González Hauck, Sué

Krakau, Meike

Lischewski, Isabel

English

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“The More Things Change, the MoreThey Stay the Same?”Sué González Hauck, Meike Krakau,Isabel Lischewski2024-04-29T08:00:24At Völkerrechtsblog, we have quite frequently wondered about time, speed, timing,and temporalities. For example, when drafting an editorial for a ten-year anniversary,there is considerable temptation initially to divide the text into neat sections between“the past”, “the present”, and “the future”. However, at second glance, we – meaningthe blog’s current Co-Editors-in-Chief Sué González Hauck, Meike Krakau, andIsabel Lischewski – find that such a division is actually almost impossible.After all, the development of an institution such as a blog does happen in fits andstarts and sometimes painful growth spurts, but at the same time often so slowlyand gradually that it is all but unnoticeable at first. Oftentimes, we have furthermoremade the experience that we thought we were debating the introduction of radicallynew policies at the blog only to realize that we were in fact rehashing year-olddiscussions. Time is, indeed, a flat circle, and progress is not linear – but possibleand indeed imperative.Case in point, many of our still-current team members, including Sué and Isabel,joined Völkerrechtsblog in mid-2019, when the blog staff almost doubled insize, marking an important growth spurt and a decisive move towards moreprofessionalization. Four and a half years later, in late 2023, we grew our team oncemore by twelve new editors, mirroring the “big extension” of 2019 – but this time witha focus on diversity and internationalization much honed since then.Despite our increased internationalization, at Völkerrechtsblog, we never tried tohide the fact that we are and remain situated in a very specific, i.e. the German-speaking, legal tradition. Even though we now predominantly publish posts inEnglish and have a wide international readership, we never considered changingour ‘unpronounceable’ name and even made the “Ö” Umlaut our logo. This is ourway of acknowledging that knowledge production is always situated. In the very firstblog post published on Völkerrechtsblog, Dana Schmalz and Michael Riegner statedthat one of the goals of this new platform would be to express the autonomy anduniqueness of international law scholarship in the German-speaking world while alsofostering dialogue – with other legal and adjacent disciplines and with internationaldebates surrounding international law. We remain committed to this goal.Running and funding an academic blog continues to come with its privileges as wellas precarities. Like so many other institutions who are part of the Open Knowledgeand Open Access movement, we still mainly rely on volunteer work. A certaindegree of professionalization has been made possible mainly since we were ableto secure a grant by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German ResearchFoundation).  We are still searching for a more sustainable model to finance our- 1 -work. After all, being able to have at least some paid positions is not only a matter ofprofessionalization but also of removing barriers within legal academia. If you wantto support our work and help us keep our technological infrastructure running wealways welcome dÖnations of any kind, true to the motto: those who can for thosewho can’t.As we prepared for our grand anniversary, we could not help but reflect on all thedevelopments and changes the blog has gone through. And just as the blog haschanged and evolved considerably in recent years, so too has international law itself.To mark the occasion, we invited the authors of some of our most outstanding andwidely read articles to reflect on them once again. Some of these articles concernpast developments which, unfortunately, have lost nothing of their currentness –such as the fact that our ten-year anniversary almost coincides with that of Russia‘s2014 invasion of Crimea. Others play with the format and idea of a blogpost orcontain self-reflection by the authors on how their own approach to writing may havechanged over the years.Beyond the blog, as behooves a Germany-based legal institution, we‘re alsocelebrating our anniversary with the publication of an edited volume. In subvertingthe idea of the classic German „Festschrift“ as a commermorative publication for aperson and as a symbol for the established ways of „doing“ German legal academia,we want to create a „Festschrift“ for an idea: the idea of turning establishedhierarchies on their heads; of moving away from prototype imagination of an isolatedscholarly genius; of opening access to legal science in more than one way; of settingnew parameters for scientific debates and of fusing open-mindedness and academicrigor. A big thank you to everyone who continues to make this project a reality. Lookout for our „Festschrift“ – coming in September 2024!A decade of international legal blogging would not have been possible without thehelp of so many wonderful people, both at the centre of the day-to-day action andin the background providing us with invaluable help and advice throughout thehighs and lows of making and finding our own way in legal academia. As it wouldborder on the impossible to mention everyone by name, we would like to begin bythanking all of our peer reviewers and academic advisors who ensure that the highacademic standards we set for ourselves at Völkerrechtsblog continue to be upheld.We’d also like to give a shout-out to our publishers, who actively support us in ourefforts to professionalize and further develop the blog. A huge thank you to ourincredible authors from all over the globe, who keep surprising and delighting us withtheir work and deep legal insights every day. Our editorial team, consisting largelyof volunteers, remains the backbone and engine of this blog, the source of sheerendless creativity and motivation, for which we are beyond grateful.And finally, we want to thank you – our readers – for being a vital part of our journeyand making this project possible. On to the next ten!- 2 -

“The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same?”

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“The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same?”

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