to:
- How post-foundational geographies can relate and respond to emergent political challenges that we may not support or agree with;
- What remains beyond political dispute in a nonetheless volatile world;
- The contingency of post-foundational praxis itself, and when, how, or whether contingent grounds ought to be defended;
- The methodological and ethical challenges of researching conflict, polarisation, and inequality from a post-foundational perspective;
- The role of affect, embodiment, and everyday practices in sustaining or unsettling polarised spatial orders;
- The limits, failures, or risks of post-foundational approaches in moments of crisis;
- How post-foundational thought can engage questions of justice without reinstating fixed political foundations.
We not only welcome traditional paper presentations but also contributions that experiment with creative methodologies and formats – including video, performance, spoken word, or other non-traditional presentations. All contributions should be around 10 minutes to leave time for questions.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 200 words to Joe Blakey (joe.blakey@manchester.ac.uk), Matina Kapsali (matina.kapsali@manchester.ac.uk) and Niamh Nelson-Owens (niamh.nelson-owens@manchester.ac.uk) by Friday 27th February. Please include your name, e-mail and any institutional affiliation.
We will be in touch to confirm acceptance by the end of Tuesday 3rd March. Contributions must be confirmed to the RGS-IBG by Friday 6th March.