Editorial 2021: Reflections on Vision and Perseverance

In a year that has been far from ‘normal’, we will approach this editorial in what has become our usual way. That is, a combination of reflecting on the year that has been, as well as looking to the future. In doing so, we can’t help but notice how the content of our editorial reflects this challenging year, in that it touches upon delicate and difficult topics alongside promising and stimulating ones.

To undertake this task we structure our editorial into four parts. First, in the next section, we reflect on the year at the journal. We overview the content published in this volume, volume 41, as well as outline some of the key events at the journal and related trends affecting the journal. In the second section of the editorial we undertake the difficult task of reflecting on Jeffrey Unerman’s legacy to our field of work, upon his untimely passing at the end of last year. While not an easy task, it is one that we, as editors, believe is essential to show our appreciation to our much missed colleague and to recognise his significant contribution to the journal. In the third section, we reflect on the concept of perseverance. This reflection is informed by our participation in this year’s CSEAR Emerging Scholars Colloquium and again places this editorial within the context of academic life during the current time. Fourth, we turn our attention to an overview of the years ahead at the journal and outline the changing roles in the SEAJ team.

1. The year in review

This year at the journal we have published Volume 41, which consists of a double issue, 41(1/2), and this issue 41(3). Overall Volume 41 includes two editorials, six regular articles, two commentaries, and two essays. In addition, and reflecting the vibrant reviews section of the journal, two book reviews, eight article reviews and two thematic reviews complete the volume’s content. While we will not endeavour to detail all of this content, we would like to highlight a couple of key points.

First, we would like to acknowledge this year’s special issue on Accounting and Conservation edited by Thomas Cuckston. A reflection of the contemporary importance of this topic (Cuckston 2018), this issue attracted a significant number of submissions and ultimately lead to a double issue. Consisting of a guest editorial (Cuckston 2021) and four articles (Büchling and Maroun 2021; Maroun and Atkins 2021; Rimmel 2021; Zhao and Atkins 2021), this issue engages with conservation in such a way that it contributes to the literature on extinction accounting (including a consideration of various contexts, i.e. China, South Africa and Sweden) and includes a contribution (Maroun and Atkins 2021), which addresses the important, but underdeveloped within accounting, issue of soil health.

The present issue 41(3) also contains two full length articles. Hummel (2021) contributes to the literature which studies internal factors for sustainability reporting. Hummel considers the impact of environmental orientation (sustainability as prioritised business goals vs. sustainability goals as supplement to core business goals) on the use of reporting frameworks, thereby nuancing our understanding of the influence of global reporting institutions. Mäkelä (2021) in her contribution to the journal considers the role of accounting in social enterprises in light of their ambiguous identity and ideology. Drawing on empirical material from Finland, she highlights the perceived multifaceted role of accounting within social enterprises and reflect on their implications.

In addition, the issue includes two essays (Boomsma 2021; Laine 2021) discussed further below and two commentaries (Egan 2021; Vinnari 2021). Commentaries published within SEAJ contribute to the literature by providing insights or provocations on particular issues of relevance. The two commentaries appearing in this issue continue this tradition. Egan (2021) for example, contributes to the discussions of the role of accounting within the field of diversity and inclusion. While we return to this issue below, readers of the commentary will note how, despite our field’s relatively long-term engagement with the broad area of diversity and inclusion, and despite some influential and important contributions, there is a need to further critical and reflective engagement on diversity and inclusion and how they intersect with accounting, accountants and the profession. Vinnari (2021) provides another style of commentary just as welcome in the journal. In her brave piece, Vinnari (2021) reflects on the challenges of academic scholarship and research and the need to be open about these. Here, in this contribution, she openly discusses a research project which she labels an ‘intellectual dead end’. It is, we believe, for reasons we discuss further below in section 3, important to reflect on challenges of academic work in such an open, honest, and generous way.

