Editorial 49.1

The “academic summer” has long been a time of ritual: examining doctoral theses on beaches; Moodle site design cruelled by patchy wifi; plaintive emails from librarians seeking reading lists; the list goes on. Over the last decade, a new ritual has arrived: which of our colleagues found themselves in the path of climate disaster? Whose celebrations were tinged with anxiety? Even corresponding with authors and guest editors has become fraught: one editor was uncontactable after being evacuated from a fire near Victoria’s Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park. In one almost surreal development this summer, the Victorian Country Fire Authority dubbed a two-hour window that allowed some residents to temporarily return to their property to collect valuables and Christmas presents “Operation Yuletide”. We are fast running out of descriptors: the 2019–2020 Australian bushfire season was dubbed Black Summer, but for how long will that designation remain meaningful? Soon, if not already, all summers will be Black.