Joy Zhang

It was a great honour to be elected as the new editor for two of the International Sociological Association’s (ISA) publications:1) Current Sociology monographs (special issues) and 2) the SAGE Studies in International Sociology.

Since last November, I’ve been supported by a wonderful group of colleagues at the ISA, especially my predecessor Professor Chaime Marcuello. I look forward tor promoting ISA research culture through working closely with ISA Research Committees (RCs) and National Associations (NAs) in the years to come.

In particular, there are four key areas that I feel the CS monographs and SSIS series offer a  distinct advantage to advance contemporary sociology: 

• Diverse socio-technical imaginations and their implications for our global future: Our sociological reality and disparity is intrinsically entangled with differentiated techno-science abilities and preferences. Different value and development priorities attached to technological innovations are key sources of conflict and collaboration within and across national borders and give rise to inter alia new environmental, economic, security, and civil rights concerns, as well as new forms of participation and democratisation.
• The futuring of global justice and solidarity: I would particularly be interested in encouraging publications that not only explore what the future entails but also the role of sociological research in actively ‘futuring’ the future.
• Cosmopolitanise the epistemological toolbox for social theorisation through meaningful transnational cross-fertilisation: A key issue today is how to bridge widening ideological divides between and within different societies. While various decolonial efforts have valuably demonstrated how sociological investigations can be ‘de-linked’ (to borrow Walter Mingonolo’s terminology) from traditional hegemonic discourses, much remains to be done to explore how we can ‘re-link’ local insights and aspirations to formulate cosmopolitan wisdom. 
• Innovative research and artistic methods to broaden the scope of evidence sociological research can and should capture: The ISA already has a range working and thematic groups that focus on digital, biographical, historical, comparative, ethnographic, sensory and artistic methods. But to capture innovative methods on paper also involves innovative curation of the texts and images on paper, without necessarily raising publication costs. I hope to explore possibilities with publishers and authors on this. I believe the best way to promote epistemic justice is to encourage and showcase rigorous methodological innovations from Global South communities.

I’m also delighted to announce that as of this January, the turnaround time for proposal review has been reduced for both CS monographs and SSIS. More importantly, it is now, for the first time, an explicit requirement for proposals to both series to include how potential guest editors plan to support epistemic diversity and inclusivity.

It’s a wonderful platform with a developing editorial board, please get in touch if you want to develop a book/special issue idea, or you want to contribute to this collective intellectual journey.