Reparative Editing

of Leicester School of Museum Studies. 1 I was full of ideals and visions for continuing the journal's commitment to diversity.I would seek new editors, reviewers, and authors from a variety of populations.I would reexamine our editorial practices to ensure that they were not embedded in systemic inequalities.I understood my role as being more of a facilitator than a gatekeeper, moving our discipline forward in an activist manner. 2 The prior chair of the editorial board, Suzanne MacLeod, had accepted a proposal for a special issue on the status of Ukrainian museums after the full-scale invasion of the country by Russia on February 24, 2022.The project devolved onto me when I became chair.I was not prepared for the realities of this undertaking.The cultural worker who had proposed the special issue disappeared into the war.In addition to the di culties inherent in being non-native users of English, article authors faced explosions, power outages, constantly changing conditions, ooding, personal trauma, unemployment, and exile.Their eagerness to proceed with decolonization and de-Russi cation was inspiring but also a challenge-while I supported these aims, I had to guard against libel and statements that might endanger authors or individuals mentioned in articles, especially if they were in occupied zones.In the end, I was overwhelmed by the kindness of Slavic scholars in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe who assisted me, and I was constantly impressed by the courage, persistence, and creativity of the authors, as they wrote articles on traumatic events, persisted in their professions, worked around resource constraints, and managed tumultuous daily experiences.What followed is a hybrid form: a splicing of the kind of scholarly article that journals have traditionally published with something more personal and intuitive, stemming from what I have termed "reparative editing."Following Shaw and Voss, I de ne editing broadly, as "the process of improving written work," and editors as "its practitioners" who "collaborate" with authors. 3The article's form and my methods are consistent with my aim-to contribute to repairing wrongs wrought by editorial practices steeped in colonization, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression.