Editorial
| Author | Lene Hansen,Colin Wight,Tim Dunne |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066108100072 |
Editorial
With this issue the editorship of the EJIR passes from Barr y Buzan and his
team at the London School of Economics to an Exeter-based editorship. The
new team of editors is the first in the history of the EJIR to be transnational
in orientation, with Colin Wight and Tim Dunne at the University of Exeter
and Lene Hansen at the University of Copenhagen. The editors see this
innovation as a symbol of the closer union that is taking place between the
different national IR communities within Europe. Our ability to function as
an editorial team is also an indication of how interconnected IR has become,
and we would also like to thank our two institutions for their generous sup-
port, including funds that make regular ‘real life’ meetings possible.
In light of the fact that the journal is now in its fifteenth year, it is worth-
while rehearsing its emergence and development. Discussions about forming a
distinctive European Journal of IR go back to the early 1990s, particularly the
first pan-European conference organized by the Standing Group on IR (SGIR)
of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) held in Heidelberg
in 1992. Within two years, the journal had found a leading publisher and an
editor — Walter Carlsnaes — who was deeply committed to building a
European-based journal of IR with a worldwide reputation for scholarly excel-
lence. This was followed by a further period of consolidation and growth under
the stewardship of Friedrich Kratochwil, James W. Davis and Heike Brabandt.
In 2004 the journal moved to the LSE, with the editorial team of Barry Buzan,
Kimberly Hutchings and Robert Falkner continuing the development of the
journal into one of the major global publications in International Relations. We
owe a debt to all of these previous editorial teams, but in particular, we would
like to thank our immediate predecessors at the LSE for facilitating the com-
plex process of transitioning the journal to a new home.
While it is commonplace for incoming editors to praise their predecessors,
in this instance we believe that such an acknowledgement is not merely a
polite gesture. In a relatively short time period the journal has reached the
European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2009
SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 15(1): 5–7
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066108100072]
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