Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly has a “Reflections on Writing” Series – all pieces are open access

The Editors of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly are excited to announce the launch of a new opinion-style series of pieces: ‘Reflections on Writing’ (2025 NILQ 76) and Reflections on Writing (2026 NILQ 77).

We are inviting authors to think about their own writing practices. To ask, for example, why do I write? How do I write? Where do I write? How do I carve out the time and space to write? How do I improve my writing? How has my approach to writing changed? Who has influenced my writing practices? What is the value of writing in the contemporary scholarly context?

These are among the questions many scholars ponder wherever they are on their scholarly journey, but seldom articulate to an audience, let alone publish, or even have an opportunity to publish. This new series seeks to develop dialogue around these and other related questions.

The Editors of the NILQ believe that such a dialogue is all the more pressing given the very many constraints put on colleagues in academia at different points in their careers. So, we have invited scholars to write up their thoughts on these — and other — questions. Authors have been given the freedom to select their leading question or prompt for reflection, and to express their thoughts however they wish within the broad remit of the series.

Contributions from Mariana Valverde, Shaun Pattinson, Barbara Prainsack and many others. I have a piece in the series forthcoming in a few weeks – I discuss how I use writing on this blog, particularly the Sunday Histories series, in relation to more formal publications.