Special Issue of Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities

We invite contributions to the open-access special issue “TANC | The Apocalypse is Not Coming”, to be published in Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities. The issue emerges from TANC | The Apocalypse is Not Coming | A Transdisciplinary Conference, held in Barcelona from 12 to 15 May 2026, hosted by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and co-organised by ISOR-UAB, BCNUEJ (ICTA-UAB), CRCG-RUG, UAB COREs, and a wider network of researchers, artists, activists, students, and practitioners, as part of the final stage of the Creative Europe and the Horizon Europe projects VIABLE UNKNOWNS and ODEEN.

TANC was conceived as a space for challenging dominant apocalyptic imaginaries while thinking and practising beyond them. Across a transdisciplinary set-up of panels, workshops, artistic interventions, embodied practices, and collective discussions, the conference explored how contemporary societies narrate ecological, technological, geopolitical, and social crises through images of end-of-times. At the same time, it asked how these narratives can be questioned and transformed through situated and care-ful practices of  solidarity and collective action.

This special issue seeks to continue and deepen these conversations.

We approach apocalyptic imaginaries critically, associal, cultural, political, technological, and affective constructions. These imaginaries shape present institutions, behaviours, forms of governance, and regimes of protection. They influence who is imagined as vulnerable, who is deemed disposable, who is protected, and who is left behind.

At the same time, many communities do not experience crisis as a single spectacular “end”, but as ongoing, uneven, and interconnected forms of socio-ecological pressure. Environmental degradation, care crises, racialised and gendered inequalities, colonial continuities, urban vulnerability, extractivism, climate injustice, spiritual loss, and democratic erosion are not future threats alone: they are already lived, contested, resisted, and at times even transcended.

The issue therefore invites contributions that move beyond fatalistic framings and open critical, situated, and transformative pathways toward regenerative futures.

Themes and questions

We welcome contributions engaging with, but not limited to, the following themes:

  • Apocalyptic imaginaries  and their social, political, ecological, spiritual, or technological effects
  • Critiques of collapse narratives, end-times ideologies, survivalism, and fatalism
  • Regeneration as concept, practice, method, or political horizon
  • Radical environmental humanities, radical pedagogies and the politics of socio-ecological transformation
  • Ecofeminist, antiracist, decolonial, Indigenous, degrowth, postcapitalist, and abolitionist perspectives
  • Environmental justice, urban vulnerability, climate adaptation, and unequal regimes of protection
  • Technological regimes of oppression and liberation
  • Spirituality, religion, eco-spiritualities, ritual, grief, hope, and collective healing in times of crisis
  • Transdisciplinary, participatory, artistic, embodied, and community-based methodologies
  • Theatre, performance, visual arts, storytelling, speculative methods, and creative practices of resistance
  • The politics of care, interdependence, relationality, accessibility and more-than-human worlds
  • Methodological reflections on uncertainty, discomfort, translation, conflict, co-creation, and collective knowledge production
  • Situated accounts of how apocalyptic narratives are interpreted, resisted, or transformed in practice
  • Affective and embodied dimensions of socio-ecological transitions, including loneliness, eco-anxiety, belonging, relationality, and experiences of connection and disconnection 
  • Any other relevant contribution to TANC

We are especially interested in contributions rooted in critical praxis and/or transdisciplinarity and/or any other form of  messy, relational, embodied, creative, and politically situated processes of inquiry and action.

Types of contributions

The special issue will include two main types of contributions.

1. Research articles

We invite full research articles grounded in theoretical, empirical, methodological, or practice-based inquiry.

Articles may be based on academic research, activist research, community-engaged work, artistic research, participatory processes, or other situated forms of knowledge production.

Expected length: approximately 7,000 words, plus references.

All research articles will undergo double-blind peer review.

2. Creative and experimental contributions

We also invite creative, experimental, and hybrid contributions that engage with the themes of the special issue through non-conventional academic formats.

These may include, for example:

  • visual essays
  • performance-based reflections
  • dialogical texts
  • methodological experiments
  • field notes
  • collective writings
  • artistic research pieces
  • audiovisual or multimodal contributions
  • situated testimonies or reflexive interventions

Creative contributions should clearly explain the research, artistic, political, or methodological process through which they were developed.

The final format will be discussed with the editorial team depending on the nature of each proposal.

All creative and experimental contributions will undergo double-blind peer review.

Eligibility

This call is primarily addressed to participants of TANC | The Apocalypse is Not Coming.

For research articles and creative contributions, at least one author or contributor must have actively participated in TANC.

We particularly encourage submissions from early-career researchers, activists, artists, practitioners, students, and members of underrepresented groups, as well as contributions emerging from collective and community-based processes.

Abstract submission

Interested contributors should submit:

  • a title
  • an abstract of 300–500 words
  • the proposed type of contribution: research article or creative/experimental contribution
  • a short biographical note of each author or contributor, maximum 100 words each
  • a brief indication of how the contribution connects to TANC
  • confirmation that the submitted work has not been published elsewhere

Please send your proposals by completing the following form: https://forms.gle/ZwjrdCZB74A5iFxa6.  

Timeline

Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2026
Notification of selected abstracts: 30 of July 2026Submission of full papers / contributions:  30 November 2026