Aside from the content of Volume 41 we are happy to highlight a few other key points here at the journal. First, we would like to congratulate Dale Tweedie, the recipient of the Reg Mathews Memorial Prize. This is an annual award, named after a leading figure in the development of social and environmental accounting, for the paper published in the journal considered to have made the most significant contribution towards the social and environmental accounting literature in the previous year. Tweedie received this prize for his essay titled ‘A Limb, Not a Lens: Re-thinking Theory’s Role in Social and Environmental Accounting Research’ which appears in 40(1) (Tweedie 2020). The paper is now available freely on the publisher’s website. This essay contributes to the long-standing discussions and debates on the role of theory in social and environmental accounting and accountability research and represents the diversity of contributions that the journal publishes.¹ It is worth noting this is the second time Tweedie has received the award, with his paper co-authored with Martinov-Bennie titled ‘Entitlements and Time: Integrated Reporting’s Double-edged Agenda’ (Tweedie and Martinov-Bennie 2015) receiving the award in 2016.

Second, we are also pleased to note the amount of publicly available content that appears in this volume. A number of papers (including four in this issue) are available either through being open access or the journal’s standard practice (i.e. having editorials freely available). We appreciate that open access publishing is not available to all authors due to a myriad of reasons, and we also recognise that it has implications for authors, publishers and the journal (only some of which are beginning to arise and be discussed). Nevertheless, we wish to highlight the importance and benefits of having content as accessible as possible. With that in mind, we would also like to remind readers that access to the journal’s content is included in CSEAR membership, which means you can access all journal issues via the members’ section of the CSEAR website.

Lastly, we would like to acknowledge the continued support of the SEAJ community. The community appears to be growing, with the number of submissions, and authors submitting to the journal, increasing. This in turns requires a greater number of reviewers, and we would like to thank them for giving some of their precious time and energy to the benefit of the journal and its authors. Readership, as measured by downloads, also appears in line with other years with a slowly increasing trend which we hope will be supported by this issue’s content. We are also pleased to announce we established the position of social media editor over the year. This has significantly intensified the journal’s online presence. We would like to thank Kylie Kingston who is currently serving in this role for her outstanding work. And if you have not done so already, please follow the journal on Twitter @Journal_SEAJ (and do not hesitate to tag the journal to any relevant posts) as well as via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/social-and-environmental-accountability-journal.

2. Taking a step back: reflecting on Professor Jeffrey Unerman’s legacy

In our editorial last year, and through a series of contributions in the journal, we reflected on the legacy of Professor Rob Gray following his passing in summer 2020. At the time of writing that editorial we were aware that another great member of our community was unwell, but had not anticipated that we would again be in the position of noting the passing of another colleague, Professor Jeffrey Unerman. Gone too soon and so quickly, his passing has been hard to comprehend. Testimonies of Jeffrey’s immense contribution to our community, both as a scholar and friend, a range of fitting tributes have been published (see, Lindsay n.d.; O’Dwyer 2021). Having benefited from his intellect, compassion and friendly conversations ourselves, we are deeply aware of his vast and multifaceted legacy. As others brilliantly pay tribute to his legacy elsewhere and in the essays published in this issue, we would like to focus here on his notable contribution to SEAJ.

Jeffrey played an important role in the development of SEAJ. As Joint Editor from 2008 to 2013 he worked alongside Jan Bebbington to establish the journal in its current format. Moving the journal to the refereed format and negotiating the publishing agreement with Routledge (an agreement which was recently renewed), Jeffrey oversaw its development and subsequently built the journal a higher profile leading to an increased submission rate (Ferguson and Unerman 2012). It was during this time, as outlined in many of the Editorials written by Jeffrey and the Joint Editors who held the position alongside him (Jan Bebbington 2008–2011 and John Ferguson 2012–2015) that many of the journal’s current aims, scope and ethos were developed building on the long history of Social Accounting Monitor and Social and Environmental Accounting Journal (see Moses, Mohaimen, and Emmanuel 2020).

