Since its foundation in 1998 Civil Wars has published a wide range of articles on intrastate conflict and has built a strong reputation in the field as an excellent specialised outlet for high quality research. We are delighted to take on the editorship of the journal and, in doing so, will build on the excellent work of our predecessors, Edward Newman and Asaf Siniver, and continue the journal’s upward trajectory. We are pleased to welcome Edward and Asaf onto the journal’s Editorial Board and look forward to their continued involvement and contribution.
Civil Wars occupies a very valuable and specialised place in its subject area. The core focus on intrastate war, its causes and nature, and the factors that help to explain onset, duration, intensity, termination and recurrence remain critical issues within international relations, politics, area studies, history and development, as well as for the wider academic world concerned by security, conflict and peace.
As incoming editors we are keen to build on the existing core focus of Civil Wars by broadening the areas covered by the journal. This is an exciting and rapidly developing field and we welcome submissions that consider broader security and development issues, including:
| • | the development and character of peace following civil wars; | ||||
| • | the role of memories and memorialisations of war in developing peace; | ||||
| • | gender and conflict; | ||||
| • | the development of methodological and epistemological approaches; | ||||
| • | and the ethics of studying conflict and carrying out fieldwork in conflict zones. | ||||
We are also keen to encourage more, high-quality submissions from colleagues in the South as well as from early-career researchers from across the globe.
As part of this effort, we are pleased to welcome twelve new members to our Editorial Board from institutions across Europe, the US, Africa and South Asia and whose range of expertise and prominence across a number of fields reflects the continued ambitions and global reputation of Civil Wars. We very much look forward to working with this new team, are pleased to welcome back many longstanding Board members and thank those who are stepping down for their service and contribution over the years. Details of the refreshed Board can be found below and on the Civil Wars website.
In the current marketplace Civil Wars should be able to further develop not only an excellent reputation but also provide some benefits for an author to publish. Current research pressures dictate that this should be done via impact factors and citations. We would not seek to pursue this at the expense of excellence in terms of published materials, but we believe that this would itself be enhanced by applying to the Social Science Citation Index and gaining an impact factor. Consequently we will make this a key aim of our editorship.
In terms of our own profiles: Paul Jackson is a political economist working on conflict and post-conflict reconstruction and has published widely on Sierra Leone, Nepal, Security Sector Reform and African civil wars. He is a Senior Security and Justice Adviser to the UK Stabilisation Unit and has provided expert advice to, inter alia, the Governments of Colombia, Nepal, Sierra Leone and the UK, as well as to the World Bank, EU and UN. He is the editor of The Elgar Handbook of Security and Development (2015).
Jonathan Fisher is a political scientist working on conflict, security and development in Africa and has published extensively on the securitization of development cooperation, on the production of knowledge in conflict settings and on the wider international security politics of the African continent. His research has been funded by the ESRC, AHRC and Newton Fund and he has provided expert advice to the Governments of the UK, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. He regularly participates in high-level briefings of, and discussions among, senior diplomatic and security officials in London, Nairobi and Addis Ababa and between 2013 and 2014 held an Honorary Research Fellowship in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
As editors, we will make use of these broad networks within the UK, Europe, South Asia, North America, Africa and beyond to attract high-quality article submissions from a wide range of scholars and researchers.
Professor Paul Jackson and Dr Jonathan Fisher, University of Birmingham.
Civil Wars Editorial Board
Navnita Behera – Delhi University, India
Alex Bellamy – Griffiths University, Australia
Christopher Bellamy - Cranfield University, UK
Berit Bliesemann de Guevara – Aberystwyth University, UK
David Chandler – University of Westminster, UK
Karl DeRouen Jr – University of Alabama, US
Mark Duffield – University of Bristol, UK
Heidi Hudson – University of the Free State, South Africa
Caroline Hughes – Bradford University, UK
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe – University of Hull, UK
Andrew Mack – Simon Fraser University, Canada
Zoe Marks – University of Edinburgh, UK
Claire Metelits – American University, US
Gearoid Millar – University of Aberdeen, UK
Mansoob Murshed – Coventry University, UK/ ISS, Netherlands
Meressa Tsehaye – Mekelle University, Ethiopia
Edward Newman – University of Leeds, UK
Gerd Nonneman – Georgetown University Qatar, Doha
Ami Pedazhur – University of Texas at Austin, US
William Reno – Northwestern University, US
Oliver P Richmond – University of Manchester, UK
Asaf Siniver – University of Birmingham, UK
Astri Suhrke – Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway
Nina Wilen – ULB, Belgium
International Development Department at the University of Birmingham
[email protected]
Paul Jackson
[email protected]