About the International Studies Compendium Project

Our Goals

The International Studies Compendium Project will be the most comprehensive reference work of its kind for the field of international studies. Peer reviewed essays of up to ten thousand words will focus on important topics and issues. Each essay will provide a comprehensive review of the development of the literature in a given area, as well as a focused discussion of current themes. Essays are designed to allow readers to be brought quickly up-to-date on the nature of questions asked, past attempts at formulating responses, and the current state of debates in a given issue area. These essays are designed for students, scholars or practitioners who want to understand the development of our thinking on international studies.

The Compendium is organized primarily around the ISA's 23 different sections. Sections represent areas of specialization within the ISA. Each specialized section organized a committee to identify key topics and identify authors. Each section will also help to provide the peer reviewers that will consider each essay prior to publication.

Review Essays

Each review essay should provide an immediate sense of the topic's intellectual and social context. Literature reviews should begin with the earliest treatments, and include as comprehensive a consideration of the topic as possible. We are looking to provide the widest possible coverage, and not simply the historical roots of the most recent literature. Current and future scholars need to know what kinds of questions have been addressed, where to access that material, what questions might have been abandoned, and not just what kinds of questions are currently in our sights. This project was conceived to provide exactly that sort of coverage.

Review essays will also cover the most recent literature. How are we currently approaching this issue? What do the major epistemological, methodological and substantive considerations look like? Reviews might also undertake to ask about possible future directions, or critical gaps in current coverage.

Peer Reviews

The entire Compendium Project is peer reviewed. Even the lists of topics submitted by our sections are being reviewed by members of our Advisory Board of Editors, a group that includes 27 present and former ISA presidents. Reviews of individual submissions will be managed by our editorial team, with the assistance of the advisory board and individual section compendium committees. The process will be the same as the peer reviews adopted by ISA journals and other leading journals in international relations.

ISO, ISE and ISC

The Compendium Project will be presented in three parts:

Editors and Advisory Board Members

Robert A. Denemark is General Editor of the Compendium Project. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and has been on the faculty of the University of Delaware since 1988. He served as Chair of the IPE Section of the ISA from 1986 to 1988, President of the Northeast Region in 1995-96, ISA Program Chair in 1998, was a founding associate editor of International Studies Perspectives, and has served on a number of other ISA committees and editorial boards. He is the editor of 5 books and author of about 40 other publications in the areas of international political economy, diplomacy, terrorism, revolution, migration, and world system history.

Managing Editor

Tony Rivera is a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, whose research interests include Complexity Theory, Phenomenology, Shi’a social movements, and the politics of meaning and energy. Tony is a graduate of Iona College where he majored in Philosophy and an alumnus of Seton Hall University’s John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

Former Managing Editor

Andrea K. Gerlak is Managing Editor of the Compendium Project. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1997. Since that time, she has served on the faculty of Guilford College and Columbia University. Presently, she serves as Director of Academic Development with the International Studies Association and as a Visiting Professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Arizona. She is the author of over a dozen articles and book chapters in the area of environmental and natural resource policy, with particular attention to water management and governance.

Editorial Advisory Board

The Editorial Advisory Board is chaired by William R. Thompson of Indiana University, and includes current and former ISA Presidents:

The ISA Compendium Project notes with sadness the passing of Editorial Advisory Board member Hayward Alker.