We are happy to announce the publication of the latest issue of The Journal of Historical Network Research. Guest-edited by Henrike Rudolph (Göttingen) and Song Chen (Bucknell University), the special issue “Beyond Guanxi” investigates historical networks across Chinese history from the Jin Dynasty (4th c. C.E.) to the 20th century, using a wide variety of different approaches to explore Chinese history and culture. Throughout this issue, network theory and analysis is used in combination with traditional source criticism and heuristics, biographical databases and records of publication as both a device of exploration and a tool of historical inquiry and verification.

About JHNR

While interdisciplinary research into the relational paradigm has produced an impressive body of work across the social and political sciences and also, increasingly, among historians, there is as yet no international medium of publication devoted to the study of networks in their historical contexts. This has put scholars with an interest in historical network research—both historians and historical sociologists—at a great disadvantage, and has meant that they have long been accustomed to publishing research papers in non-historical journals. The situation for historians interested in network research is further complicated by academic and cultural idiosyncrasies, since much of the groundbreaking and recent research into historical networks in the English-speaking world has been carried out by historical sociologists, rather than social historians, and has thus remained mostly outside the sphere of traditional academic history departments. This has naturally also influenced the means of publication for research in this area; preferred journals such as Social Networks and the American Journal of Sociology focus heavily on methodological and theoretical aspects. In short, there are no international publications devoted to the study of networks (social and otherwise) from a specifically historical perspective.

This is the gap that the Journal of Historical Network Research is keen to fill. It publishes outstanding and original contributions which apply the theories and methodologies of social network analysis to historical research, helps advance the epistemological and theoretical understanding of social network analysis in the historical, humanities, social and political sciences, economics and beyond and promotes empirical research on historical social interactions.

The journal promotes the interplay between different areas of historical research (in the broadest sense), and different research traditions and disciplines, while strengthening the dialogue between network research and “traditional” historical research. The journal serves as a meeting place for conventional hermeneutics and its concomitant emphasis on contextualisation and source criticism (as present in traditional academic historical journals) on the one hand, and the theory-heavy and/or sometimes overly technical discussion of methodological and technological issues (which predominates in publications focused on more quantitative orientated network research) on the other.

All contents are made available free of charge to readers and authors using a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-ND 4.0) license and include copyediting services for articles written in English and French.