Reflecting on publishing and research culture during Open Access week 2025 – with Professor Devyani Prabhat
At the University of London Press, we have been reflecting on recent conversations in the sector about research culture, what this means for the humanities, the potential benefits of open access, the role of publishing and our own role as a publisher.
In this series of blog posts, recent UoL Press authors share their own publishing experiences and words of advice and support for new authors, along with their views on open access and what more publishers can do to work with the research community to help build supportive, collaborative and open research and publishing cultures.
In our next post in the series, we talk to Devyani Prabhat, author of Migrating Borders and Citizenship in Law: Scales, Locales, Themes and Practices. Devyani Prabhat is Professor in Law at University of Bristol Law School, UK, with legal practice experience in Constitutional law. She has an LLM and a PhD from New York University and is an enrolled Attorney at Law, NY. She researches and teaches Migration, Citizenship and Nationality from a socio-legal and comparative perspective. Her first monograph Unleashing the Force of Law (Palgrave/Springer) won the Society of Legal Scholars (UK and Ireland) best book award in 2017.
- Tell us about your book with UoL Press.
Borders are always in the news. Tightening of immigration rules, reducing access to asylum, and enforcing hard borders are all everyday diatribes. But how much do we actually understand about borders? How did they come to delimit specific spaces such as nation states? What is their effect on human beings who fall on their either side?
As borders become more and more pervasive, extending much beyond mere geographical locations, my book Migrating Borders and Citizenship in Law: Scales, Locales, Themes and Practices examines these issues in a consciously inter-disciplinary manner. It draws from sociology, politics, philosophy, and history while tracing developments in law and the role of law in bordering lands and people.
The book is spatial and scalar by design: moving between the vast realms of empires to continents and free movement regions, nation states, workplaces and families as well as analysing global bordering. As this is a broad canvas, covering centuries, the book focusses on key events that have changed the legal landscape of migration control, such as the end of the British empire, the arrival of Empire Windrush, the Immigration and Nationality Acts in the United Kingdom, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the case of Shamima Begum. Its focus is on uncovering mechanisms and practices of control through law.
The book argues that law has many roles in bordering: it categorises people and demarcates eligibility and access to resources. It legitimizes use of force and removes the need for external use of violence. But it can also be used to challenge different bordering practices.
Yet, such challenges are increasingly difficult because of rising nationalism and rollbacks in commitments to universal human rights. Immigration control has become enlarged through discretionary executive powers of exclusion which affect foreigners as well as citizens. Understanding the context of law and bordering is a first step towards making sure power is not used unchecked in this manner. - What advice do you have for authors looking to publish their first book?
There are pressures in academia to instantly convert PhD theses into monographs or to contribute chapters to edited collections as soon as one submits a doctoral dissertation thesis (or sometimes even before submission). However, it is important to pause after the PhD journey or a major research project to give time for the work to settle. Thoughts should coalesce for a wider book audience from a more specialist thesis/project. If possible, take this time and revisit your work after some time while thinking about its implications and pull for a broad audience. - Why did you choose the University of London Press as your publisher?
The series in which my book is located ‘Reimagining Law and Justice’ is an instant draw because of its fit with my topic. The series editor is Professor Carl Stychin, whose work I greatly admire. When I met with the University of London Press team to discuss my book proposal, I received so much enthusiasm for my work and constructive feedback on my proposal, that it was clear this is a group of people I would like to work with while writing the book. The open access format is also important for me as the topic should not be inaccessible to readers because of costs: many monograph volumes are so expensive that only specialist libraries or research institutions can afford to buy these books anymore. The distribution links between University of London Press and University of Chicago Press also make it attractive in terms of reaching many interested readers worldwide especially as my work touches on many jurisdictions. - Do you think open access has a role to play in creating a positive research culture and, if so, how?
Yes, and especially in the manner encouraged by University of London Press where there is high standard peer review and support for the book production process. Costs are not passed on to authors or their institutions in a manner that makes open access illusory for authors to avail of in the first instance. Open access, when properly modeled in this manner, reduces the access gaps between the global south and north in terms of availability of research materials and who can afford to read what without compromising on quality of the scholarship available for research. - The theme of International Open Access week is ‘Who Owns Our Knowledge?’ Why do you think this is an important question for humanities researchers and how does that influence your publishing choices?
Knowledge is indeed power. In my book I look at how using legal knowledge of a particular kind and setting up institutions which draw their legitimacy from imperial legal systems furthered the goals of domination. Colonial expropriation and exploitation are based on a foundation of privileging certain kinds of knowledge and undermining others, so it is important to think about what we know, how we know it, and why it matters in this age and time. For this kind of critical engagement on issues, a variety of research must be widely available. Herein the crucial role of open access publishing. I published a book (Britishness, Belonging and Citizenship) with University of Bristol’s Policy Press open access in 2018 and I am delighted to do so again with University of London Press.
