Associate Professor Sara Goodkind was just named part of a three-person Editor-in-Chief team at Affilia, the feminist social work journal. She spoke to us about her history with the publication and what lies ahead.
How long have you been involved with Affilia?
"I began as a consulting editor for Affilia in 2014 and joined the Editorial Board in 2016. In December 2020, I became part of a three person editor-in-chief team for Affilia that also includes Drs. Mimi Kim and Jennifer Zelnick. My involvement with and appreciation for Affilia extends back much further, however, as Affilia published my first sole-authored journal article in 2005 as I was completing my doctoral program."
What makes Affilia stand out among other social work journals?
"Affilia stands out because it is the only feminist social work journal. We are a home for critical feminist scholarship and seek to publish articles that raise new questions, challenge assumptions about knowledge, present innovative theories and methodologies, disrupt power hierarchies, and link theory and practice through praxis. Affilia also stands out because of the commitment, since its inception in 1986, for Affilia to be run collaboratively by the editorial board, which meets in person once a year as a way to build and maintain our critical feminist community and collective vision. 
It was originally published by the Feminist Press and Audre Lorde was Affilia’s first poetry editor, based on the founders’ wish to include poetry as a means of inspiration and vision. While we no longer have a poetry editor, we maintain our collective approach to the work. We have a number of means by which we promote critical feminist scholarship in social work, sustain a network, and support a new generation of critical feminist scholars. Specifically, we present the Affilia Award for Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work each year, and we have recently formed a Critical Feminisms special interest group (SIG) through the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) to enhance our ability to foster intellectual community, exchange, and collaboration and to advance critical feminist scholarship."
What will your work as Editor in Chief entail?
"The EIC team is responsible for producing four issues of the journal each year. This involves determining which submissions to send out for peer review, identifying peer reviewers with relevant expertise, communicating reviewers’ feedback to authors, deciding which manuscripts to accept, and providing additional reviewing and editing of manuscripts submitted to Affilia. We are also responsible for writing an editorial to lead each issue, for constituting and managing the editorial board and consulting editors, and for communicating and working with our current publisher, Sage Publications, to put together each issue based on the manuscripts and book reviews in our cue. While the responsibility for ensuring that all of these tasks are accomplished rests with the EIC team, we are fortunate to have an incredible team of associate and copy editors, editorial board members, consulting editors, editorial assistants, and past editorial board members who now constitute Women and Social Work, Inc., who all contribute to this work."
Do you have any special issues or timely journal content coming up?
"Last year Affilia featured an extended special issue entitled “Anticarceral Feminisms: Imagining a World without Prisons” that focused on feminist abolition and transformative justice. It included articles by Beth Richie and Mimi Kim, both founding members of INCITE!, which is, as stated on their website, “a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities.” In our first editorial as the new editor-in-chief team, just out this month, we write about “pandemics, protests, and feminist politics of resistance,” speaking to our vision of collective interdependence and liberation. For our next editorial, which will appear in the May 2021 issue of Affilia, we sat down with social worker Anjanette Young, who two years ago experienced the violence of police breaking down her door with a no-knock warrant similar to the one that led to Breonna Taylor’s murder. Presenting Anjanette’s narrative in her own words, as well as our reflections as Affilia editors, this piece invites social workers to take action to end state violence again Black women and girls and to work collectively to create a more just, loving world."
Why you are excited about this new role?
"Social work is one of few disciplines and professions with an explicit commitment to social justice. Now, more than ever, we need scholarship that challenges white supremacy and patriarchy, redresses social work’s past and ongoing complicity in the perpetuation of inequities, and provides a vision and roadmap for a more just world. For 35 years, Affilia has served as a home for feminist social work scholarship, and I am honored to have the opportunity to continue its important work with my wonderful colleagues Mimi Kim and Jennifer Zelnick and our fantastic editorial board of critical intersectional feminist scholars."