Goldsmiths historians take command of military history journal
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One of the UK’s leading military history publications has appointed a new editorial board led by researchers from the Department of History at Goldsmiths, University of London.
World War I: stretcher bearers in Mesopotamia. Image credit: Wellcome Images
From February 2019, the British Journal for Military History (BJMH) will be co-edited by Professor Richard Grayson and Dr Erica Wald.
Professor Alexander Watson, author of the 2015 Wolfson Prize-winning book Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I is now chair of the journal’s editorial advisory board.
Dr Rosie Kennedy has been named book reviews editor, while Dr Erin Scheopner is one of five international managing editors. The new team’s first issue will be published in the summer of 2019.
Professor Grayson said: “In its first five years the journal has been a pioneer in the field by linking academic study with the general public through providing research on an open access platform. At the same time, it has reflected the diversity of a field that spans both specifically military subjects and the wider history of warfare’s place in society.
"Of particular interest to the new team is ensuring that we have an international range of contributors so we can full reflect innovation in the field on as broad a scale as possible.”
The BJMH was launched in 2014 by the British Commission for Military History as an alternative to ‘traditional’ academic military history publications, with Dr Matthew Ford of the University of Sussex as the founding editor.
The free, open access, journal takes a broadly conceived view of military history as a subject, and welcomes submissions from military historians and non-military historians, also encouraging input from writers both within and outside formal academia.
Over the past few decades military history as a field has developed significantly, with a new generation of military historians and ‘amateurs who write for the sheer love of it’ producing work which often reaches wide audiences. As the journal’s editors explain: “The military history shelves of many bookshops often take up as much space as mere history.”
Dr Erica Wald’s areas of expertise lie across the fields of imperial, social and medical history. She is the author of Vice in the Barracks: Military, Medicine and the Making of Colonial India (2014); teaches undergraduate modules at Goldsmiths on dictators, war and revolution, modern south Asia, and empires in comparative perspective; leads an MA class on society and rule in early colonial India; and is course convenor for MA History.
Professor of Twentieth Century History, Richard Grayson, holds research interests in Ireland and the First World War, the Irish revolution and the role of remembrance in contemporary society. His books include Dublin’s Great Wars: The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution (2018). At Goldsmiths he teaches on the First World War, Irish history, the USA in the era of the Vietnam War, and the Spanish Civil War.
The Department of History at Goldsmiths has helped pioneer the teaching of history through concepts: the issues, themes and controversies underpinning centuries of events. The Department is home to the Centre for the Study of the Balkans, and in 2016 became the first university department in the world to offer an MA in Queer History. MA Black British History launches at Goldsmiths in September 2019.
The British Journal for Military History is on Twitter @britjnlmilhist and further information can be found on the journal's website