We did not receive any answers to our mails for 3 days. Then we knew. Agnes always responded to us within a few hours at the most. Always.
She loved the journal since she started as its editorial assistant over 15 years ago. It is an ESA principle that editorial teams change every few years. Agnes remained and ensured continuity. She held a Master in Sociology from the University of Essex and was close to Ken Plummer. She was also the editorial assistant of the journal Sexualities since its foundation in 1999.
Over her years in European Societies, Agnes worked with John Scott, Göran Therborn, me, and the current editorial team Patrick Präg, Evelyn Ersanilli and Alexi Gugushvili. Agnes would certainly continue, we all thought.
Associate editors knew that they could count on her. Marco Verweij, Sebastian Koos, Ionela Vlase, Yuliya Kosyakova, Detlev Lück, Martina Klicperova, Antonello Petrillo, appreciated her competence, effectiveness and warmth, which played a critical role in bringing to fruition our Covid issue of over 900 pages. Agnes’s work consisted in handling all queries by authors and reviewers, alerting editors to likely problems and making sure that our publishers got everything right. One does not imagine how sensitive the handling of an academic journal is. Careers, and to an extent, livelihoods, depend on reputable publications. Behind the restraint of sophisticated conventions, everyone is anxious. Receiving a rejection after months or years of hard work is deeply disappointing. Sometimes even a personal trauma.
Agnes not only understood all that, but she respected the authors and went to great lengths to show that respect on behalf of the journal. She felt for early-career colleagues when reviewers were late, and knew how to convey that feeling when gently nudging reviewers. It is this light touch of kindness that makes the significant difference between bureaucracy and assistance, between administration and support.
In all the years I worked with Agnes, I never heard from her an unpleasant remark, even when exasperated authors or arrogant reviewers addressed her impolitely, or held her responsible for delays or decisions over which she had no influence. In our weekly meetings, she would report these matters as part of our duty of care to all involved (‘after all researchers work out of interest for their field’; ‘after all reviewers do voluntary work’). After all, everyone would benefit from Agnes's efficiency and good will, a rare combination indeed.
Now, such combinations do not come from nowhere, they need to be robust to withstand the dark spectrum of life's tests; and Agnes was quite tested. A wheelchair user and a carer for a member of her family at the same time, she would describe situations that would have a Zen master panic, and dismiss their consequences with her hearty laugh. And in-between she would answer everyone, kindly, all the time.
Until she stopped. And now she will be missed.
Missed for her respect to others, for her concern for the journal, for her genuine and disinterested appreciation of due process in research publishing. She left her mark by discreetly teaching us that handing matters is in fact handling people, and in doing so, one should be fair and gentle at the same time. Also, that there are so many precious life principles that one can learn from one's editorial assistant …