This special section grew out of a series of contributions presented in the context of the international symposium “Managing coastal change and climate vulnerability: questions of space, place and landscape”, held at Hamburg University (Germany) in November 2015. All papers are based on the insight that coasts are partially solidified zones of fluid transition holding extreme and powerful dynamics which make it worthwhile exploring pressing issues of coastal change whether in relation to spatialities of nature conservation, conceptual issues concerning the environmental governance of the coast or the role of art as a facilitator in coastal management processes. Drawing on a rich array of qualitative methods and theoretical approaches, providing far-ranging empirical insights and reflecting reflexively on the implications of the research undertaken, the papers of this special section contribute to sketching out a nascent cultural geography of coastal change. In this introduction, we focus on the conceptual aspects which inform and cut across each of the contributions and which we envisage as conceptual building blocks meriting further investigation. Taken as a whole, the special section offers an insight into the potential of methodological and epistemological pluralism to empirically come to grips with the multifaceted character of coastal change while explicitly challenging prevailing scientific cultures and epistemologies of the coast.