Angela Last, Lecturer at the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment at the University of Leicester, has joined David Chandler and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos as joint Editor-in-Chief of Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman.

Dr Last is an interdisciplinary scholar who started off in Fashion, where she became interested in environmental and social justice issues in relation to design.  After working outside academia for several years, she subsequently completed a PhD in Geography at the Open University. Her research focuses on human-environment relations, and specifically the politicisation of these relations. This research necessitates continued interdisciplinary work, whether in teaching, research or outreach, and she aims to bring this experience to her work for Anthropocenes. For example, Angela has been working on environmental sound art events, fashion workshops, and taught on the MA in Art & Science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London.

Her main aim in joining the journal is to forward the idea of ‘anthropocenes’ as a multiplicity of relations that humans have with their environment, kin, cosmos, or however they frame their relation, and not simply as ‘Anthropocene’ according to the current (still relatively ambiguous) geological interpretation. She notes, ‘the current planetary emergency requires many of our relations to change, which needs urgent discussion, and for this to be as geographically wide as possible.’ While traditional academic journals have some obvious limitations in terms of reach and economics, Dr Last envisages that Anthropocenes can make creative contributions to the debate by staging interdisciplinary conversations and publishing these in a variety of formats.

Anthropocenes is a fully open access journal, with no fees to authors or readers.  It launched in 2020 and has readers in over 130 countries. Articles publish as they are ready to avoid delays in making work publicly available, and the journal actively encourages multimedia and non-traditional submissions including creative writing, audio and visually based work.  The journal is currently open for submissions. You can follow Angela Last’s work on her blog Mutable Matter.