The St Antony’s Series publishes studies of international affairs of contemporary interest to the scholarly community and a general yet informed readership. Contributors share a connection with St Antony’s College, a world-renowned centre at the University of Oxford for research and teaching on global and regional issues. The series covers all parts of the world through both single-author monographs and edited volumes, and its titles come from a range of disciplines, including political science, history, and sociology.  Over more than forty years, this partnership between St Antony’s College and Palgrave Macmillan has produced about 300 publications.

Tell us about yourselves and your work at St Antony’s College.

HALBERT JONES: I’m a research fellow at St Antony’s College with a specialization in the history of Mexico and of US-Latin American relations. I teach Mexican history at the College’s Latin American Centre, and I have served as director of its North American Studies Programme. My current role at the University is as director of the Rothermere American Institute, which focuses on the history, politics, and culture of the United States.

MATT WALTON: I direct both the Programme on Modern Burmese Studies and the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s. I am a political theorist by training and my work focuses on religion and politics in Southeast Asia, particularly Buddhist political thought. Hal and I have been working together on the series for a bit over two years now.

Why was the series set up and who had the initial idea?

HAL:  Our colleague Archie Brown recalls that in 1977 several fellows of the College, including Warden Raymond Carr, thought it would be good to restart a College series of books. The old St Antony’s Papers had ceased to appear some years earlier and publishers were not interested in that kind of miscellany anymore. Archie suggested that Tim Farmiloe, an editor at Macmillan responsible for a great many history and social science books, might be interested in working with the College to launch a series that would include both single-author books and edited volumes around a coherent theme. Tim was indeed interested, and the series was born. Archie became the first general editor and served in that capacity from 1977 until 1985, with Tim as the point of contact at the press until his retirement.

St Antony has always been a widely interdisciplinary series, but how has it changed over the years?

MATT:  One thing that has changed over the last 40 years is that the terms in office of series editors has gotten shorter, so while the first two series editors – Archie Brown and Rosemary Thorp (a former Fellow of the Latin American Centre at St Antony’s)-- were in office for something like eight years each, editors now tend to take the role on for two years or so, and often, as in our case, in conjunction with another fellow. So while the series benefited greatly in its early days from the continuity provided by highly dedicated series editors, today colleagues are able to bring new perspectives to the series every couple of years.

What’s the thing that you like the most about being a series editor?

HAL: Being involved with the series has been a great way to get a sense of the great work that is going on not just in my own disciplinary or regional areas of interest but all across the College community. It’s fascinating to see the range of topics being explored by colleagues, graduates, and former fellows.

MATT: I think it’s nice to get to know authors through working with them as series editors, and especially to support junior colleagues. Your first book can be intimidating and we try to help de-mystify the process.