Annotations Special Edition: Reflections on Reading Weekend 2025
The JPIA Editors-in-Chief share reflections on this year's Reading Weekend and their experiences working on the Journal's 36th edition.
Dear Readers,
This special edition welcomes our very own Editors-in-Chief, Diana and Ariel, to share insights on a JPIA tradition. During Reading Weekend, the leadership team invites graduate students from around the world to Princeton for three days of reviewing journal submissions and selecting the final pieces for publication. As we enter the final stretch of publishing the Journal’s 36th edition, our Editors-in-Chief write on their experience. Please enjoy!
There are a number of qualities that make Princeton University’s Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA) a special publication and a joy for us to work on as Editors-in-Chief. We are run by a multidisciplinary team of ten graduate students and we are one of the few policy journals focused singularly on providing publication, reviewing, and editing opportunities for graduate students. This focus allows us to both publish groundbreaking and cross-cutting policy research and to be a training ground for editing, writing, and publishing for early career scholars and policymakers. In our effort to provide learning and career development opportunities for policy students, we are thrilled to host an annual, in-person Reading Weekend event at Princeton University each winter, where contributors help our board choose which article submissions to publish.
From February 7th to 9th, 2025, our JPIA team, alongside 30 visiting and associate editors from fourteen graduate schools, reviewed almost 60 graduate-level articles discussing relevant topics on domestic and international policy. Visiting and associate editors reviewed every article submission during four reading rounds. During each round, our Managing and Deputy Managing Editor sorted anonymized article submissions among visiting and associate editors to read, review, and assess. Each article submission was reviewed at least four times by different editors throughout the weekend.
Following these intense reading rounds, we held a “final table” where visiting and associate editors summarized, debated, critiqued, and voted for each article. Through this process, we selected finalist articles for our upcoming 36th Journal edition. This gathering of student editors was not only an opportunity to learn from our submitting authors, it was a wonderful chance to meet, network, and learn from graduate students from across the globe with a similar interest in using rigorous research to improve the world of policymaking.
Our team is proud to share that this year we developed JPIA’s first annual Faculty Advisory Committee comprised of ten professors from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. To ensure each article was evaluated rigorously, these professors agreed to assess the methodology, analyses, and arguments of each article. After our faculty advisors’ reviews, the JPIA board paired each selected author with two graduate student editors to undergo a robust editing process before the publication of the journal’s upcoming edition in April.
Reading Weekend was the culmination of a semester of planning and organizing alongside our JPIA board members. Leading JPIA as Editors-in-Chief during this academic year has been a transformative and enriching experience and one that has helped us develop stronger leadership, management, and editing skills. We’d like to extend special gratitude to our JPIA board members – Deputy Editors-in-Chief Caroline Sager and Stefan Tobias, Managing and Deputy Managing Editors Jennifer Williams and Patrick McCabe, Digital and Deputy Digital Editors Francisco (Paco) Gonzalez, Mera Cronbaugh, and Michelle Zhang, and Communications Coordinator Sophia Kierstead – for their arduous dedication to making JPIA’s Reading Weekend possible! It has been an honor to work with you and we look forward to JPIA’s continued growth in the coming years.
With gratitude,
JPIA Editors-in-Chief Diana Chavez-Varela and Ariel Munczek Edelman
We’re an academic journal showcasing exceptional policy papers and articles from policy graduate students. Our focus spans U.S. domestic policy, international relations, development studies, and economic policy. Read our latest edition here. JPIA selects articles on the merits of each piece’s academic rigor and contribution to policy discourse, our editorial board does not endorse any opinions expressed therein. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on publications, deadlines, and our network. Read more about us on our website.