Calls For Papers

 

CALL FOR PAPERS (August 2026)

East of the Elbe: Environment and Society in Central and Eastern Europe

Call for Contributions to the First Issues

East of the Elbe is a new peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the environmental history of Central and Eastern Europe, published by The White Horse Press. The journal will launch in 2027 and is now inviting submissions for its first issues.

The journal aims to provide an international forum for scholarship that places the environment at the centre of the history of Central and Eastern Europe and explores the changing relationships between human societies and the non-human world.

We welcome research on East-Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and the Balkans, the Baltic region, Austria and relevant parts of Germany. We particularly encourage comparative, transnational and transregional contributions that connect the region to wider European and global histories.

Possible themes include, but are by no means limited to:

• environmental transformations under state socialism and their longer legacies;
• forests, rivers, water management and hydraulic infrastructures;
• industrialisation, mining, energy and pollution;
• waste, recycling, consumption and material circulation;
• agriculture, rural environments and changing land use;
• cities, infrastructures and urban environments;
• conservation, biodiversity and human–animal relations;
• environmental movements, activism and environmental governance;
• science, expertise and environmental knowledge;
• technology and the transformation of nature;
• environmental inequalities, health and toxicity;
• climate, disasters and environmental risk;
• post-socialist environmental transformations;
• environmental thought, culture and everyday environmental experience.

All historical periods are welcome, from the medieval period to contemporary history. While the journal has particular strengths in the environmental history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the socialist and post-socialist eras, we explicitly encourage contributions that broaden its chronological and geographical horizons.

We are interested not only in studies of Central and Eastern Europe but also in work that uses the region to speak to larger questions in environmental history. We particularly welcome scholarship that crosses national boundaries, challenges inherited geographical divisions, develops new conceptual or methodological approaches, or places Central and Eastern European experiences into wider comparative and global contexts.

Submissions

East of the Elbe publishes original research articles subject to double-blind peer review, as well as invited contributions. Proposals for special sections and special issues are also welcome.

For this inaugural call, submissions will be considered for the first several issues of the journal, allowing the editors flexibility to assemble strong and intellectually coherent issues from both invited and open-call contributions.

The journal is committed to supporting dialogue between scholarly communities working in different countries and languages. Contributions are published in English, and authors whose first language is not English are warmly encouraged to submit.

East of the Elbe is conceived as an open-access journal and will initially operate through The White Horse Press's Subscribe-to-Open model, which aims to make published research openly accessible without author fees.

Submissions open: Autumn 2026
First volume: 2027

How to submit a paper: Articles may be submitted for consideratiom on this website.

 

Editors:

Stephen Brain, Mississippi State University
Viktor Pál, University of Ostrava

Published by The White Horse Press