Letter from the Co-Editors

As Johnny Finn steps down a!er four years as JLAG’s Editor-in-Chief, 2023 marks a new era for the journal: for the %rst time we have a co-editorship arrangement, and for the %rst time we have female Editors-in-Chief. Martha Bell is Associate Professor of Geography and Environment at Ponti%cia Universidad Católica del Perú, where she researches historical landscapes and resource use, as well as climate change and disasters in Peru. Jessica Budds is Professor of Development Geography at Universität Bonn, where she works on the relationship between economic change, environmental governance and social development, with a particular focus on the water sector, and with experience in Brazil, Chile, and Peru. First and foremost, we would like to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of Johnny Finn, who developed several important initiatives upon which we will build. One such initiative is the possibility of translating selected articles from Spanish and Portuguese into English, thus supporting the journal’s role in increasing access to the work of geographers in and of Latin America writing in these languages. A second initiative is the broadening of submission formats to include JLAG perspectives and retrospectives, special issues, and cover art. Together, these projects help to expand JLAG content, enriching and diversifying our discipline. We are excited to continue to work with Johnny as part of our dedicated team of Associate Editors, which also comprises Eugenio Arima, Gabriela Valdivia, and Jörn Seemann –who additionally serves as Book Review Editor– and Visual Content Editor, Diana Tung. &e editorial team is supported by JLAG’s International Editorial Board, members of the CLAG community, and peer reviewers from far and wide, whose inputs we gratefully acknowledge. On the production side, we remain in the safe hands of our production manager, Yulia Garcia Sarduy, and the colleagues who translate, copyedit, and typeset the papers that you read. We also thank the CLAG board for accepting our proposal to transition from Associate Editors (since 2017 and 2020, respectively) to Co-Editors, and for the opportunity to lead and further develop the journal. Our aim is to consolidate the position of JLAG as a top choice for geographers writing on Latin America through showcasing the many themes, topics, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies that make Latin American geography such a rich and dynamic research area. We recognize, and will seek to enhance, the journal’s status as an independent, non-corporate, non-pro%t, and linguistically accessible outlet for our community. As such, our %rst major initiative will be to boost the pro%le of the journal in an expanding and increasingly competitive market, by fulfilling existing plans to ensure that the journal is fully indexed on major academic platforms. This process requires updating and streamlining editorial and review processes, with the goals of speeding up the review process, and improving transparency about editorial policies through an Le!er from the Co-Editors