You could be... the next editor-in-chief of the blog of the AESOP YA network

On behalf of the YA coordination team and the small but growing team of YA blog editors, I would personally like to invite you to consider a small but key move in your career as academic / researcher / spatial planning officer in the making.

I will begin by enticing you to jump on board the YA blog team, and then share the formal description of what the position entails.

Do you love to blog? Share cutting-edge research from others as well as your very own? Share insight about all the great spatial planning events and collaborations out there? Are you excited to nurture and enthuse a diverse, global community of scholars, educators, planning officers, consultants and activists? Then, you are standing on the shoulders of giants!

The AESOP and YA communities feature key leaders in the field (past, present and future), and you are one of them. We all lead by example, which means plentiful opportunities to learn and gain skills. So by helping to lead the blog's activity you can also support the YA and AESOP communities in their endeavours to support, design, leverage and evaluate quality spatial planning policies and education that can benefit both present and future generations. Sounds like a big responsibility? That is what spatial planning can do (or perhaps should do, from a normative perspective). If we all get down to it. Lest we should forget about climate change and the rest of it, and just sit idle and wait till we don't have the opportunity to act anymore.

All 'calls to planning arms' set aside, I can only entice you by saying it is a great and highly rewarding experience. As with most things worth pursuing in life: the more you give, the more you get. The good news is, the larger the YA blog editing team, the more tasks can be shared and blog activity will nearly effortless to manage.

The YA blog is all about nurturing your community! A globally active community that spans all sub-fields and types of careers around spatial planning.

Below is the an updated summary of the official call that was shared by my colleagues at the YA Coordination Team, which remains open:

The YA Coordination Team (CT) is seeking to appoint a new editor starting December 15, 2020, for a duration of 2 years. Please apply soon (the deadline has been extended till the position is filled) by sending you CV and letter of motivation (and your eagerness!) to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Preference will be given to candidates who have been involved in YA activities in recent years and/or have previous experience in managing and/or writing a blog.

The YA blog welcomes contributions from members of the network and people interested in planning and research in the broader sense: early-stage researchers, students, activists, practitioners. This is a 'quasi-academic' tool, a place for the exchange of ideas, information about events of relevance both for members and non-members; dissemination of best practices, debate on planning/urban/environmental issues of interest to the general public. For reference, you can find out more about the YA blog here, including its creation of the blog in 2014, as well as yearly overviews of the activity. The list is growing, and open to innovation and new exciting projects led by the blog editorial team.

Your responsibility as Editor-in-chief includes

• ensuring regular activity on the blog (~ 2-3 posts per month) by recruiting new authors and encouraging previous authors to continue sharing regularly, and seeking contributions from occasional authors,
• developing and scheduling calls for blog posts and publication series around various themes, in collaboration with the other editors of the YA blog
• managing the review and publication process of the blog posts and making sure contributions do not violate international standards of law, scientific practice and ethics, and observe as much as possible best practice in research dissemination
• coordinating activity between the YA blog editorial board and the YA Coordination Team
• overseeing the administration of the YA blog wordpress website: https://aesopyoungacademics.wordpress.com/
• thinking creatively and co-developing original and innovative ways of sharing research, insight and experience from YA members and non-members in various communicative and interactive formats (e.g. podcasts, infographics, video abstracts...)
• showing enthusiasm for communicating about all the exciting activities which the YA community organises, in collaboration with the YA Coordination Team and other members of the YA community
• a self-starter, proactive attitude whereby you will be able to test ideas for the blog, such as different types of resources to share and host permanently on the website (e.g. list of planning-related blogs, planning-related conferences, useful resources and practical information about research, lecturing and practice-based careers, activism in the field etc.)

Your work will be supported by additional supporting editors (currently Caitlin Hafferty, Nina Vidou and Ian Babelon). Future supporting members of the editorial board will be appointed by the Editor-in-chief in collaboration with the YA Coordination Team.

In closing, and to highlight there is a 'leader' in each and everyone of us, I will cite a quote attributed to novelist Henry Miller:

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

And if, like our brand new member Caitlin Hafferty, you would rather like to join as supporting editor, we would also be delighted to receive your expression of interest at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The more, the stronger - and merrier!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Join the YA blog and help us continuously open our eyes to the many insights and outputs of the AESOP YA community and beyond. Photo by Vlad Kutepov on Unsplash. Graffiti on a building in Gleneigh South, Adelaide, (Australia).