Editorial: British political studies and the politics of global challenges
| DOI | 10.1177/13691481211063400 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211063400
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(1) 3 –10
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211063400
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Editorial: British political
studies and the politics
of global challenges
Under the astute stewardship of editorial teams based successively at Birmingham,
Nottingham, Queen’s, and Edinburgh universities, The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations (BJPIR) has established itself as a journal of international signifi-
cance, at the forefront of major disciplinary debates. We are particularly grateful for the
work of the Edinburgh team in especially challenging circumstances. Those of us lucky
enough to witness the late John Peterson in action understand the size of the shoes that the
team had to fill, and they did so very effectively.
Assuming the editorship of BJPIR is a great privilege and a significant responsibility.
As the new editors, we aim to build on BJPIR’s already impressive standing and further
expand its international reach and reputation. To do this, our vision for the journal is prem-
ised upon two overriding concerns. First, we will extend BJPIR’s long-held reputation – as
a flagship journal of the United Kingdom’s Political Studies Association (PSA) – for driv-
ing forward the research agenda in British politics and political studies. Specifically, to
achieve this, our vision for BJPIR while it is at Leeds dovetails the strategic vision for the
School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) and is to position ‘BJPIR’ at the fore-
front of scholarly efforts to understand and address the politics of global challenges, such
as climate, health, violence, and geopolitics. Second, we will use our editorship to help
further much-needed structural change in the academy. Working with the PSA, we will
support the discipline-wide effort towards gender parity, and improve the journal’s repre-
sentation of under-represented minority groups, scholars from the Global South, and early
career researchers. These twin aims work in synergy; we are ambitious in our plans to
expand the journal’s scope so that BJPIR serves a wider community of scholars.
In keeping with the journal’s distinctive history, BJPIR will continue to provide a
forum for a diversity of approaches. Our vision is empirically, theoretically, and meth-
odologically pluralist. We value and will continue to support work across the full breadth
of the fields of international relations (IR), comparative politics, public policy, political
theory, political economy, and politics, as well as genuinely interdisciplinary research
agendas. This is reflected in the range of expertise of the Leeds editorial team, located in
POLIS, which represents one of the largest and most diverse political studies departments
in the country. In this Editorial Statement, we elaborate on these mutually reinforcing
areas in turn, before returning to consider our role in addressing academic structural
inequalities.
British politics and political studies
The landscape of British politics looked rather different when BJPIR was first published
at the end of the 20th century. Despite the prominence of the European question, few
observers regarded the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union as a
1063400BPI0010.1177/13691481211063400The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsEditorial
editorial2021
Editorial
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