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Geography is a sprawling, ragged, gorgeous, discipline. It ranges across the physical and social sciences into the humanities and the performance arts. It's a discipline with a whole heap of different ways of doing what it does. It maps and models. Critiques and exposes. Drills and digs. Surveys and measures. Talks and hangs out with. Theorises. Analyses. Deconstructs. It's a discipline that both knows what it's about, and yet were you to ask a groupof academic geographers what exactly it is that defines geography each would give a different answer. Stuffy and hip, it's a discipline with too much difference for some and yet not nearly enough for others. Area is a journal for all of this geography. At least it tries to be. A place where all of the different bits and pieces of the discipline – or rather the bits and pieces of UK geography, and friends of that geography – can gather together to think, discuss, and argue, about what doing geography is about. From its founding just over 50 years ago Area's been a place where people publish punchy, pithy, statements about how and where geography should be at. It's a place from which to launch cutting-edge theories and methodological experiments. But it is also a journal that supports early career researchers – who after all often know better than anyone where the intellectual action is at. And it is a place – perhaps more than anything – that publishes outstanding and to the point geographic research. A journal built on the wisdom that less is often more. Publishing punchy, pithy, to the point geographical research is what we aim to keep Area about as we take the helm of the journal. But of course we also want to shape things a little too. If Area is meant to be a journal for the broad spectrum of geography – physical as well as human, quantitative as well as qualitative – there is quite a lot of the discipline that doesn't show up as much as it should. In this vein, we want to reengage with the physical and environmental geography communities by positioning Area as a place for contemporary debates. A place where new concepts and methods can be critically presented. We'd also like to encourage geographic information scientists and data visualisation scholars to publish with us. Given the centrality of all sorts of spatially oriented data systems to the contemporary world their contributions are crucial. We'd also like to continue examining the novel routes geographers have been exploring for connecting with all sorts of lay knowledges and citizen science. Such work stretches our understanding of what the discipline is and who it is for. It also presents all kinds of methodological questions. Area has, of course, long been a place where human geographers talk about their research methods. But rather than just talking about new methods and innovations we would like to extend the discussion of method within the journal to more explicitly and systematically scrutinise the ordinary working practices through which we produce and analyse geographical knowledge. Human geographers – particularly qualitatively oriented researchers – have much to gain by spending more time thinking about the nitty gritty of our research practices. With this in mind, the move to online publishing and data repositories potentially provides a range of distinctive spaces for us to rethink how we share and present geographical knowledge, methods and techniques. If we had to summarise our vision of Area, it is that it's a journal of conversations. Some of these are extraordinarily challenging. The history of UK geography, for example, emerging as it does from 19th and early 20th century colonialism, confronts us with all kinds of uncomfortable but vital questions. Area aims to be a space where such challenges might be recognised and debated by an inclusive community of scholars. Apart from conventional articles we aim to continue supporting these conversations through special issues, forums, and commentaries. If anyone out there has ideas or suggestions please contact us. And keep your eyes peeled for future collections including on Gentle Geographies, Gender and Rewilding and on the Ethics of Archives, regular features in our Ethics section, and the forthcoming Classic Revisited issue on Tivers (1978) “How the Other Half Lives.” This editorial also marks the start of our conversations with you. In the coming year or more each of us will be writing editorials that outline some of our ideas and invites your input to the journal. In closing, we would like to thank Kavita Datta, Peter Kraftl and Rob Bryant; the out-going editorial team. They were an outstanding team of editors, who worked hard to build the journal into the fantastic resource that is today. More than simply caretakers for the journal, they shaped and cemented the place of Area in geographical debates. They developed the journal in all kinds of ways, allowing Area to flourish as a space for critical, considered and caring geographical scholarship. We hope to hold onto the supportive attitudes, shared responsibilities and collective ethos for which Area is now well known.
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