The Editorial Board
Dear Reader,
In the interminable summer of 2020, when I was grinding through my MA Dissertation, I received an unexpected email from Professor Patricia Murrieta-Flores, who had convened a module I had taken on GIS for historians, suggesting that an essay I had written on the geography of Manhattan in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho would be a good fit for a PhD student’s new magazine. Tremendously excited, I reached out to the PhD student and, after about two weeks of intensive writing, the essay had become ‘American Psycho: Spaces Real and Imagined’. I hadn’t imagined that, nearly four years later, I would be the Coordinating Editor at EPOCH.
I would like to thank Dabeoc Stanley, our outgoing Coordinating Editor for his unflagging work ethic; without him, EPOCH could not have gone from strength to strength over the last four issues. He leaves a legacy of a readership in the tens of thousands and a much refreshed and expanded editorial board. Dabeoc will remain with us as our Maritime History Editor, and if you do have any nautical-themed ideas for an article he would love to hear from you! I would also like to welcome Anna Drury, our incoming Deputy Coordinating Editor, who is already doing an excellent job of running our weekly editorial meetings. Issue 15 would not have come together without her.
We’re very pleased with the range of material in this issue. Rebeca Martinez-Tibbles examines how women in colonial Mexico resisted gender expectations and social norms. Stephen Graham tackles the thorny problem of historical biography, and Jude Rowley, from Lancaster’s Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, returns for a follow-up ‘The Rise and Fall of Soviet Studies at Lancaster’, asking ‘Was a Lancaster Professor a Cold War Spy?’. We also have contributions from our editorial board, with articles from Anna, Dabeoc, and our Social History Editor Laura Noller, and the inauguration of Early Medieval Editor Ed Moore’s digital humanities tutorial series.
Issue 16, out on 1 June 2024 is themed ‘Nature and Environment’. If you have anything to say about environmental or natural history, or if you know somebody who does, please do submit a pitch here. You can also contact us by email at epoch@lancaster.ac.uk or @HistoryEpoch on Twitter.
Sincerely,
Will Garbett