Geography and ‘the new’

This Intervention reflects on the multiple, contradictory and ambivalent relations human geography has with ‘the new’. Some sort of relation with the new is an inescapable and necessary part of all practices of knowledge generation. Newness, whether it be an empirical finding, an idea, a concept or an approach, can fuel the interest, wonder, urgency or surprise that can animate and sustain academic life. Yet, relations with the new are fraught. Claims of newness are enrolled into materially consequential systems and practices of audit, and the desire for newness is inseparable from the digitally mediated political economy of academic publishing. Questions persist about whether contemporary human geography is too beholden to the same or too enamoured by the new. Developing from a plenary panel at the RGS-IBG 2025 annual conference, five contributors reflect on their own and (sub)disciplinary relations with the new in the context of these necessary but fraught relations. In doing so, the aim of the Intervention is to generate reflection and discussion about the place of newness in our research, what kinds of newness geography values, and the political and ethical implications of different ways of relating to and valorising the new.