I’m delighted to be able to announce that the subject of the inaugural issue of the new open access, edited-collection journal of the BSHS, called BJHS Themes,  will be:

 “Intersections: Science and Technology in Twentieth Century China and India”

The special issue editors will be Jahnavi Phalkey (King’s College London) and Tong Lam (University of Toronto)

In the open competition held to select the issues of BJHS Themes, proposals are judged according to standards of focus, originality, timeliness, and breadth of appeal to readers. In their successful proposal, Jahnavi Phalkey and Tong Lam outlined why they considered their theme to be so promising:

“Science and technology are dominant factors shaping Indian and Chinese modernity and the development paths of these two nations can illuminate important questions in the history of science as well as the rise of a global modernity. We do not merely juxtapose case studies in the two contexts; instead, the collaborations capitalize on the unique opportunities that China and India present to elucidate questions in the history of science that are not readily apparent elsewhere, and those that could potentially expose the limits of Western experience. We expect this to advance the understanding of modern India and modern China, but also the history of science at large.”

Contributors to BJHS Themes 1, will include:

Sunil Amrith (Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom)
Leon Antonio Rocha (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
Asif Siddiqi (Fordham University, United States)
Arunabh Ghosh (Harvard University, United States)
Fa-ti Fan (State University of New York-Binghamton, United States)
Madhumita Mazumdar (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, India)
Zuoyue Wang, (California State University, Pomona, United States)
Jahnavi Phalkey, (King’s College London, United Kingdom)
Madhumita Saha (Drexel University, United States)
Sigrid Schmalzer (University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States)
Michael Lewis (Salisbury University, United States)
E. Elena Songster (St. Mary’s College of California, United States)
Pin-Hsien Wu (University of Sussex, United Kingdom)
Diganta Kumar Das (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Tong Lam, (Department of History, University of Toronto, Canada)

More details about the inaugural issue, including titles of papers, will be announced later this year. Publication is expected in January 2016.

A proposal for Issue 2 has also been selected. This second issue is planned for publication in January 2017. An announcement about the successful theme will be made soon. To ensure you receive the latest information for BJHS Themes you can register for alerts here. 

Finally the competition for proposals for Issue 3 is now open, although there is plenty of time until the deadline (1 July 2017)! More details can be found on the BJHS Themes website:
http://journals.cambridge.org/bjt

If you have plans for an edited collection, and would like it to appear in a peer-reviewed, gold open access journal backed by a leading learned society for history of science (BSHS) and a leading publisher (CUP), then think BJHS Themes!

In the meantime, my thanks to all those who submitted proposals – the quality was extremely high, and the competition was tough – and congratulations to the successful applicants. BJHS Themes is an exciting new venture for both the BSHS and CUP, and I feel that it has got off to an excellent start.

Professor Jon Agar

University College London

Editor, BJHS Themes