For example, Bebbington and Unerman wrote ‘One of our aims in this journal is to develop a high quality literature in a form that will be accessible to, and used by, people interested in developing a range of social and environmental accounting and accountability insights and practices’ (2008a, 59). One way of achieving this aim was to encourage submissions that were shorter papers to reach ‘a level of clarity that will make them accessible to a wider audience than read many of the existing journals’ (Bebbington and Unerman 2007, 6). This was also seen as important to ‘enhance the potential of this new literature to “make a difference” in practice.’ (Bebbington and Unerman 2007, 6, their emphasis), representing one of Jeffrey’s focuses as an academic as discussed further below. While the recommended word limit for the journal has been increased since in order to reflect the submissions received, the journal still encourages shorter submissions and submissions that seek to engage with policy and practice. As current editors, we would like to see more authors take up this challenge of Bebbington and Unerman and submit shorter, engaged and accessible contributions for a wide audience as we do not often receive submissions fitting this description as imagined (Bebbington and Unerman 2007).

Another early initiative from Bebbington and Unerman in establishing the journal was to encourage commentaries. They highlighted their beliefs that commentaries provide opportunities for debate, development and enrichment of our field (Bebbington and Unerman 2008b). We could not agree more. Commentaries and polemics, established by Bebbington and Unerman as part of the journal’s DNA, have been revived in recent years. They are an important part of the journal and represent a different – and we believe crucial – way in which authors can engage. We encourage people to contact the editors if they are interested in writing a commentary or polemic which opens up or contributes to debates, presents points or counterpoints. They could, as outlined by Bebbington and Unerman (2008b, 91), take the form of an alternative view – ‘here is a view of an eminent member of the academy. Does this view chime with your views of the world and its possible futures? Do you see the world differently or have different experiences than those documented here?’

From his early days as editor, Jeffrey has been committed to nurture a mentoring role for the journal. This role is meant to provide, to submitting emerging scholars and researchers from various contexts and backgrounds, patient and constructive support in the development of their research work – independent of whether their work will ultimately meet the journal’s quality standards and be published. Beyond the potential to increase submissions, this role attests of Jeffrey’s convictions of the importance to have as many voices heard as possible within our literature through sound research:

we welcome contributions from academics who have only recently begun researching in this field. As is the case with all disciplines, there is a need for current work to be informed by, and to advance, existing knowledge in the field. (Bebbington and Unerman 2011, 2)

The journal relies on contributions from its community and Jeffrey contributed to the journal in this way as well (e.g. Unerman 2011; Unerman and Zappettini 2014). Indeed, a stand out publication in the journal would be his paper with Zappettini on materiality (Unerman and Zappettini 2014). In this paper, also discussed by Laine (2021) in his essay, Jeffrey provides an example of the type of contribution he envisioned as a past editor of the journal. Reflecting on the importance of materiality in sustainability reporting, Unerman and Zappettini highlight the need to ‘take materiality into account when analysing the absence of social and/or environmental disclosures from organisational sustainability reporting’ (172). They illustrate, using an example from the literature, that when considering absence from reporting that ‘such interpretations can only be justified if organisational processes related to materiality are factored into the analysis’ (172). Anecdotal evidence suggests that several readers skipped to the examples to see if their work was amongst those challenged by their analysis. At the time of them writing this piece, materiality was perhaps considered more in the practical sphere than in the academic/research one. With clarity and logic of argument, Unerman and Zappettini address a relevant issue for social and environmental reporting researchers, highlighting the need to be critically aware of what we do as researchers – especially if our findings are to be relevant to policy and practice. In parallel, this contribution is a great example of how Jeffrey championed and pioneered more than one topic in social and environmental accounting research throughout his career.

Through their multiple forms, Jeffrey’s contributions to SEAJ are influential and long lasting. They appear to be driven by a desire to transform and challenge (social and environmental) accounting scholarship, in order to keep it innovative, engaged and focused on the key issues. He contributed to set out a vision for the journal and for our field more broadly. We are immensely grateful for his commitment to SEAJ over the years and for his inspirational legacy.

