*CFP* "NORDIC PERSPECTIVES ON PLACE BRANDING", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF PLACE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

Nordic place branding is an emerging field of academic research and practice. Place branding's evolution, expansion, and geographical spread in the Nordic region have been studied in several ways, however these studies have not fully explored the peculiarity of the Nordic context and its characteristics. The limited scope of previous studies on place branding paired with a widespread international interest for the “Nordic” as a geographical place, moral orientation, and discourse calls for more research into the global relevance of Nordic place branding. In this special issue, our aim is to collect, examine, and systematise diverse instances of the Nordic place branding tradition. How can “Nordicity” in place branding be defined and what can we learn from it? Moreover, it deals with how the Nordic place brand travels, that is to say, ways in which the Nordic is appropriated and incorporated into international place branding practices and the conflicts that may arise when the Nordic travels. We invite contributions to the special issue that unpack the specificity of “Nordicity” in regard to place branding by – for instance - offering novel, points of critic, modes of analysis, novel conceptualisations of and ways to translate and transform Nordic place branding to an international context. Unpacking Nordic place branding reveals historical and contemporary stereotypes of national and regional differences. The special issue aims to examine the values, ideologies and practices that the Nordic countries have used to construct themselves with particular relevance for place branding. Such claimed values include cooperation, consensus, solidarity, democracy, freedom, social cohesion, and gender equality. Contributions may well scrutinise the social, cultural and geopolitical reasons to why these values historically have been emphasised in the region. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The institutional, economic, political, cultural context of Nordic place branding activities 
• Nordic place branding from an emic and etic perspective (external and endogenous) 
• Feminist and postcolonialist perspectives on Nordic place branding 
• Nordic values and imaginaries in branding practices  
• The moral affordances of Nordic place branding (e.g. ‘Jantelagen’) 
• Appropriation of the Nordic discourse in place branding strategies in other locations 
• Community, consensus, and participatory elements in Nordic place branding practice 
• Nordic place branding vs. European and Anglo-Saxon place branding 
• Sustainability and Nordic place branding 
• Practitioner-researcher relationships 
• Tourism vs local development

Submission guidelines & key deadlines:

Articles should be approximately between 4000-6000 words. General submission guidelines for authors can be found on the journal’s website.

Closing date for extended abstracts (750 words): 1st July 2019

Abstracts should be submitted by email to the guest editors. All abstracts will be reviewed by the editors and successful authors will be invited to submit a full paper via the JPMD ScholarOne online system.

Closing date for full submissions: 15th December 2019

Planned Publication Date: 15th March 2021

Estimated publication: 2nd January 2021

Expected issue number: 14.1

If you have any queries about the special issue or the submission process, please contact any of the guest editors: Cecilia Cassinger (cecilia.cassinger@isk.lu.se), Andrea Lucarelli (andrea.lucarelli@fek.lu.se), Szilvia Gyimóthy (gyimothy@cgs.aau.dk)

Guest editors:

Cecilia Cassinger, Lund University, Sweden

Andrea Lucarelli, Lund University, Sweden

Szilvia Gyimóthy, Aalborg University, Sweden