RSA Blog Series Call for Blogs
Historical Regions: Same Place and Changing Policies, Politics and People
Deadline: 20 December 2025
Introduction
Across the world, regions are shaped not only by their contemporary boundaries but also by the layered traces of history, ambition, and governance. This blog series invites reflections on how the same place acquires different meanings under changing political, economic, and cultural conditions.
Whether through the remapping of borders, the repurposing of infrastructures, or the persistence of older administrative or social geographies, “historical regions” offer rich ground to understand how space, memory, and policy intersect.
Theme Overview
This call focuses on how historical governance, changes in regime, policy misalignments, the political economy of planning and investment, and challenges of accountability and implementation shape regions over time.
Regions are not only lived in the present but carry layered histories of planning, ambition, and abandonment, raising questions about what happens when past projects and aspirations remain—whether fulfilled, stalled, or left behind.
How do these earlier spatial projects remain active in shaping the present, even as regimes, policies, and ambitions change? For instance, in Kinshasa, customary land rights and earlier territorial divisions continue to shape the growth of peripheral communes (Kalenga, 2025). Across contexts, planned settlements, cantonments, and infrastructural corridors reveal how earlier spatial visions persist within daily experience. In some cases, large-scale projects—such as new towns, airports, or industrial complexes (for example: Ordos Kangbashi or Tianducheng, China; Lavasa, India, etc.) stand as reminders of the uneven temporalities of regional planning, where ambitions outlast their political or economic moment, embedding questions of governance and accountability into the spaces themselves. Even the regions that are war-torn, regime change (for example: Afghanistan, Sudan, the Middle East, Bangladesh, etc) or casualty-prone (For example: Russia, Japan, etc). They are regions that have dynamically seen changes in politics and polices for people at both the micro and geopolitical levels. Therefore, we invite contributions exploring the multiple ways in which history, power, and regional transformation intersect. Submissions may focus on (but are not limited to):
- Historical–Geographical Regions: Changing borders, administrative reforms, colonial and postcolonial spatial legacies.
- Institutional and Policy Regions: Heritage governance, urban planning, accountability, and policy discontinuities.
- Comparative and Global Perspectives: Cross-regional analyses of spatial projects, long-term governance trajectories, or “ghost infrastructures.”
Who Can Contribute: The call welcomes contributions from academics, early-career researchers, students, practitioners, and writers across disciplines and geographies. Interdisciplinary, comparative, and reflective approaches are especially encouraged.
We also warmly invite authors who have previously published with the RSA and whose work intersects with themes of historical regions. We would be delighted to see earlier discussions evolve in dialogue with new perspectives on regions, governance, and spatial change.
Submission Guidelines
- Length: 600–800 words (hard cut-off at 1,000 words).
- Format: Submit in Word (.docx) format, including a short author bio (100 words).
- Visuals: Include 1–2 images, maps, photographs or videos where relevant, with permission or appropriate attribution.
- References: Use complementary links, narrative or in-text citations (author, year) where necessary. Attach a brief reference list at the end with additional readings, if any.
Writing Approach
Blogs should be clear and engaging, speaking to both scholarly and broader audiences. Authors are encouraged to coherently develop a smooth narrative that connects ideas and examples, drawing on specific cases, comparisons, or observations that bring regional change to life. Reflection and storytelling are welcome alongside analytical insight; references to policy, planning, or historical detail can help anchor broader arguments. These are indicative rather than prescriptive suggestions; contributors are invited to shape the piece in their own disciplinary voice and style.
Submission and Review
Please send your blog and author bio to: Rsablog@regionalstudies.org by 20 December 2025.
All submissions will be reviewed for clarity, relevance, and coherence. Selected blogs will be published in early 2026 as part of the Historical Regions series. Please feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss early ideas or drafts before submitting. We’re happy to support contributors at any stage of the writing process.
Stay in touch and follow the latest updates:
Bluesky: @rsablog.bsky.social
LinkedIn: Regional Studies Association Blog
We look forward to receiving your submissions and continuing conversations on how historical regions illuminate the politics, ambitions, and afterlives of place.