The Importance of Contexts: A Q&A with the Graduate Editorial Board

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Over its nearly quarter-century existence, Contexts has relied on the contributions of dozens and dozens of talented, insightful, brilliant, dedicated, and hilarious graduate students, many of whom have gone on to become thought leaders within and beyond the discipline of sociology. In this training ground, they learn about the inner workings of an academic journal and a public-facing magazine—as well as the synergies and tensions that arise when collaborating with a team of editors to craft a publication meant to be both. Graduate editors’ roles involve tasks as disparate as searching for just the right images to help bring an article to life, conducting and producing video interviews with feature article authors, curating our dynamic blog, and selecting, pitching, writing, and editing research briefs that help us all appreciate the vast array of exciting new work published across a range of journals. In this conversation, faculty co-editors, Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn, and long-time managing editor Letta Page sit down with University of British Columbia sociology graduate students Sophie X. Liu, Parker Muzzerall, Colter J. Uscola, and Rose Xueqing Zhang, as well as Elena G. Van Stee at the University of Pennsylvania, to talk about their experiences at the magazine and their vision for it going forward.