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Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2018

 

Dear Readers, Welcome to Volume VI of the Leeds Human Rights Journal!

This academic year has been incredibly fruitful for the Journal. Having been a part of the Editorial Team for two years now, I have an immense belief in the Journal’s potential as the only one of its kind in the country. Needless to say, this Journal or any of the minor achievements along the way would not have been possible without the Editorial Team consisting of my Managing Editors, the Peer Reviewers, Online Coordinator and our Graphic Designer.

The Editorial Board, consisting of Managing Editors Rosa Morahan and Anton Witchell-Chibber and myself, has been one of the best teams that I have been a part of. Both of them brought a great amount of dedication, enthusiasm and initiative to the job. At the start of the year, we agreed that we wished to increase the Journal’s reach both within the University and the wider community as well as promote its research culture centred around human rights issues. With this in mind, we set about launching a Human Rights Blog to complement the Journal as well as attempted to increase the circulation to the other White Rose Universities.

Our online coordinator Hannah Nagar, another very important member of our team, has gone above and beyond what her role initially entailed. Her creative ability has indeed been an asset to our team in helping set up the blog as well as run our social media accounts.

In order to connect with the wider university and promote research culture, we reached out to various research groups such as the Undergraduate Research Experience and the European Centre for R2P. We also strived to strengthen our ties with clubs and societies that were concerned with similar ideas. This included strengthening our connection with the All Hallows Church in Hyde Park featured in the last volume, which will once again host the launch event and this time in collaboration with the Syrian Kitchen. I would like to thank both these communities for sharing in our vision and helping us host what promises to be a wonderful event on May 4th. The Church does some truly wonderful work to help the Leeds Community and I hope that future Editorial Teams strive to strengthen these ties.

We were overwhelmed by the number of submissions we received this year – academic as well as creative. I would like to thank our Peer Reviewers for helping us promote this research culture as well as painstakingly reviewing each submission that came through. This edition also includes professional headshots of the team which were taken by Viktoriya Kerimidova. I would also like to thank Lily Scott, our graphic designer for designing this edition of the Journal. Her dedication and hard work is what helped us get the Journal to print on time as well as keep up with the standard that previous teams had set.

The funding for this year’s Journal was provided by the Department of ESSL and the School of History. I would like to thank Professor Jeremy Higham and Dr. Rafe Hallett for their support of the Journal. This letter would be incomplete without expressing our gratitude to Tess Hornsby Smith for being a fantastic mentor who gave our ambition a direction. Additionally, I would like to thank the Footsteps Fund as well as Mr. Martin Pelan for recognising the Journal’s potential.

I am proud of how far the Journal has come in these two short years and am confident that it will only grow in the years to come. And lastly, I would like to thank Professor Amrita Mukherjee for her contribution based on the great work she has done over the years. It makes this edition all the more special.

Applications for next year's editorial positions open on May 4th.

Abhaya Ganashree

Editor-in-Chief, 2017-18.