[Top inset: January 2025 edition. Bottom inset: Venkat and CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Bennett at the May 2024 launch of a special journal edition.]
Dr Venkat Iyer stepped down from the editorship of The Round Table on 31 December 2024, after 16 years’ sterling service as editor. During that time he edited 96 issues, comprising 11,432 pages and approximately 4.8 million words.
Venkat took over as editor at a challenging moment in the journal’s now 115-year history, as it sought to maintain its position as the leading Commonwealth journal at a time when international relations journals were proliferating and academic interest in the Commonwealth was declining.
As editor, Venkat set the journal on a steady path to renewed success by diversifying the contents of the journal, to include a far broader range of Commonwealth-related topics including law, economics, health, development, and culture. He also recruited new authors from around the world, where he often held writers’ workshops: colleagues joked that he must have accumulated more air miles than most airline pilots.
Venkat also innovated: notably it was on his watch that the Round Table launched its own website, and that the journal began including ‘opinion pieces’ commenting on numerous issues of topical interest both to academics and to a wider audience of readers.
Venkat at the Editorial Board presentation in February 2025.
Venkat further improved the standing of the journal by notably raising the bar in terms of the quality of articles accepted for publication in the journal. He rejected many (sometimes to the chagrin of their authors), but many others he worked hard to improve, with a particular talent for making the authors say what they clearly meant to say but had somehow failed to.
Venkat’s colleagues on the editorial board and international advisory board have long not only admired but been amazed at his work ethic. We are sure he will not remain idle for a single moment. But we wish him well, and thank him for the dedication with which he has served the journal.
