Coasts are, by definition, adjacent to large bodies of water. This has made it difficult to carve out a space for discussion of coasts as distinct from oceans, and of coastal studies as something distinct from maritime studies. Coastal Studies & Society aims to coordinate and direct sustained attention to the relationship between the land and sea and society that comprises a nature-culture hybrid territory which has appeared at the periphery of so many academic inquiries, but at the centre of too few. The new approaches to the coast are diverse, but they share an enhanced concern for the local, the adjacent, or the domestic, discriminating between the fine gradations of coastal experience. They may also approach local specificities as the basis for the travelling of ideas, people, animals, plants, and assets that explain the role of coasts as open global interfaces. All of these themes can be considered across disciplines, and at different temporal and spatial scales. Coastal Studies & Society comprises a wide-ranging collaboration between humanities and social science research, along with other fields of human knowledge. It will promote new alignments that are able to challenge older agendas and methodologies, as well as propose new ones. It caters to a growing and vibrant area of scholarly work that is currently scattered but will find here a common place for shared encounters and synergies.
Editorial board:
Joana Gaspar Freitas (FLUL/Projeto ERC Dunes)
Robert James (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Isaac Land (Indiana State University, USA)
