After our short break, we will launch the new series of Discover Society on 7th April. We are moving to a quarterly format focused on specific themes with invited contributions. We remain committed to publishing good quality writing that is measured, factual, and critical and that intervenes in current social and political debates. The new format will provide an opportunity for more focused interventions with the possibility of a pdf publication of the issue that can be downloaded for easy reference.
Our first issue will focus on Peo Hansen’s important new book, A Modern Migration Theory. It dismantles the dominant idea, in political circles, that there is a trade-off between migration and the sustainability of the welfare state. It offers a timely rethinking of how austerity can be overcome in an inclusive social and public policy. Hansen will introduce the themes of his book in an opening article and the issue will also include responses by Adrian Favell, Maya Goodfellow, Fadhel Kaboub, Lucy Mayblin, and Fiona Williams.
We first launched Discover Society in October 2013 setting out to publish academically informed short pieces for a general audience. Since then, we have published 14 pieces every month on a range of topics resulting in over a thousand contributions. We are grateful for the support of Policy Press, later University of Bristol Press, during this period and for the technical know-how of Mark Carrigan and Pat Lockley. In March 2020, we started a special section on the coronavirus pandemic. This was titled, The Covid-19 Chronicles, and focused specifically on social science responses to the pandemic. This contains almost 200 short articles. All back issues will continue to be available via the Discover Society archive. We would also like to thank Sue Scott who was one of the co-founders of Discover Society and joint managing editor for all her support.
Future issues of Discover Society: New Series are planned on Brexit and the Nations of Britain, and on Politics, Publics, and Expertise. There is the possibility of issues being guest-edited and we will make details of these opportunities available shortly. We are grateful to Ishan Khurana and Lukas Kikuchi for the redesign of the site and their technical assistance in this relaunch. We hope you enjoy Discover Society: New Series.
Look out for the first issue on 7th April …
Gurminder K Bhambra and John Holmwood
