New Editorial Team announced for GEP

October 5, 2016

Global Environmental Politics (GEP), a quarterly academic journal that examines the relationship between global political forces and environmental change, recently announced its new editorial team to include two University of Toronto political scientists, Steven Bernstein and Matthew Hoffmann. Along with Erika Weinthal (Duke University), the new team will take over as editors for a five-year term starting officially with Volume 18 (February 2018). According to the official announcement, “Drs. Hoffmann and Bernstein are longtime members of the editorial board and active members of the GEP community. Collectively, they bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this position in the field of global environmental politics and beyond.”

Both political scientists expressed excitement over their new roles, Dr. Hoffman saying, “I’m excited about taking on the editorship of GEP because the journal serves, and is a key focal point for a community of environmental politics scholars and students that I’ve learned a lot from over the years. Serving as editor is a way to give back to this community and I’m gratified on both a personal and professional level that this community saw fit to trust me, Steven and Erika with this responsibility. Editing the journal is also a way to participate in scholarly conversations about sustainability and global environmental politics – not direct those conversations, but participate in the curation and dissemination of cutting edge knowledge on these grand challenges that face the global community.”

Dr. Bernstein remembers the journal’s beginnings a year after he joined the faculty at the University of Toronto. “High quality journals in global environmental and sustainability politics simply didn’t exit. More than 15 years later, the journal is amongst the highest ranked in political science and environmental politics, showing the vibrancy of this research area. Our department is an example of that, with 7 or 8 faculty members whose scholarship directly overlaps with the journal’s mandate. I feel like my professional life has grown up with the journal, and so it’s particularly gratifying to be able to take on a leadership role with my co-editors.” An ideal opportunity to help nurture the next generation of scholars he continued, “I still remember my first journal article – which took four years(!) from first draft to publication. A more supportive and active editor might have made that process a little smoother. It’s a tough road for young scholars, but the best new ideas often come from them. It’s a privileged position to edit a journal like GEP and have the opportunity to help nurture that work. Obviously doing so is also an imperative to keep the journal as a leader in the field.”

The journal was established under the founding editorship of Peter Dauvergne in 2000 and is published by MIT Press. An official ceremony to mark the occasion will be held at the publication’s next board meeting at the 58th International Studies Convention (ISA) in February, 2017.