As we have noted, Jeffrey’s scholarship and contribution extends well beyond any single journal or community group. In the two essays that follow, Boomsma (2021) writes of Jeffrey’s contribution to the area of NGO accountability, while Laine (2021) speaks to his contribution to the sustainability reporting research. However, Jeffrey’s insights extend well beyond these two areas and beyond the academic space. His contributions to the profession (a topic he often wrote about, for example see, Unerman (2021)) were immense. Yet, as well as all of this Jeffrey was a wonderful colleague and extremely generous with his time – especially when it came to emerging researchers. These multiple roles and multiple influences are captured in the contributions of Boomsma and Laine, who we thank for contributing in this way. We appreciate they were not easy pieces to write. We hope that in reading them people take time to remember Jeffrey fondly – whether that be as scholar and/or friend.

3. Reflecting on perseverance

In light of the challenges the last (two) year(s) brought to academics, we thought we would dedicate some of our editorial to reflecting on perseverance. Part of this reflection emerges from our presentation at the plenary session of the last online CSEAR Emerging Scholars Colloquium in August 2021 where we were asked, as editors of this journal, to discuss some of the implications of the pandemic to publishing and in doing so reflect on perseverance in the face of inequitable obstacles.

With the pandemic ongoing for almost two years now, the varied impacts it has had, and still has, on academic lives are discussed regularly. For example, it has been noted that some have faced a decrease in their publication outputs and research productivity, while others have published more than usual. A plethora of events burgeoned online, making scholarly exchanges more accessible than ever. This was especially the case for individuals who, for various reasons, are more limited in their ability to travel and attend the more traditional conference and networking formats. Conversely, a sharp decline in face-to-face interactions has also obviously occurred. This has prevented engagement for those who benefit from the energy, motivation and ideas that emerge from informal discussions. As editors, we have also noted impacts on both sides of review process. Finding available reviewers is more of a challenge, and we would like to thank reviewers once again. Both reviewers and authors often need more time to complete the review or revision process, something we understand and are happy to support. We are also aware of authors withdrawing their papers due to lack of time and energy to work on their revision in the current context. We hope it does not have to get to this point and encourage authors in this situation to get in touch with us, or any editor for that matter, before withdrawing their paper. We also cannot help but note that the pandemic has been embraced by many authors as a new research opportunities (e.g. Larrinaga and Garcia-Torea 2021; Leoni et al. 2021), and rightfully so, as there are brilliant, important, research questions to explore. Still, we would encourage members of our community interested in the topic to make sure they engage sufficiently in their work with the pandemic and the issue/implication related to it they are seeking to explore. We feel the need to emphasise this as we have noticed that some authors are not sufficiently engaging with the pandemic in their papers, perhaps equating it to other crises (e.g. the global financial crisis) or failing to recognise the contextual aspect of the pandemic and its implications, unfortunately reducing their chances of success in the publication process.

Beyond being discussed regularly, the impacts of the pandemic are experienced daily, and require each scholar to adapt. When trying to articulate this need, we found it useful to draw on the concept of perseverance, or more specifically the need to be perseverant, i.e. ‘to persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement’.² That said, being perseverant is not about ultimately succeeding or failing in an endeavour. It is more about being aware of our own contextualities and identifying how we can make them work for ourselves. Indeed, underlying the brief above nomenclature of impacts, it is important to recognise that no two persons have been/are impacted in the same way by the pandemic. Each scholar has been affected, and still is affected, by the pandemic in their own particular way, influenced by a large number of different (and at times complex) factors. Each scholar dealt/deals with these impacts in their own personal way. Ultimately, structural and contextual inequities surface. Recognising and embracing these specificities, these differences in the way the pandemic affects each individual seems like a significant step in nurturing perseverance. We reflect on some of these briefly in the paragraphs that follow.

