EISA-OUP Voices in International Relations Book Series

About

EISA’s new Book Series, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), furthers the development of research at the frontiers of International Relations (IR). It expands the remit of the field by including innovative scholarship that broadens debates about key issues in IR, but it is more interested in scholarship re-problematizing IR and its ‘key issues’ of concern by approaching it from inside and outside the conventional core. We are committed to furthering diversity and inclusion in terms of authorship, location, topics and approaches from both inside and outside Europe. We have an inclusive approach to neighbouring disciplines, be it sociology, history, anthropology, geography, economics, political theory or law.

We know that IR has expanded considerably over the past two decades. The space occupied by the discipline in universities has steadily grown and with it the number of professional researchers and students working in the field. The scope of the discipline has also been extended both empirically and theoretically. The discipline has become less state-centric, more sensitive to theoretical and empirical diversity, more attuned to methodological innovation and more reflexive regarding the positionality of researchers. New approaches, themes, and forms of authorship therefore proliferate. These developments are to be welcomed, but they also come at the possible price of disciplinary fragmentation with a lack of communication across ‘camps’ (to echo Christine Sylvester). With no connecting communication, the discipline loses its sense of community and so also its capacity to embrace newer developments. Innovative exploration may be occurring in IR’s frontiers, but the core remains relatively unchanged. Journals and Book Series have often both reflected and reinforced this trend towards increasing specialization.

The EISA/OUP Voices Book Series aims to counter this trend. It is oriented around two principles: a pluralism that allows a diversity of approaches and scholars to be represented, and an ethos of communication that forges new connections between ‘the camps’ that currently constitute IR. This means exploring the new, connecting it to the established and cultivating a discipline that must (therefore) see itself as dynamic, multiple and evolving. Voices cultivates a sensibility to the research foci and approaches of a diverse range of authors positioned at the edges of the current reproduction of the discipline. Thematically, we aim to publish research that pushes the limits of IR conventionally defined from within and research that connects to it from without, for example, from queer, decolonial, legal, anthropological, philosophical, architectural or new materialist perspectives. A core ambition of the series is to remain at the frontiers of the discipline and so to encourage and support upcoming and emerging work while nourishing dialogue. This requires sensitivity to the potential of emerging themes and scholars not already sanctioned by academic hierarchies, and a willingness to actively support them.

Proposal Submission

Types of Submission:

This series will publish high-quality, innovative and ambitious research manuscripts that extend the disciplinary horizons and conventional debates within IR

  • Manuscripts will consist of original research
  • Manuscripts can be single, co or multi-authored.
  • Manuscripts will be in the range of 200-360 pages.
  • It is the author’s responsibility to secure permissions for any images included in the manuscript. These will be reprinted in black and white for print, but colour for e-books.

 

How to Submit Your Proposal:

Given our commitment to pluralism and communication, Voices offers prospective authors flexibility for proposal submission. This will help us recognize and respect diverse writing practices in IR while instituting standardized submission principles. With that in mind, submissions will usually have the following:

  • Book Proposal
  • 2 page Author CV
  • Substantive Material

 

The length and focus of the proposal and substantive chapters is at the discretion of the submitting author. However, some common models of submission might be:

 

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Book Proposal (10-12 pages, operates as an introduction) Book Proposal (4-5 pages) Book Proposal (4-5 pages)
2 substantive chapters Introduction Full Manuscript
2 page CV 1 substantive Chapter 2 page CV
2 page CV

 

In the case of (a) Edited Volumes and (b) PhD Dissertations revised into book manuscripts, we strongly suggest authors submit the FULL manuscript (i.e. Model 3).

All proposals and CVs submitted to Voices should be in 11 pt font, normal margins (2.54cm). All material, including substantive manuscript chapters, should be submitted through the online form

Voices Book Proposal Template:

When completing your submission package to Voices, please use the following template for the Book Proposal:

 

  • Title & Progress:

Provide the proposed title of the manuscript and clearly state its current status (i.e. is it already drafted? If not, when is the planned delivery date?) Please indicate any pre-published work which will be duplicated in the book.

 

  • Overview & Contribution:

This section should provide an overview of the core argument of the book and a clear summary of its main contributions to current debates in IR. It should include an account of the main theoretical framework and research methods used, and a summary of how these are developed through substantive / empirical chapters. This is the most important section of the book proposal: the central argument of the book should be explained in clear, forceful and compelling language.

