How HSS Scholarly Publishing Supports Social Justice: DEI Policies and Practices

Sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan

Recorded on 08/15/2022
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 272

Publishers today are working to implement robust internal practices that center diversity, equity, and inclusion. Palgrave Macmillan—a publisher whose titles focus on issues of race, gender, disability, class, and more—is certainly no different. What kind of DEI initiatives, projects, and training has the publisher introduced? How do they ensure that this work is outlined with intention and paid roles instead of left to volunteers? Why are editorial and company policies so essential to transforming a catalogue and authorship?

In this second episode, our guests dig into DEI policies and practices at Palgrave Macmillan. Felicity Plester, Editorial Director for Humanities, and Tamsine O’Riordan, Editorial Director for Social Science, both at Palgrave Macmillan, emphasize how internal policies translate into external changes through implicit bias training, acquisition workshops, and recruitment to expand representation in their author base and staff. The guests also discuss burnout due to COVID-19, and its effects on both researchers and editorial teams.

About the guests:

Felicity Plester headshot

Felicity Plester
Editorial Director for Humanities
Palgrave Macmillan

Felicity is Editorial Director for Humanities at Palgrave Macmillan with overall responsibility for the literature; film, culture and media studies; and theatre and performance studies scholarly books programmes.  She leads a team of seven Editors based in our London and New York offices, who publish high quality, cutting-edge research in a range of formats, including monographs, edited collections, scholarly Handbooks, major reference works, textbooks and Palgrave Pivots across these diverse subjects.  Prior to becoming Editorial Director, she headed up the film, culture and media studies team at Palgrave, but also has experience of commissioning into the literature and theatre lists.  Felicity joined Palgrave in 2010, having previously been Commissioning Editor for environment, development and public and social policy at Edward Elgar Publishing for five years.

Tamsine O’Riordan headshot

Tamsine O’Riordan
Editorial Director for Social Science
Palgrave Macmillan

Tamsine O’Riordan is Editorial Director for Social Science at Palgrave Macmillan, part of Springer Nature. In this role she leads a global team of 15 editors to respond and deliver cutting-edge and (inter)discipline-defining social science ideas and thought across a range of book types, as well as leading the Social Science Matters campaign. She has been with Palgrave since 2012 and before that built successful programmes for a variety of social science scholarly, trade and professional publishers over 20 years, working in the past for Practical Action, Earthscan and Zed Books.

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