The Open Access journal Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity has opened a call for submissions to a themed issue on ‘Climate change and intersectionality’.

Editors: Christopher Lyon Kate Sang Susan Sayce  Nisha Onta 

The effects of climate change are not felt equally across national contexts, with poorer countries facing more immediate and stronger effects. Global efforts to address climate change have recognised that gender is a factor in both the impacts of climate change and adaptation and mitigation. However, gender still remains peripheral to climate policy making, regardless of the gender composition of policy making teams (Mangusdottir & Kronsell, 2014). Further, there is increasing understanding of the importance of working with indigenous peoples and knowledge. This has been highlighted in terms of policy making, and media representations of climate change (Roosvall and Tegelberg, 2015).

Social identities cannot be viewed in isolation. Efforts to understand how multiple identities may affect an individual’s experience have been advanced by drawing on intersectionality. Developed by Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) intersectionality does not aim to add together sources of discrimination or oppression, rather how these sources interact to inform experience (Hancock, 2007). Analyses of intersectionality are moving towards understanding how privilege and disadvantage may interact (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 201). Early steps have been made to understand, from an intersectional perspective, how communities respond to climate change (Vinyeta et al., 2015). There is considerable scope for further studies which can adopt intersectionality in order to provide nuanced and contextualised understandings of how to best respond to the threats posed by climate change.

This themed issue aims to provide a forum for the discussion of how intersecting social identities can be incorporated into climate change research, in order to provide a more holistic understanding of how we can respond to the global threat of climate change.

Empirical and conceptual submissions are not limited to, but may wish to consider:

•   How intersecting identities, such as age, race, sexuality, gender, religion and disability inform experiences of working within organisations dedicated to mitigating the effects of climate change.
•   How are intersecting social identities, (re)produced within climate change organisations, policies and discourses? What are the effects of these (re)productions on efforts to mitigate climate change and its effects?
•   Analysis of the dynamics of intersecting identities for understanding and mitigating the effects of climate change.
•   How incorporating methodological approaches which enable the inclusion of temporal, material, discourse and contextual elements may help to reveal the intersectional dynamics of climate change.
•   How intersectional understandings can be used to inform climate policy, and associated practice?
•   Given the particular local effects of climate change, to what extent (and in what ways) are global organisations adapting their policies to local concerns. This may include working relationships with indigenous peoples.
•   What do indigenous, and other non Western perspectives, contribute academic debates on climate change? Are these perspectives welcomed?
•   How, and to what extent, do new initiatives such as Green/Sustainable Human Resource Management create opportunities for organisations to challenge existing patterns of privilege/oppression?
• What does climate change mean for intersectional understandings of identity?

We are keen for this themed issue to embrace diverse ways of disseminating knowledge. If you have a submission idea which is broader than that mentioned above, please get in touch.

Submissions may be full research papers (approx 8k words), research notes (up to 5k words), book reviews, pedagogical reflections, activist and practitioner research/policy analyses, position pieces or student essays. Submissions will be subject to a double blind peer review. IPED is an OA journal and authors retain the rights to their submitted work. Submissions may be in English, Thai, Greek or German. If you wish to submit in another language (including American, British or International Sign Language) please feel free to contact us.

The deadline is 28th February 2017. Please  contact  Christopher Lyon , Kate Sang, Susan Sayce or Nisha Onta, if you have any questions.

Submissions can be submitted via http://journals.hw.ac.uk/index.php/IPED – in your covering letter, please clearly indicate that your submission is for the themed issue ‘Climate change and intersectionality’.