 

  • Series Fit:

This section should briefly explain how your book fits with the ethos of the EISA-OUP Voices in International Relations Series. For example, does it reconfigure existing debates within IR. Introduce innovative directions in conventional IR research topics? Engage other disciplinary traditions in conversation with IR?

 

  • Competition:

This section should position the manuscript in relation to the most relevant books currently published on this topic in IR and, if appropriate, its adjacent disciplines. The main purpose here is to show how the proposed manuscript is different from its competitors and how it adds original research to existing debates.

 

  • Audience:

This section should explain the target audience for this book in terms of (sub)-disciplines, adjacent disciplines (if appropriate) and level of reader, bearing in mind the central audience will be academic researchers across IR.

 

  • Table of Contents:

This section should provide a full Table of Contents with Chapter headings and summaries. This should not provide empirical detail but should focus instead on explaining how each chapter contributes to the central argument and narrative of the book.

 

 

Process of Decision Making:

Each submission will be read and discussed by the EISA Series Editors. They will make a collective decision as to whether the manuscript will be forwarded to OUP for consideration. If required, the EISA Series Editors will consult their Advisory Board for guidance in specialist subject areas. Successful projects will be sent to OUP with a collective assessment from the EISA Series Editors. Once the project is forwarded to OUP, the publishers will take over the process and the project will enter their peer review process which is outlined here.

The Series Editors will be in contact with OUP throughout this process.

 

 

Governance

Voices Governing Structure

 

Series Editors

Debbie Lisle (E-i-C), Queen’s University Belfast

Tanja Aalberts, VU Amsterdam

Anna Leander, Graduate Institute Geneva / PUC Rio

Laura Sjoberg, Royal Holloway University of London

 

Advisory Board

Tarak Barkawi, Johns Hopkins University

Noé Cornago, University of the Basque Country

Scarlett Cornelissen, Stellenbosch University

Thomas Diez, University of Tübingen

Naeem Inayatullah, Ithaca College

Beate Jahn, University of Sussex

Caroline Moulin, UF Minas Gerais, Brazil

Burak Tansel, University of Newcastle

 

 

 

Turn your PhD into a Book

Specific Guidance for Turning your PhD into a Book:

One of the most common questions prospective authors ask is how to turn a PhD into a viable book. There are many resources online to help you think about this, including general advice such as PhD Progress  and PhD Studies , as well as advice from other disciplinary Associations. Given our pluralist ethos, we do not want to be overly programmatic about the PhD / Book distinction. However, if you have completed your PhD and are in the process of transforming it into a book for submission to Voices, we would encourage you to consider the following:

 

  • Positioning yourself in the field with confidence: In a PhD, you must show deference to those who have come before you and demonstrate your knowledge of the existing literature and debates. Positioning yourself within the field is crucial, but a book requires a much more confident and original voice. Pragmatically, this often means losing the required (a) ‘Literature Review’ chapter; and (b) ‘Methodology’ section or chapter, and reducing deferential language. Successful PhD transformations find creative ways to redistribute these key elements and insights into their analysis elsewhere in the PhD thesis.

 

  • Announce your project with authority: Be absolutely clear about what is original about your contribution to IR and how it takes existing debates forward. Cultivate your own voice from the very first sentence. Make sure your Introduction is excellent: this is the chapter that everyone will read so you want it to be compelling, concise and powerful. If your PhD is very specialized, it would be worth considering how the argument can be made more appealing to a broader IR audience.

 

  • Be strategic about pre-publication / duplication: How much of your book can consist of pre-published material (e.g. journal articles; chapters in edited books)? For US based University Publishers, this can be up to 33%, but for some UK publishers this is as low as 10%. In the discipline of IR, the rule of thumb is somewhere around 20% or one chapter of your book. This means that one chapter of your proposed book can consist of the journal article you have already published. Anything over one chapter / 20% decreases the originality of the manuscript.

 

  • Revise the PhD before submitting: no matter how minimal, some effort is needed to revise the PhD into book form. A book is a different beast than a PhD, and it is important to recognize these ‘generic’ differences. The general rule is that the scope and audience of a book are much broader than a PhD. It is likely that the examiners of your PhD gave you good advice on how to do transform your work, and you should certainly have these conversations with your mentors and supervisors. The Series Editors strongly recommend that you do this revision work before you submit your manuscript to