2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) occupy us — about inclusion and exclusion, about legal status and public goods — and infuse these debates with fresh perspectives gleaned from how the world has reacted in the face of this global crisis. The pandemic forces us to revive and deepen our attention to the drivers of marginalisation and exclusion that have placed a multitude of vulnerable groups in a more precarious position to overcome — or even survive — the crisis. Within this wider context, there must be renewed commitment to unpacking, critiquing and engaging in dialogue about the role of citizenship, the systems in place for its attribution, the linking of status to rights — and perhaps also for the exploration of alternatives. As we present the first issue of the second volume of SCR, we are mindful of the growing weight of expectations that will come to rest on those engaged in scholarship on these issues. We are pleased therefore to present in this issue such a rich and diverse range of high quality contributions to the field. The articles and symposium together indicate the great promise that the multidisciplinary field of statelessness studies offers, and the extent of unexplored territory within the field. New theoretical critiques continue to emerge, and Thomas McGee’s article in this volume makes a highly original and important contribution, bringing a queer lens to statelessness studies. As he rightly observes, unlike fields such as refugee studies, which have been subjected to extensive queer analysis and critique, discourses around ‘sexual citizenship’ on the one hand and the relatively new discipline of statelessness studies on the other have ‘operated largely in isolation, with each generating its own body of literature discrete from the other’. 4 In arguing that a global nexus does indeed exist between statelessness and sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics, the article ‘calls for further empirical research in order to provide greater nuance and context-specific understandings of the intersectional experiences and causes of statelessness for LGBTIQ+ individuals around the world’. 5 Another thought-provoking contribution that challenges the boundaries of our current understanding of the field is offered by Deirdre Brennan’s historical perspective on gender discriminatory nationality laws. As she opines, it may have been assumed by many working in the field of statelessness that until the launch of the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights in 2014, ‘efforts to eradicate such laws were largely only coordinated on a national level’. 6 In her article in this issue, Brennan uncovers ‘a hidden period in statelessness history: the citizenship equality campaigns of the early 1900s’. 7 Through an exploration of these campaigns, the article provides ‘a feminist revisionist history of statelessness activism and academia that aims to adjust dominant narratives in contemporary statelessness literature’. 8 The theme of inter-disciplinarity is further explored in our Symposium on Statelessness and Slavery. As guest symposium editor, Alice Eckstein, notes in her introduction, there are obvious overlaps in both ‘condition and population 4 5 6 7 8 Thomas McGee, ‘“Rainbow Statelessness” — Between Sexual Citizenship and Legal Theory: Exploring the Statelessness–LGBTIQ+ Nexus’ (2020) 2(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 64, 66. ibid 64. Deirdre Brennan, ‘Feminist Foresight in Statelessness: Century-Old Citizenship Equality Campaigns’ (2020) 2(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 43. ibid. ibid. 2