Documenting Contours of Displacement 

This spring, Praxis: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security released their latest issue on the theme, “Contours of Displacement: A Journal on Migration and Mobility.” Under the direction of editor-in-chief Briana McGowan F25, who self-designed a field of study on internal migration and refugees, the team decided to curate an issue focused on understanding migration through multiple lenses. 

Founded in 1981 as the Fletcher School Journal of Development Studies and now known as the Fletcher Journal of Human Security, Praxis – in collaboration with the Henry J. Leir Institute at The Fletcher School – serves as a platform for cutting-edge research and dialogue at the intersections of humanitarianism, development, human rights and conflict resolution.

“I like how Praxis looks at migration through the human security lens,” said McGowan. “The issue starts with a piece from one of our editors about her grandfather’s migration during the partition of India. It’s a very personal story with fewer citations. A lot of our other pieces examine climate and migration, or gender and migration, topics that are less frequently discussed.” 

“Migration is not one issue – it's an interconnected issue that also has to do with maritime security, trade and gender,” said staff editor Kellie Peitersen Sullivan F26. “I think it's really easy to think of it as monolithic, but it’s interconnected and always changing.” 

A Look Inside the Newsroom

Both McGowan and Peitersen Sullivan learned a lot about migration through their work with Praxis, but curating this issue also illuminated the nature of work in an academic journal. Praxis had not published a full-length issue since 2020, and the team identified publication as their goal for the year. 

“We’ve wanted to do this since last summer,” said McGowan. “Because human security is so broad, we thought it made sense to create this collection of articles on a more specific topic.”

The editorial board narrowed the issue’s focus and dove into the intricacies of creating an issue. 

“We were basically building this from the ground up,” said Peitersen Sullivan.

In addition to her work with Praxis, Peitersen Sullivan is also a staff editor with The Fletcher Forum. She tapped into that team’s collective expertise to understand every aspect of assembling an issue, down to the nitty gritty of trim size, spacing and font. 

“It was definitely a learning process, and I'm glad that we had help from the Forum,” said Peitersen Sullivan. “We also had a lot of creativity and enthusiasm within our own team to create this.”

The final product includes nine articles written by a range of contributors, including Fletcher students and alumni. For contributors, the journal offers an opportunity to write and publish in an academic setting. Peitersen Sullivan herself expanded a midterm paper she wrote into the article, “Routes Rewritten: How Migration Has Changed and Why It Matters.” The team celebrated the issue’s release on campus, and five writers gave brief presentations of their work. 

“I think there's a lot of meaning both behind the content of the articles and what the authors are putting into these pieces,” she said. “These articles are the authors’ academic children. Working on the journal gave us new insight on what that means.” 

Building Skills on the Job

Leading several rounds of revisions with contributors provided the editors with rigorous academic training. Reflecting upon the publication process, McGowan sees additional, professional benefits. 

“I was not someone who was super attentive to details, like the exact color and location of page numbers,” said McGowan. “Last summer, I worked for the attorney general's office in Massachusetts on their community engagement. I worked on their summer newsletter, and I think that was the first time I was introduced to this level of attention to detail.”

“They were thorough about every single word, and I spent weeks working on a two-page piece,” she added. “It’s the same process at Praxis. I want to go into the migration field, and I realized that the attention to detail – making sure that you're really intentional about what you're saying and how you say it – really does matter. That’s something I’ll bring into my future career.”

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