We are seeking abstracts for chapters for The Routledge Companion to the Urban Wyrd. This volume has been contracted and we have commissioned in excess of 35 chapters. We are looking for abstracts which cover particular areas including, the Anglo-Saxon origins of the wyrd, the link between the Gothic and the wyrd city, Georgian and Victorian urban anxiety, global cities, theoretical approaches to the urban wyrd, urban ruin and photography, sound and music and the city, the environment and the urban future.

The volume as a whole is intended to map the intersection of the uncanny, the folkloric, the liminal, and the mythic within contemporary urban environments. The ‘wyrd’, a term with roots in Anglo-Saxon thought denoting fate, mystery, and strangeness, has been increasingly used in disciplines ranging from psychogeography, folk horror and hauntology to speculative fiction, art practice, and urban anthropology. Yet to date, there has been no comprehensive, interdisciplinary volume that explores how this concept explores the strange undercurrents of city and suburban life across global contexts.

• Abstracts of c.250 words to be sent (as .docx or .rtf) to r.edgar@yorksj.ac.uk and w.johnson@yorksj.ac.uk. Please also include a biography and keywords.
• Abstracts to be sent by 26th June 2026

This companion will bring together scholars and practitioners to explore how the urban wyrd manifests in built environments, marginal geographies, and cultural expressions. The volume will examine a wide range of case studies, from the haunted streets of London, and the myth-infused alleyways of Tokyo, to the ritual-inflected corners of Lagos and the ghost cities of Inner Mongolia. Contributors will be invited to draw on diverse methods and media, including literary analysis, cultural geography, art criticism, ethnography, sound studies, architecture, speculative fiction, and social and urban planning. Through this wide lens, the companion reframes the many manifestations of the city as sites not only of modern rationality but of spectral disturbance, forgotten mythologies, and repressed histories. The urban wyrd emerges not as a purely aesthetic or folkloric concept but as a critical framework for interrogating spatial politics, memory, class, and cultural anxiety in the contemporary world.

 Aims and Scope:

• To develop the concept of the ‘urban wyrd’ as a critical interdisciplinary framework
• To explore how cities globally exhibit liminality, haunting, mythic layering, and atmospheric disturbance
• To investigate the political and aesthetic implications of ‘wyrdness’ in urban spaces: this will include post-industrial ruin, gentrification, spiritual resistance, informal infrastructure, and beyond
• To explore the modern city as a palimpsest
• To connect academic theory with creative practice through fiction, art, photography, and site-specific work in creative/critical contributions
• To encourage a global range of case studies, avoiding a purely Anglocentric focus
• To include scholars who use different methodologies and to include discussion of these in their chapters where appropriate.