TILBURG LAW REVIEW Journal of International and European Law Maria Jose Recalde-Vela, Sangita Jaghai-Bajulaiye and Caia Vlieks, ‘The State of Statelessness Research: 5 Years Later’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review pp. 139–141. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.5334/tilr.148 EDITORIAL The State of Statelessness Research: 5 Years Later Maria Jose Recalde-Vela*, Sangita Jaghai-Bajulaiye† and Caia Vlieks‡ The idea for this special TLR issue on citizenship and statelessness was initiated at the first PhD Workshop on Citizenship and Statelessness hosted at Tilburg University and funded by the Tilburg University Alumni Fund in September 2018. This special is a result of rapidly growing interest in citizenship and statelessness among early career researchers worldwide and reflects innovative research and new developments in researching citizenship and statelessness issues, particularly focusing on interdisciplinary research. Statelessness has been traditionally understood as a legal issue: it denotes the lack of legal membership of an individual in a state. Efforts to reduce statelessness have traditionally been of a legal nature, through conventions and efforts to change laws that cause statelessness. Therefore, work related to statelessness— both academic and in practice—has primarily had a legal focus. Over the last ten years, however, major developments have taken place, which have resulted in the issue of statelessness gaining prominence and being acknowledged as an important issue on its own, and in the academic domain, as a fascinating field of academic inquiry. Economists, anthropologists, social scientists, human geographers, historians, and people from other backgrounds have become interested in conducting academic research on this issue. This became visible in, among others, the first special issue on statelessness published by Tilburg Law Review in 2014, which compiled the work of over 30 scholars and practitioners working on statelessness and spanned two volumes, across various disciplines. Due to the relatively small size of academics working in the field of statelessness, it has become like a small family where faces are familiar, and newcomers are welcome. This has allowed for people from different backgrounds to come together in events and become interested in the works of others who might work outside of their own discipline, but still related to statelessness. Two recent events come to mind that showcase this. The first is was an academic meeting organized by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, the NYU Centre for Global Affairs, and Open Society Justice Initiative, which took place in New York in mid-2017. In this academic meeting, senior and junior academics doing research on statelessness or closely related fields came together and discussed some of the most pressing issues they encountered in their own work. The second event, the PhD Workshop on Citizenship and Statelessness was a follow-up from the 2017 academic meeting in NYC. This PhD workshop brought together 15 PhD students from around the world and from very different academic disciplines for four days to discuss not only their own research but also to attend masterclasses by various experts from different fields whose research is interesting for statelessness research. They learned about statelessness and digital data from Dr. Linnet Taylor (TLS & TILT), about citizenship and statelessness from literary and philosophical perspectives from Dr. Michiel Bot (TLS) and Mr. Isshaq Al-Barbary (Palestinian researcher), about innovative manners to conduct field research from Professor Morgan Goodwin (TLS) and all about researching statelessness by Dr. Laura van Waas (TLS and co-director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion). Keynote speeches were given by Emeritus Professor Gerard-René de Groot (Maastricht University) on citizenship and statelessness, social identity and ‘genuine link’ from a legal perspective, Ms. Zahra Albarazi (Senior Researcher, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion; External PhD TLS) on academia and activism through field research on statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa, and Mr. Oluseyi Bajulaiye (retired Senior UN official) gave invaluable insights into his career journey and spoke about career opportunities in and beyond academia. The PhD Workshop participants also brainstormed about the future of statelessness academic research. These discussions yielded two concrete results. The first is a network, the Global PhDs on Statelessness (GPS), which will launch in a few months, and this Tilburg Law Review special issue on statelessness. This special issue contains two case notes and five articles. Vlieks’ case note covers Tjebbes and Others v Minister van * PhD researcher, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, m.j.recalde-vela@tilburguniversity.edu † PhD researcher, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, s.jaghai@tilburguniversity.edu ‡ Lecturer/researcher, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, c.vlieks@tilburguniversity.edu