The second edition of Global Policy: Next Generation marks a step-change in the existence of the GPNG project in two ways. First, the academic world that existed when the idea of an early-career researcher platform, led by early-career researchers, was launched has altered substantially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ways of working, the access to research, and the opportunities for early-career researchers to demonstrate the impact and importance of their work have fundamentally shifted. While this change to the way we work has certainly impacted upon GPNG as a project, it has more importantly further underlined both the need for and the opportunities that exist in promoting a platform that highlights the importance of early-career research.
Second, 2020 marked the point in which the founding editorial team of GPNG passed on the torch to the next generation of early-career editors. We were delighted to welcome on board Janina Pescinski, Katharine Petrich and Anastasia Ufimtseva in August last year, and extremely pleased to announce that the founding editors, Amna Kaleem and Emma Lecavalier were to join the newly formed Editorial Board of GPNG, alongside two new editorial board members Vladimir Bogoeski and Rishikesh Ram Bhandary. It would be remiss of us to suggest that the editorial torch had merely been passed on, however, as the new editorial team have taken the strong foundations left by the previous team and brought new ideas, new perspectives, and new academic content to the project in a manner which has firmly established GPNG’s reputation as a cutting-edge early-career platform.