EJSP Special Issue: “Remembering Climate Disasters, Imagining Climate Futures: Collective Memory, Identity, and Action in a Changing Climate”

Climate change is not only an environmental or political crisis; it is also a crisis of collective memory and imagination. As communities experience floods, fires, heatwaves, storms, displacement, and ecological loss, these events become embedded in shared narratives about who “we” are, what has been lost, who is responsible, and what futures remain possible (Normann, 2022; Walshe et al., 2020).

Social psychology has developed substantial literature on both climate change and collective memory, yet these areas have largely evolved in parallel. Climate psychology has often focused on beliefs, risk perception, communication, and behaviour (Clayton, 2024; Fielding et al., 2014), while collective memory research has examined how shared representations of the past shape identity, intergroup relations, responsibility, and action. Bringing these perspectives together raises an important question: how do remembered environmental disruptions shape how communities understand themselves and imagine their futures?

Memories of climate-related harm may foster solidarity, resilience, adaptation, and collective action, but they may also contribute to resignation, denial, blame, conflict, or resistance to change. Experiences of disaster, displacement, recovery, and ecological loss can also be transmitted across generations and incorporated into narratives of justice, responsibility, belonging, and future possibility (Navarrete-Valladares et al., 2023).

This Special Issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology aims to bring together theoretically innovative and empirically rigorous research on how societies remember environmental disruption and climate-related disasters, and how these memories shape identities, social relations, responsibility, and future-oriented action.

We invite submissions addressing questions including, but not limited to:

• How are climate disasters and environmental disruptions collectively remembered, narrated, contested, commemorated, or forgotten?
• How do memories of environmental loss and disaster shape social identities and place attachment?
• How are climate-related experiences transmitted across generations, and how do they influence future responsibility?
• How do collective narratives connect with perceptions of responsibility, blame, injustice, and climate justice?
• Under what conditions does remembering environmental harm or foster or hamper hope, solidarity, resilience, adaptation, or collective action?
• When might such memories contribute to denial, resignation, conflict, defensive identity processes, or resistance to climate transformation?
• How do communities imagine climate futures in relation to remembered experiences of disaster, displacement, recovery, and adaptation?
• How do post-disaster memory processes relate to social cohesion, intergroup relations, conflict, and repair?
• What methodological innovations can advance the study of collective memory and climate presents and futures?

We welcome diverse theoretical perspectives, methods, and data sources, including experimental, longitudinal, survey, qualitative, mixed-methods, participatory, computational, and cross-cultural research.

We particularly encourage submissions from scholars based in the Majority World and research involving populations and communities underrepresented in mainstream social psychology, including Indigenous, rural, displaced, disaster-affected, and socio-politically marginalised communities. Contributions led by postgraduate and early-career researchers are also especially welcome.

Methodological and epistemological pluralism are central to the Special Issue. Authors are encouraged to follow open-science practices where appropriate, including preregistration and the sharing of materials, code, and data when ethically feasible, while recognising participant protection, community data governance, and the challenges of research in vulnerable or politically sensitive contexts.

The EOI should include:

• Names and affiliations of all authors
• Contact information for the corresponding author
• A tentative manuscript title
• A brief description of the proposed manuscript of up to 600 words, including its theoretical arguments and relevance, research questions, design and methods, sample or research context, and anticipated or established contribution to the Special Issue

Manuscripts should be submitted through the regular EJSP online submission system and should clearly indicate that they are intended for the Special Issue “Remembering Climate Disasters, Imagining Climate Futures: Collective Memory, Identity, and Action in a Changing Climate.”

EJSP submission portal: https://submission.wiley.com/submission/dashboard?siteName=ejsp