There is a myriad of different contexts affecting how one is able to engage in academic work in a pandemic context. Care responsibilities, socio-economic status, financial stability, living arrangements, geographic location, emotional toll, are only some of the many contextualities (see Hörisch 2021). It thus seems important to acknowledge the challenging aspects of our individual context. It might help being more at peace with it. It could also make us more agile to deal with them and transform them to our advantage. In other contexts, some scholars dealing with intense emotions channelled their experience into the development of a research article (Boncori and Smith 2019; Malsch and Tessier 2015). Could the emotions stirred up by the pandemic context and its impacts be channelled this way? Alternatively, it could be that having to accomplish different than usual tasks (e.g. teaching online, helping out a neighbour having to quarantine, homeschooling, and the like) or working in a different context (let’s say from the kitchen table or the living room) might nurture the creativity that is essential to any research work.

Part of recognising and embracing our respective contexualities also relates to defining our own measures of accomplishment (note how we avoid the term performance). It may be easier to nurture perseverance if we set our own objectives in terms of accomplishment taking into account our context, rather than setting unachievable expectations for ourselves, or having them externally imposed on ourselves. Now, we understand that some institutional constraints persist and are hard to shake off, but the pandemic provides some argument, creates some opportunities, to make the case for alternative measures of accomplishment (Malisch et al. 2020).

Defining our own measures of accomplishment relates to different issues that may be taken in consideration alone or in combination. First, it underlines the singularity and individuality of each accomplishment. In other words, a ‘victory’ for a person will be (should be) different from a ‘victory’ for another person. Whatever their scale. A small victory is a victory nonetheless, and deserves to be recognised as an accomplishment in light of our own context. As a result, this implies that contextualities preclude comparisons. Comparing accomplishments is fast and easy but, taken out of their context, accomplishments lose all meaning. Here it might be worth keeping in mind two pragmatic considerations. First, social media are known to be one-sided, with people showing only their successes. To avoid (invalid) comparisons, it might be useful to take this into account when consulting the latest posts. Second, publications and other academic accomplishments are tied to their authors, and to their authors only. In other words, the publication of a colleague only reflects on this colleague’s potential, and does not send signals about anyone else’s potential.

We realise what a challenging task defining our own measure of accomplishment is and see some potential way forward in the work of Michelon (2021). In her essay, Michelon draws on the work of Wiseman (1996) to call for greater academic empathy among academics circles, emphasising how ‘academic empathy is more about how us, as individuals, take on our daily academic endeavours’ (7). Michelon (2021) notes how Wiseman identifies four attributes of empathy: perspective taking, no judgment, recognising emotions and communicating the understanding. Her work inspires us to encourage what we could call ‘academic self-empathy’ to nurture perseverance. This would mean embracing the four attributes of empathy in defining our measures of accomplishment. Perspective taking requires each of us to take our contextualities into account. Avoiding judgment speaks to the need to avoid comparisons we discussed above. Recognising emotions encourages the explicit recognition of the difficulties brought by these challenging times, briefly discussed at the outset of this section and something we return to below. Communicating the understanding then suggests to take all this into account when setting up our objectives in terms of accomplishment.

Beyond recognising and embracing contextualities, nurturing perseverance seems related to the importance of the purpose we give to our individual and collective work. In general, members of our research community are motivated by the desire to contribute to a more sustainable (or at least less unsustainable future) (Gray 2004; Thomson 2014; Laine et al. 2020). Beyond this broad, ambitious and noble purpose, many of us identify a more focused purpose for our research projects, intended to contribute to this global goal. Perseverance would be attached to, and nurtured by, this focused purpose, in that this focused purpose has to be powerful enough to keep us going. Passion comes into play here as well (Correa and Laine 2013), in that passion for our research topic or research purpose is likely to provide meaning, motivation, energy (and fun!) to any research endeavour, despite the research’s challenges and the researchers’ contextualities. Passion thus feeds into perseverance.

