Many thanks to Susan Hautaniemi Leonard for her years of service as co-editor of Continuity and Change. Julie Marfany and Mary Louise Nagata welcomed Susan as co-editor along with Chris Briggs for the January 2014 edition after Eilidh Garrett stepped down. Although Susan has published articles on historical demography, she has her degree in anthropology and worked for many years on household dynamics, farming practices, wealth inequality, and their interaction with the population dynamics of the Great Plains of North America. Her broad areas of expertise made her a good fit for our editorial team.
Over the years Susan mentored many articles through the publication process including articles on the marriage chances of the deaf in nineteenth century Belgium, the demography of the slave population on St. Vincent, the decline of the worsted industry in 18th century Norwich, and Palestinian Arab lawyers in the Jewish state of Israel, 1948–1952, to name a very few. In addition, Susan was our technical expert as we transitioned from meeting via Skype to Zoom. She created a shared Google Drive to facilitate sharing files instead of emailing back and forth and kept a spreadsheet for the articles in process.
Susan remained as co-editor when Julie Marfany and Chris Briggs stepped down and we welcomed Alex Brown and Helena da Silva as co-editors in 2020 and Susan finally stepped down as co-editor when she retired from academic work at the end of 2023 and ten years with Continuity and Change.
The co-editors welcomed Helder Carvahal in Spring 2024. Hélder Carvalhal is Researcher in the Department of History of the Uppsala University (Sweden). His research focuses on global living standards, gender, and work and occupational structures since 1500, and he has become a valuable addition to the editorial team.
