Professor Rodanthi Tzanelli releases Planetary Biostyles: Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes (2025)

A new book is released by Professor Rodanthi Tzanelli. Planetary Biostyles: Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes.

The suggestion that we live in the age of multiple, overlapping crises, which announce the end of human and nonhuman life should be treated as an invitation to reflect on community-making in the Anthropocene.

The School of Sociology and Social Policy would like to congratulate our colleague, Professor Rodanthi Tzanelli, Professor of Sociology of Culture, on the publication of Planetary Biostyles: Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025).

Planetary Biostyles: Community-Making and Futures Design in the Age of Extremes generates a map of dominant critical schools of thought, which attempt to answer what ‘life’ is in scholarship and in public cultures, and how it is valued in the Anthropocene, the era of human domination over our planet’s futures. The study of the communities emerging from mapping these collective biographical styles of life, or biostyles, is placed in ‘snapshots’ of extreme situations in tourism consumption, artwork, anti-museum design and technological reconfiguration.  

The book’s paradigmatic map brings into focus patterns of prejudice about what is seen as worthy to preserve in contemporary societies. However, it also suggests that despite their flaws, the same biostyles can help us to design inclusive futures for different human communities, natural habitats, and our planet. 

The research carves new analytical pathways into ‘planetary theory,’ a growing field embracing the humanities and the social sciences, making this publication not only accessible for sociologists but also to academics across transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. 

Professor Tzanelli has commented that, “this book represents the crystallization of various discussions that took place during symposia and conferences I organized under the auspices of the Bauman Institute in Leeds, between 2021 and 2023. The themes of these events centred on the contemporary development of academic paradigms, with a particular emphasis on movement and flux in the Anthropocene”.

Following the publication of this book, Professor Tzanelli is currently exploring the applications of aspects of her argument in the fields of mega-event and tourism theory. These endeavours serve as a stepping stone to her next related research project, which will focus on the atmospheric indexicality of climate change and catastrophe. 

Professor Rodanthi Tzanelli joined the University of Leeds in 2007 and was promoted to her current role as Professor of Sociology of Culture in 2024. She also serves as the Deputy Director of the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds. Professor Tzanelli is a social and cultural theorist of mobility with particular reference to the representationalist contexts generated by contemporary crises such as overtourism, climate change, consumption, and capitalism. She is the author of numerous critical interventions, research articles and chapters on tourism, digital technologies, film, and mega-event ceremonies.  

If you would like to find out more about Professor Rodanthi Tzanelli please visit her pages at LinkedIn, Google Scholar, and on ResearchGate.