As MPSA President Elisabeth Gerber announced on May 3, the Council voted to appoint me as Lead Interim Editor for June 2018-June 2019, in anticipation of a successful search for the next four-year editorial team. With previous editorial service to the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) and the Journal of Politics, the challenge of a one-month transition period seemed less daunting in light of the expectation of working with a team of associate editors. In identifying potential associate editors, my first priority was to find leading scholars across subfields of the discipline, ones whose professional values were consistent with the scholarly goals of the AJPS—and who were able to make a commitment to the journal, over other academic obligations, on such short notice.
As that one-month transition period comes to a close, I am pleased to announce that Sarah M. Brooks of The Ohio State University, Mary G. Dietz of Northwestern University, Jennifer L. Lawless of the University of Virginia, and Rocio Titiunik of the University of Michigan have agreed to serve as associate editors.
Sarah M. Brooks is Professor of Political Science and 2018-2019 Huber Faculty Fellow at The Ohio State University. Her research and teaching interests center on comparative and international political economy, Latin American politics and social protection. Brooks is also co-director of the Brazil Working Group at the Center for Latin American Studies, and co-director of the Globalization Workshop at the Mershon Center. She is the author of Social Protection and the Market in Latin America and she has written extensively on the topic of social security and pension reform. Her research, which has been supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung Foundation and Fulbright, has appeared in numerous scholarly journals including International Organization, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Latin American Politics and Society. Brooks received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University.
Mary G. Dietz is the John Evans Professor of Political Theory and Professor of Political Science and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. Her areas of academic specialization are political theory and the interpretation of texts, with concentrations in feminist theory and politics; democratic theory and citizenship; the history of Western political thought, and contemporary political and social theory. Dietz is the author of Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil and Turning Operations: Feminism, Arendt, and Politics; and editor of Thomas Hobbes & Political Theory. She has also served as editor of Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy from 2005-2012. Dietz received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Jennifer L. Lawless is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on political ambition, and she is the co-author of Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era, co-author of Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned Off to Politics, and author of Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office. She is also a nationally recognized expert on women and politics, and the co-author of It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office. Her research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, has appeared in numerous academic journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, and the Journal of Politics. Lawless received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University.
Rocío Titiunik is James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. She specializes in quantitative methodology for the social sciences, with emphasis on quasi-experimental methods for causal inference and political methodology. She is a member of the leadership team of the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Summer Institute, member-at-large of the Society for Political Methodology, and member of Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP). She is also associate editor for Political Science Research and Methods. Her work appears in various journals in the social sciences and statistics, including the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Econometrica, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Titiunik received her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Soon I expect an additional editor to join the team—more details when I have them. Until then, the five of us will be working to secure high-quality reviews promptly, and identify those manuscripts that satisfy our expectations of intellectual contribution and scholarly impact. Final manuscript publications decisions will be made jointly by the associate editor to whom the manuscript is assigned and myself, with no appeals accepted.
And so we’re off! The year will go by quickly, I’m sure—with thanks in advance to our reviewers (who do the real work) and to Rick Wilson and the rest of the Editorial Search Committee tasked with finding the next editorial team. I am also grateful to the many individuals on the MPSA Council, in the MPSA office, on the Wiley staff and on the MSU editorial staff for getting us going so quickly.
Hope that your summer is as fun and productive as I expect ours to be!
Jan Leighley, Interim Editor
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