Image by Sofia Greaves
May 2023 marks a landmark moment for the degrowth academic community: the first publications of the Degrowth journal are online.
Degrowth is a free, open-access, international, transdisciplinary, and peer-reviewed journal dedicated to degrowth and post-growth studies. It was established in 2020 by a small collective of junior academics following the observation of Timothée Parrique and Ben Robra in this website that while degrowth is a thriving field, until now it has been one without a home, and this has held it back considerably. The new journal aims to provide a space for degrowth research in which it no longer needs to defend its own existence, and in which knowledge is free and open to all, with no barriers and no profiteering.
Following an open call for publications in 2022, the journal received 55 submissions ranging from research articles to book reviews, from essays to thesis summaries. The successful submissions are now forming part of the journal’s first volume, which begins online publication today.
The first four submitted publications, as well as an introductory editorial and a re-publication of the journal’s manifesto, can be viewed now here. The journal’s editorial collective has bold plans for the future of the journal. They are looking to reopen submissions once a new submission system is implemented, and in the meantime, they are exploring the development of an arts section - a challenge to the long-established epistemological boundaries between art and science - as well as making continued efforts to include people from less privileged backgrounds in the journal’s activities, and engaging with the degrowth community to make the journal an open and collective endeavour.
The collective is grateful for the many great voluntary contributions that have allowed the journal to reach this stage, including from authors, editors, reviewers, copy-editors, and many others, and they are excited to now welcome you in.
Degrowth.info is launching a call for blog posts that will constitute a series on movements for social and environmental justice, with a focus on Global South struggles and organising. Do you have a story to contribute?
The first International Degrowth Conference held in Paris in 2008 was followed by another ten other conferences, most of which took place in Europe. These conferences provided room for the Degrowth community to meet and exchange on latest research. In Christiania Town (Copenhagen) in 2018, just before the 6th International Degrowth Conference in Malmö, degrowthers met in a new format. Going beyond research-related conversations, they instead discussed the “how” of Degrowth and started to organise the movement.
In October of this year Giorgos Kallis, Julia Steinberger and Jason Hickel were awarded 9.9 million euros by the European Research Council (ERC) for a project titled Pathways towards post growth deals. This constitutes the largest ever sum of funding for a degrowth research project! We interviewed Giorgos Kallis to find out more about this important milestone!
