We are delighted to invite scholars from all disciplines to contribute to the forthcoming edited volume with Routledge: Translating Ruins: Mutable Grounds, Mediated Encounters, and Mobile Precarities. 

In an era of climate crisis, extractivism, war, forced displacement, migration, and rapid urban change, ruins have become pervasive. Contemporary ruin scholarship has moved beyond the aesthetic of Ruinenlust (‘ruin lust’) to recognise ruins as critical thresholds that illuminate entanglements of pasts, presents, and futures (López Galviz et al., 2017). This edited volume examines how translational practices – broadly conceived as complex semiotic practices that are materially grounded and embedded in sociohistorical, ethical and creative relations – engage with historical and contemporary ruins, and how such practices shape the reconstruction, reinterpretation, remembrance and governance of contested ruin-sites, wider processes of ruination, and forms of ruin-related heritage.

We invite critical and practice-based contributions that engage with the complexities of translating ruins. We especially welcome proposals from Translation Studies, Critical Heritage Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies, Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, Art History and Visual Culture, and related fields.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

• The transformation of ruins into museums, monuments, heritage sites, and immersive multimedia formats. 
• The redevelopment or repurposing of ruins into green spaces, public facilities, cultural infrastructures, or commercial complexes – spaces that may themselves enter new cycles of decay and renewal.  
• Multilingual and multimodal interpreting and translation practices within ruin-related museums, heritage sites, communities, or institutional settings.  
• Activist or community-based translation practices, or artistic interventions in sites of historical or ongoing ruination.  
• Intermedial and multimodal representations and translations of ruins and ruin narratives across diverse platforms and formats, including social media, blogs, travel vlogs, livestreams, and digital archives.  
• The translation and resignification of ruin-related textual fragments, archival materials, photographs, and other material remnants. 
• The translation of narratives that foreground the material presence and historical specificity of ruins, and the lived experience of those who built, inhabited, or survived ruins. 
• The transposition of ruin objects to new sites and interpretive contexts (e.g., travelling exhibitions, diasporic archives).   

Submission details:

Please submit a proposal of up to 300 words as a single Word document (.doc or .docx) to translatingruins@gmail.com with the subject line: “[Your Name] – Chapter Proposal”. 

The Word document should include: 

• A provisional chapter title 
• An abstract (maximum 300 words, excluding references) and up to five keywords 
• A short biographical note (maximum 150 words), including your affiliation and contact details
• A brief statement indicating whether the proposed chapter will include any line illustrations, photographs, or tables, and whether colour reproduction will be required

The deadline for abstract submission is 23 February 2026. Full chapters are due 30 September 2026.

Contact Information

Yaqi Xi (yaqi.xi@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Shaoyu Yang (shaoyu.yang@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Contact Email

translatingruins@gmail.com

Attachments

CfP_Translating Ruins

Co-editors George Severs and Amy Tooth Murphy are inviting expressions of interest to contribute chapters to the forthcoming Routledge Oral History Theory Handbook. The Handbook will consist of between 35 and 40 chapters in English which aim to reflect on and advance the field of theory within oral history. Despite its usefulness and importance, theory remains under-examined and under-appreciated within oral history. In dialogue with each other, the chapters of the Handbook will situate and make a case for theory as a crucial and productive component of oral history work, both within and beyond the academy. Across all stages of the oral history process, from conception to analysis and dissemination, theory is vital. To that end, the editors invite a wide range of contributions which centre theoretical frameworks, approaches, developments and provocations.

Theory is a live and dynamic process. As such, contributors to this volume are not expected to make definitive or ‘final’ pronouncements. Rather we encourage submissions which propose new and emerging concepts, actively engage with ongoing theoretical developments, and impact future practice. In doing so, the editors seek to stage work by an international range of authors, including but not limited to early career and established scholars, oral history practitioners, public historians, archivists and activists. This volume will be global in scope and the editors encourage submissions from a wide range of geographic contexts. We particularly encourage submissions from authors working in the geopolitical south and/or whose work foregrounds theories and questions of decolonisation and/or indigeneity.

We are seeking chapters of 8000 words. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts of 250-300 words to the editors via ohtheoryhandbook@gmail.com along with a short biography by January 31st 2026. Authors are reminded that theory should form the core of the proposed chapters. We appreciate that case studies may feature but these should be used to evidence or inform the theoretical interventions at the hearts of chapters. The editors will respond with their decisions on submitted abstracts by the end of February 2026 and first draft chapters will be expected by the end of December 2026.

To learn more, please see the full Call for Chapters here.