Convenors: Emanuele Amo (Aberystwyth University), Damian Maye (University of Gloucestershire), Chi-Mao Wang (National Taiwan University), Michael Woods (Aberystwyth University)
Processes of rural place-making are closely connected to questions of inequalities and injustice. Disparities in the distribution of wealth, resources and services between rural and urban areas, as well as between rural places, shape trajectories of place development and the identities attached to places. Processes of place-making in turn shape perceptions of spatial injustice, or the unfair treatment, informing a ‘rural consciousness’ through which rural residents interpret politics (Cramer, 2016). Questions of rural spatial justice are also evident in the variegated capacity of individuals to participate in making rural places – a ‘right to the rural’ paralleling the ‘right to the city’. Moreover, approached as a normative concept, rural spatial justice can inspire proactive and progressive place-making (Woods, 2023).
This session specifically calls for papers that address these dynamics between rural place-making and spatial justice from a planetary perspective. Following principles outlined in Wang et al’s (2025) call for planetary rural geographies, a planetary perspective highlights the making and remaking of rural places within unequal global relations and associated questions of economic and social justice; the more-than-human composition of place and the questions of multi-species justice embedded in rural places; the justice or injustice of knowledge claims for describing, knowing and representing rural places, from colonial scientific legacies to indigenous thinking; and rural place-making with respect to planetary crises, including issues of environmental justice in the remaking of rural places by climate change and in conflicts over the repurposing of rural land for renewable energy, rewilding or carbon forestry, for example.
As such, we understand place-making as a relational, contested, and uneven process shaped by multi-scalar forces, including climate change, agro-ecological transitions, infrastructure expansion, extractivism, conservation, migration, and food sovereignty struggles. We are particularly interested in how justice claims emerge across scales, and how rural places are made, unmade, and remade through interactions among human and more-than-human actors.
We welcome empirical, conceptual, and methodological contributions from geography and related disciplines. Examples of topics that may be covered included, but are not restricted to:
· Rural place-making and the planetary distribution of resources, services and infrastructure.
· Perceptions of spatial injustice between rural and urban places and between rural places linked to planetary processes and their political consequences.
· The ‘right to the rural’ or the ‘right to the countryside’ in the context of planetary processes and planetary crises
· Uneven impacts of climate change on rural places and issues of spatial and environmental injustice
· Rural place-making, dispossession, and repair in relation to planetary processes
· Justice-related perspectives on agrarian transitions, food sovereignty, and rural livelihoods
· Rural energy transitions and the repurposing of rural land
· Multispecies and more-than-human approaches to rural justice
· Infrastructure, territory, and uneven rural futures
· Affective, relational, and political dimensions of rural space
· Decolonial and indigenous perspectives on justice and rural place-making
· Normative visions of spatial justice and rural place-making as a hopeful process
The session aims to foster dialogue between rural studies, critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and more-than-human geographies, advancing a relational and planetary understanding of rural spatial justice.
If you are interested in contributing, please contact the session organisers: Emanuele Amo (ema21@aber.ac.uk); Damian Maye (dmaye@glos.ac.uk); Chi-Mao Wang (chimaowang@gmail.com); Michael Woods (zzp@aber.ac.uk) by 23rd February 2026.