Margaret E. Kosal, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, has been appointed co-editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed, scholarly journal Politics and the Life Sciences (PLS) which is published by Cambridge University Press. Kosal’s appointment begins in 2017.

Established in 1980, PLS reaches a global network of interdisciplinary scholars. PLS publishes on an “exceptionally broad range” of topics including “evolutionary and laboratory insights into political behavior such as political violence, group conflict to war, terrorism, and torture; political analysis of life-sciences research, health policy, environmental policy, and biosecurity policy; and philosophical analysis of life-sciences problems, such as bioethical controversies.” 

Kosal brings to bear expertise in biotechnology, emerging technology, national security, nonproliferation, arms control, biosecurity, terrorism, and foreign and defense policy.

The journal’s “typical contributors include political scientists and political behaviorists; biosecurity and international-security experts; life scientists, clinicians, health-policy scholars, and bioethicists; moral and evolutionary philosophers; environmental scientists and ecological economists; political-behavioral and environmental historians; science-policy scholars and historians of science; and legal scholars.”

PLS was founded in 1980 by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS), which is an American Political Science Association (APSA) Section and an American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Member Society.