Abstract deadline: 1 October 2026
Manuscript deadline: 30 March 2027
Javier Revilla Diez, Mfundo Mlilo & Peter Dannenberg, researchers in our sub-project C01 “Future in Chains”, and Michael Bollig from our sub-project A04 “Future Conservation”, are inviting chapter abstracts for an edited volume expected to be published in 2027. In this volume, the editors seek to tackle the issue of regional resilience in the context of escalating and intersecting global crises. Drawing on an evolutionary understanding of regional economic resilience as the capacity of regions to resist, adapt to, and transform in response to shocks (Martin & Sunley, 2015; Sutton et al., 2023), the volume seeks to advance a more context-sensitive perspective grounded in African and Global South experiences. While regional resilience has become an influential concept in regional studies and policy, existing approaches remain largely shaped by Global North contexts and often overlook the historical, structural, and power relations that condition resilience across African regions. The editors therefore welcome contributions engaging with questions of global value chains, commodity dependence and extractivism, multi-scalar governance, agency and inequality, informal economies, gender and generational dynamics, colonial legacies and path dependence, decolonial perspectives and Indigenous knowledge, as well as future-making, diversification, path creation, digitalisation, green transformation, and just transitions. The volume conceptualises regional resilience as a contested, relational, and future-oriented process and invites contributions that critically engage with these themes.
Click here for more information.
Submission instructions
Abstracts of approximately 350 words should be sent to Professor Javier Revilla Diez at j.revilladiez@uni-koeln.de by 1 October 2026. Each abstract should identify the topic, research questions and methodology. The editors will provide feedback on accepted abstracts by 20 October 2026. The submission deadline for the first full draft chapters is 30 March 2027. All chapters will undergo rigorous internal review. We plan to host an initial hybrid workshop in March 2026 on Regional Resilience in Southern Africa in Kasane, Botswana, where the first draft chapters will be presented, and authors will receive feedback. We plan to submit the full draft book manuscript for review to James Curry Publishing House by autumn 2027 with a possible publication in 2028.