Relatedly, communities seem to come into play when nurturing individual perseverance. Interactions with peers in the research process can be a powerful driver of perseverance in the face of inequitable contextual obstacles. Once again, the pandemic encouraged developments in this area. The myriad of online conferences and webinars are cases in point. Another example relates to online writing groups, where scholars connect online to work on their respective projects and exchange over planned breaks.³ In parallel, the research community also has a role to play in acknowledging and discussing challenges, setbacks and failures in the research process. A polished article published in a scientific journal does not reveal the professional and contextual obstacles authors had to overcome to reach publication. We believe there is a need to be more open about our respective difficulties when pursuing research, as no research project follows a straight path. To this end, we again encourage people to read Eija Vinnari’s commentary in this issue. As we note above, she candidly exposes how she faced an intellectual dead end in one of her research projects, and how she experienced it. We believe many of our readers will recognise themselves in Vinnari’s experience and identify some takeaways to nurture their own perseverance.⁴ It seems inadequate to confine communities to the research communities however. Going back to our interpretation of perseverance encouraging the identification of how our own contextualities can work for ourselves, the interplay of contextual factors could make it that one finds a community beyond academia. A like-minded group of peers might emerge out of a dog-walking group, a community garden or a running group. Ultimately, the location or source of the community does not seem central. It is more about how interactions within a community, whatever their make-up, nature or purpose, play a significant role in breaking silos and isolation, and in developing (self-)empathy, and a greater sense of belonging. Ultimately, such elements could be key in nurturing perseverance.

These reflections on perseverance are by no means complete, they are merely emerging thoughts brought by the challenges of last two years and the increasingly demanding academic context. There are certainly more discussions to be had on the importance of contextually grounded perseverance in academia.

4. Looking ahead

From individual contextualities we now move back to the journal’s context in order to say a few words on plans for the future. Last year we reflected on the COVID-19 pandemic as it related to the journal and the type of research the journal focuses upon. We noted that:

although COVID-19 related concerns have taken centre stage in the last year, the social and environmental issues the journal has for a long time been focused on have not disappeared. Some have been more clearly exposed (e.g. the climate challenge, inequalities and injustice), others have been accentuated while others (temporarily?) set aside (e.g. waste). Ultimately, the events of the last year reaffirm how there remains a need, and an urgent one to carry on the work that is the focus of SEAJ. The deep sense of care, the feeling of urgency and the call for action and transformation that permeate our community and literature certainly have not lost their relevance, indeed we would go so far as to argue that their relevance has been further underlined and accentuated. (Rodrigue and Tregidga 2020, 158)

We think that this statement remains an important one. As we note above, seriously and carefully executed research on the pandemic is important, and likely to remain a focus for many in the years to come. However, there are a myriad of other issues that require our attention and for which we encourage those working in these areas to consider SEAJ as an outlet for their work. While our regular issues remain an option for those wishing to engage with social and environmental accounting and accountability issues in a broad sense, we also have a series of planned special issues which connect to some of these specific urgent issues. Before we detail them below, we wish to express our thanks to all the guest editors involved, as we greatly appreciate their commitment to the journal.

Our next special issue, currently in preparation and edited by Robert Charnock and Ian Thomson, is on Accounting and Climate Finance. As starkly highlighted in the most recent IPCC report (IPCC 2021), action on the climate cannot wait. And as Charnock and Thomson (2020) note in their call for papers for the issue the IPCC have ‘defined their problem space, evidence gaps and information requirements’ but are ‘in dire need of research insights from communities such as ours’. We are looking forward to seeing how this issue engages in this conversation, and hopefully further conversations on climate, climate finance and related issues moving forward.

Following on is a special issue edited by Lee Moerman, Dianne McGrath, Dan Murphy and Sandra van der Laan titled ‘Accounting in Competing Worlds’ (Moerman et al. 2021). With this call for papers they specifically invite authors to ‘consider the concept of competing worlds by exploring the role of accounting and accountability in social and environmental contested spaces’. The call for papers offers a range of illustrative topics for examination. The scope of their call is wide ranging and we encourage those working in the area to consider submitting to this issue.

