EJIL News!

The transition from 31 December 2025 to 1 January 2026 entails four big events in EJIL’s life.

1. After almost 30 years, first as Assistant Editor and since 2008 as Managing Editor, Anny Bremner will leave the journal. Many international lawyers will have communicated with Anny about the publication of their articles or book reviews. For many authors, the experience prior to acceptance is tough: screening decisions are often negative, and if articles are sent to peer review, reviewers and editors tend to be demanding, asking for more and more and more revisions. But then, after acceptance, there was Anny, taking the article through the publishing process, and everything became much brighter. Many authors have written to say how much they have enjoyed working with Anny and how much she will be missed. Members of the Executive Board feel the same. For Anny was in practice the spider in the web of the entire EJIL ecosystem (also including EJIL:Talk!, EJIL: The Podcast!, EJIL book reviewing and EJIL social media), organizing meetings, sending materials across the ecosystem, writing to board members, paying bills, keeping the accountants up-to-speed, the list is endless. Her to-do list grew as EJIL developed, so she also started delegating. When she joined EJIL in 1996, Anny copy-edited and proofread all articles herself. The proofs of each issue would arrive by courier, she would correct them with a red pen and return them by courier. Fast forward some years and we see Anny managing a team of copy editors and proofreaders, all online.

Before EJIL, Anny worked as editor and publications officer at the UNICEF research centre in Florence. And after EJIL? She will continue making the world a more peaceful and beautiful place as a qualified yoga teacher and country music singer. We have asked Anny for an interview – few people have had such an extensive participant observation experience in the field of international law – but she has thus far declined. Thank you, Anny, for all you have given the journal. It is difficult for journals to radiate warmth, but your emails certainly did.

2. After 13 years of involvement with EJIL:Talk!, Marko Milanovic will be stepping down as editor of the blog. Marko was with the blog from the very beginning and soon became an editor. He has become world famous for his extraordinarily quick and razor-sharp analyses of the international legal aspects of current affairs, whether an incident involving the use of force somewhere in the world, a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights or an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice. His commentary has set many of the parameters of subsequent discussions. But his behind-the-scenes service to the blog has been at least as impressive. While in the blog’s early years, the job of editor mostly entailed providing contents, in recent years it has involved deciding on dozens of submissions every week, corresponding with authors and fixing technical problems on the blog. Marko did it all, with his characteristic speed, sharpness and sense of humour. We hope he will continue to write his unparallelled rapid-response pieces and are tremendously grateful for the many, many hours that he has put into making EJIL:Talk! what it currently is. He leaves behind a well-oiled system, with Julian Arato, Nehal Bhuta, Wanshu Cong, Devika Hovell, Miles Jackson and Justina Uriburu as blog editors, and Mary Guest, Luíza Leão Soares Pereira and Sebastian von Massow as associate editors. And Marko? We will continue to hear from him!”

3. Urmila Dé will take over as EJIL’s Managing Editor. EJIL gratefully received many expressions of interest for the role. The selection committee (Anny Bremner, Abhimanyu George Jain and I) ultimately offered the role to Urmila because of her extensive editorial experience. The international criminal lawyers among our readers will recognize the name: Urmila has been Executive Editor of the Journal of International Criminal Justice since 2004; that is to say, almost since its very first year. A historian by training, she has other extensive editorial experience, is fluent in English, Bengali and Hindi, and has an interest in museology, rug and carpet making and fibre art. Welcome to the team, Urmila!

4. And last but absolutely not least, Michael Waibel will join EJIL as Co-Editor-in-Chief. A professor of international law at the University of Vienna, Michael brings editorial experience as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Economic Law and Co-General Editor of the ICSID Reports. He combines specialized knowledge in the field of international economic law with expertise in classic areas of public international law. Michael is also an institution-builder: as co-Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law he initiated many programmes that are still going strong. He is fluent in German, English and French and pretty fluent in Spanish. EJIL will continue to grow under his leadership!

The Management Board is grateful to all those who expressed interest in the role and also thanks Ana Luisa Bernardino, Megan Donaldson, Devika Hovell, Doreen Lustig and Anny Bremner for having joined me on the selection panel.