Subjects

Where we publish, what fits, and how to propose a series.

The Press began in the fields the Foundation funded from 2018 and has widened from there. The list below describes where our editors and Advisory Board have the depth to review well.

Humanities

• Philosophy, including philosophy of medicine, science, mind and law, ethics and political philosophy
• History: social, intellectual, economic and legal history, and the history of science and medicine
• Area and regional studies, particularly work grounded in archives and languages under-represented in Anglophone publishing
• Literature, cultural studies and the study of translation
• Classics, archaeology and material culture
• Religious studies and theology
• Digital humanities and computational approaches to humanistic evidence

Social Sciences

• Anthropology and ethnography
• Sociology, social policy and the study of inequality
• Politics, political theory and international relations
• Public administration and the practice of policy-making
• Economics, economic policy and economic history
• Development studies and migration
• Education
• Geography, urban studies and the built environment
• Science and technology studies
• Psychology, where the work is book-length and theoretical rather than a report of experiments

Law

• Civil rights, civil liberties and human rights
• Constitutional and legal theory
• Regulation and regulatory reform
• Comparative, international and transnational law
• Law and technology, including data protection and the governance of automated systems
• Criminal justice and access to justice

Medicine, Health and the Life Sciences

• Bioethics and clinical ethics
• Health policy, health systems and global health
• Psychiatry, mental health and disability
• Genetics, genomics and their governance
• Bioengineering, synthetic biology and biotechnology
• Research ethics and research integrity
• Environment, climate and ecology in their social and regulatory context

The Foundation's three original areas (philosophy and medicine, law, and the biosciences) remain the strongest parts of our list and the fields in which our Advisory Board is deepest. Work outside the categories above is not excluded; ask us.

What We Publish

• Monographs: single-authored or co-authored books making a sustained argument. Typically 70,000–120,000 words.
• Edited volumes: where the collection is a book rather than a set of conference papers with a preface. Editors are asked to state the argument the volume makes as a whole.
• Critical and scholarly editions, including translations, where open licensing materially widens access to a source.
• Long-form essays: 30,000–60,000 words, for arguments that are more than an article and less than a monograph, and which conventional publishing handles badly.
• Revised doctoral work, where the revision has been done. We are glad to advise on what that requires before you propose.

What Tends to Fit

Three things recur in the proposals the Advisory Board recommends. The book makes an argument that could not be made in an article. It rests on primary research. And there is a particular reason for open publication, such as a readership beyond the academy, a source base that should be widely available, or a field where the people who most need the work are least able to buy it. The third carries substantial weight with the Board.

Series

We publish series under the direction of external series editors, and we are actively interested in new proposals. A series gives a coherent body of work a shape, and gives readers a reason to keep returning.

Series →

Proposing a Series

A series proposal should set out the intellectual rationale and what the series does that existing series do not; the intended scope and readership; a realistic sense of the field's capacity to sustain three to five books a year; the proposed editor or editorial board and their standing in the field; and two or three specific titles or authors who would plausibly be in the first tranche.

Series proposals are reviewed externally and go to the Advisory Board in the same way individual titles do. Series editors are appointed for renewable terms of five years, and are involved in commissioning and in the review of proposals to the series.