And the last planned special issue currently in development (the call for papers should be out soon) relates to the important area of diversity and inclusion. This issue will be edited by Matthew Egan and will build upon his commentary featuring in this issue. In having a special issue on the topic of diversity and inclusion SEAJ wishes to open up this topic for further conversation within our literature. While COVID-19 has been one key area of attention and focus globally, inequities and injustices have been another – sometimes exacerbated or highlighted by the pandemic itself. Indeed the current social context, with many social movements denunciating inequities, is a reminder of the need to pay more attention to these issues in our research. This echoes the call made by colleagues in their manifesto on Opening Accounting (Alawattage et al. (2021) available open access in Accounting Forum). This group of 23 accounting academics seek to ‘implore the accounting academic community to expand its focus to issues of significant importance, recognizing inequities and our complacency, or worse, our perpetuation of said oppression’ (228). The YouTube recording available at: Opening Accounting: A Manifesto – YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXzc_9TTv_I) provides a short insight into the issues posed and will make an excellent resource in spreading the message to our colleagues, students and beyond. The Manifesto is reflective and powerful. And it needs to be. As these issues, if taken seriously, are uncomfortable and unsettling.

Again, we would invite you to submit your work to the journal, either to these special issues or as a regular submission. Keen to see a distinctive feature of the journal continue to flourish, the reviews team is always happy to receive proposals for book, article and thematic reviews. As always, we welcome enquiries from interested contributors and the journal remains open to a range of contributions (e.g. regular papers, essays, commentaries or polemics). Like foreseen by Bebbington and Unerman in the early stages of the Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, we particularly see value in shorter, novel and engaging contributions. However, there are also other, creative ways that researchers and scholars can engage with the issues in our field. Account giving, account receiving and accountability relationships are complex and diverse. And embracing a diverse way of engaging is required. We take the opportunity here to direct readers to the recent open access publication of Breaking Boundaries: (Counter) Accounts during the Pandemic – letters to future generations (Arjaliès et al. 2021) for inspiration. We see many opportunities to continue the discussion started within this digital book in the pages of SEAJ.

4.1. Moving forward: changes to the SEAJ team

As part of the normal rotation of positions at the journal, 2022 will bring some changes to the journal’s team. We are pleased to announce Colin Dey will take up the Joint Editor position for a four-year term, working alongside Michelle Rodrigue to lead the journal. His active participation in CSEAR, not only at conferences but also through his service as a member of the CSEAR Council and his role in managing the website and other social media activities, makes him well positioned to lead the journal. Colin is also a long-term contributor to the journal, not only through the review process and as a member of the Editorial Board, but also as an author – he co-authored one of the top cited papers in the journal (Gibbon and Dey 2011). We are pleased to have him take this leadership role and look forward to his influence on the journal.

In parallel, Lies Bouten, having completed her four-year term, will leave the reviews team. We thank her sincerely for her contribution over the years and the development of this section of the journal during that time. We are pleased that Nicolas Garcia-Torea has agreed to join the reviews team to work alongside current reviews editors Mercy Denedo and Matthew Scobie.

Matias Laine will finish his time as SEAJ Convenor at the end of the year as well. Matias has now completed his long-standing contribution to the journal in all formal editorial positions – reviews editor, Joint Editor and Convenor. We thank him immensely for his service and decade long commitment to the journal, his constant support to the editors, and his acumen for governance and policies. We are pleased that he will remain part of the journal through continuing on the Editorial Board. Completing the rotation is Helen Tregidga who moves from the Joint Editor role at the end of the year to take over as SEAJ Convenor.

The new members of the team will move into place over the next few months. As always, the editors welcome feedback and ideas. For now, we leave you to enjoy this last issue of the year, hoping you will learn from the new research articles, be inspired by the commentaries and be informed by the reviews.

Notes

1 Upon receiving the award, Tweedie reflects on his essay on the CSEAR blog: http://csearweb.blogspot.com/.

2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persevering.

3 See Harrington (2018) at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05589-w for insights on how to set a writing group.

4 Needless to say we welcome additional pieces reflecting on the research process or a particular research experience in the future. Please get in touch with the editors should you be interested in developing a commentary on the matter.