Twenty-one years of Asian ethnicity: a short recollection

In February 2021, Asian Ethnicity formed a new team of editors-in-chief, led by Ian G. Baird, professor of geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Matthew W. King, associate professor of religious studies, University of California, Riverside, and Debojyoti Das, lecturer, University of Sussex, Falmer. The new team of editors-in-chief has geographical expertise in Southeast Asia, Inner Asia, and South Asia; while disciplinarily speaking, they are located in religious studies and history, social anthropology and geography. This collective leadership signals a change in the journal’s history and might further lead the journal to other uncharted territories in the future. Before this new team, the three former editors-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity were all more engaged with studies of China. Colin Mackerras, the founding editor, is an Australian sinologist and is currently emeritus professor at Griffith University specializing in Chinese culture. He has published widely on Chinese ethnicities. The second editor-in-chief, Chih-yu Shih, started his term in 2008. Shih is a professor of international relations and has also published widely on identities and nationalism in China. Shih thrives in both the discipline of political science and China studies. After working under Shih’s guidance as an executive editor for Asian Ethnicity for several years, Julie Yu-Wen Chen became the third editor-in-chief of the journal in late 2015. Chen, a former student of Shih, is also active in both political science and China studies. Her interest in ethnic politics in China focuses on the Uyghurs’ diasporic experience. In this short article, Mackerras shares his recollection of the birth of the journal and his observations about the journal’s development over its twenty-one-year trajectory. After that, Shih and Chen discuss the new elements that they have added to the journal with the hope that the new generation of editors-in-chief can continue to bring the journal to the next level of intellectual creativity.