Abstract
Our regular readers have certainly noticed a change in co-editor’s name on European Journal of Women’s Studies (EJWS) website and in hard copies. Starting September 2020,
In early 2020, Christina has told us she is pregnant and would be on maternity leave from March 2020 to April 2021. We congratulated her wholeheartedly and wished her and her family all the best with the changes that a new baby would bring. However, there was a drawback. With such a long absence, Christina has decided not to return to EJWS after the end of her leave. We regretted this very much as Christina has brought to EJWS great expertise in gender, (social) media and culture; racial, classed and gendered inequalities in the creative industries and classical music profession; as well as in young women’s engagements with feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism. We want to use this opportunity to warmly thank her for her intellectual investment in EJWS, her gentle and kind ways, positive energy and collegiality, and to wish her – with a new baby already there – all the best in her private and professional life. And to remind her to not be the ‘always-on’ academic (https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/doi/full/10.1177/1350506818794569)!
Faced with the need for search for a new co-editor, we realized that we have a perfect candidate already among us. Madeleine has been a member of the EJWS associate editors group since 2011 and is very familiar with the Journal, its politics, its main objectives, its achievements and its struggles in these complicated and troubled times. She has also led Open Forum for years and – through careful selection of important and interesting topics – contributed directly to the high quality of the EJWS’ output.
In making decision to invite madeleine to switch from being an associate editor to become a co-editor of EJWS, we very much appreciated the facts that she belongs to a younger generation of feminists and has vast international and multicultural experience. Europe and European feminisms have seen dramatic changes in the last two decades and even more so in the recent years. Anti-feminist, sexist, racist and xenophobic movements and political agendas have questioned some of the traditional feminist (and other social justice) movements’ strategies and theories. Belonging to the younger feminist generations, we know madeleine will, in her new role, continue to enrich EJWS with new knowledge and perspectives and thus contribute further to the quality and relevance of our publishing. We also believe that madeleine’s work and life experiences in different European countries, among diverse communities and in various kinds of academic, activist and practitioner circles, will help us maintain and further enrich EJWS’ perspective on Europe as a geopolitical, social and symbolic space implicated in the current global politics and its multiple (often devastating) consequences for those living in it, as well as for those who do not. So, we welcome madeleine wholeheartedly.