Portal. Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
Portal is a forum for practitioners of international, regional, area, migration and ethnic studies and cultural producers by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Collection details
Editorial Team
FOUNDING EDITOR AND CHAIR EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
- Associate Professor Paul Allatson, School of International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
MEMBER, EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
- Dr. Julie Lynn Robert, International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
- Associate Professor Kate Barclay, School of International Studies, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
- Dr. Beatriz Carrillo, China Studies Centre, and the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney, Australia
- Dr. Fredericka van der Lubbe, School of International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Focus and Scope
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies is a fully peer reviewed journal with two main issues per year, and is published by UTSePress. In some years there may be additional special focus issues. The journal is dedicated to publishing scholarship by practitioners of—and dissenters from—international, regional, area, migration, and ethnic studies. Portal also provides a space for cultural producers interested in the internationalization of cultures. Portal is conceived as a “multidisciplinary venture,” to use Michel Chaouli’s words. That is, Portal signifies “a place where researchers [and cultural producers] are exposed to different ways of posing questions and proffering answers, without creating out of their differing disciplinary languages a common theoretical or methodological pidgin” (2003, p. 57). Our hope is that scholars working in the humanities, social sciences, and potentially other disciplinary areas, will encounter in Portal scenarios about contemporary societies and cultures and their material and imaginative relation to processes of transnationalization, polyculturation, transmigration, globalization, and anti-globalization. Our use of scenario here is drawn from Néstor García Canclini, for whom the term designates “a place where a story is staged” (1995, p. 273). García Canclini’s interest lies in comprehending the staging of stories at “the intercrossings on the borders between countries, in the fluid networks that interconnect towns, ethnic groups, and classes, … the popular and the cultured, the national and the foreign” (1995, p. 273). Such stories indicate some of the many international scenarios that Portal hopes to stage in the future.
Portal has built into its editorial protocols a commitment to facilitating dialogue between international studies practitioners working anywhere in the world, and not simply or exclusively in the “North,” “the West” or the “First World.” This fundamental policy is reflected in the broad constituency of our Editorial Board, with members drawn from respected academic and research institutions in many countries and continents. The journal’s commitment to fashioning a genuinely “international” studies rubric is also reflected in our willingness to publish critical and creative work in English as well as in a number of other languages: Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.