Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS: Modernizing Winter

We invite chapter proposals for the edited volume Modernizing Winter: A Global History of Winter in the Industrial Age. This book will explore how winter has shaped modernity and modernity has reshaped experiences of winter. The volume will be published as part of the project History of Winter (Research Council of Finland, 2024–2028). It is intended as an international, English-language collection of original research that will complement the project’s Finnish-language anthology on the history of winter in Finland since the Ice Age.

The volume contributes to a growing scholarship on the history of seasons and seasonality and addresses a need for further studies of the industrial era (late eighteenth century–present). The central aim of the collection is to better understand how seasonal rhythms and changes have structured societies, economies, politics, and cultures during this period. We are looking for chapters that represent diverse topics and approaches in the field, including environmental, social, cultural, economic, military, and business histories, as well as histories of science and technology, historical geography, and historical climatology. We welcome studies at local, national, or regional scales as well as those with international, comparative, or transnational perspectives.

Topics may include:
•       Technologies and winter
•       Winter and urbanisation
•       Lived and imagined winter in seasonal societies
•       Commodification of winter
•       Indigenous and local knowledge of winter in the modern era
•       Winter warfare and geopolitics
•       Transforming winters: seasonal change and its futures
•       Regional winter cultures and their evolution
•       Winter migration and seasonal labour
•       Food systems and the winter economy
•       Winter and the body: health, illness, and bodily experience
•       Winter, ritual, and religion

Contributions should address regions where winter is a lived climatic reality and where the annual seasonal cycle exerts a meaningful structuring force on economic activity, culture, mobility, the built environment, or the everyday life of people and animals. Studies of winter as a purely symbolic or imported cultural phenomenon in non-seasonal climates fall outside the scope of this collection.
Submission guidelines

Prospective contributors are invited to submit a proposal of 300–500 words outlining the chapter’s argument, geographical and temporal focus, sources, and methodological approach, accompanied by a short biographical note (100 words).

Deadline for proposals: 25 September 2026

Notification of acceptance: 15 October 2026

We expect full chapters to be ready early September 2027.

Full chapters should be around 5,000 words, including footnotes.

Proposals and enquiries should be directed to Dr. Janne Mäkiranta, jajuma@utu.fi

Editors: Janne Mäkiranta, Simo Laakkonen, Rami Mähkä, Anna Sivula, and Sam White

Publication

The editors aim to have a complete manuscript of the volume ready by summer 2028. We are in contact with Bloomsbury Academic as a possible publisher.

On behalf of the editorial team,
Simo Laakkonen
PhD, Senior Lecturer
Degree Program in Digital Culture, Landscape, and Cultural Heritage University of Turku Finland simo.laakkonen@utu.fi