Christopher D. Green, PhD
Green is a professor of psychology at York University.
Background
Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?
I earned my PhD in computational cognitive science at the University of Toronto. Then I took a position at York University (also in Toronto) in a unique History & Theory of Psychology program. During my first sabbatical, I went back to the University of Toronto and earned a PhD in the philosophy of science but, soon after, I began retooling on my own as a historian of psychology. I had always been interested in the topic, but I did not really commit to it as my main research topic until then. Not long after, in the mid-2000s, I was offered the editorship of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. It was a fantastic opportunity, but I found it to be very difficult work at that point in my career, and I gave it up after 3 years. Now, however, I am better positioned professionally to do the job, and History of Psychology is a journal that I have published in frequently over the years. In fact, one of my articlesopens in new window was the first ever published in the journal. So it was a natural fit.
Priorities
Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?
As can be said of many journals these days, one key goal is to expand coverage to more diverse communities, specifically in terms of racial and ethnic identity, nationality, and gender. This also entails ensuring that people from these communities are included as authors, reviewers, and editorial board members in the production of the journal itself. We need to expand the range of voices and faces among the people who call themselves “historians of psychology.”
I would also like the journal to take greater advantage of the fabulous technologies that are now available. The traditional archive-based historical article will always have its place in the journal, but, in addition, how can the new digital tools be used to expand the kinds of historical work being done and to extend the historical vision of the discipline? I want researchers who are pioneering new methods of study to know that History of Psychology is a place that will welcome their innovative efforts.
Journal importance
Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?
The journal is coming into its 25th year. It is one of only two major journals in this field in North America. It enables the people who devote their extraordinary skills and precious time to examining, reexamining, and analyzing psychology’s past to publish their work, have academic research careers, and be successful professionals. As quickly as academic publishing is changing these days, the journal is still the pivot point on which many careers turn.
Why should people outside of the academy learn history? History has this undeserved reputation as being a frill of the leisure class. Nothing could be further from the truth. History defines all of us. Nearly all of the debates that are rocking U.S. politics right now are, at their root, debates over history and how that history defines what it is to be an American. What was the intent of the Founding Fathers? How far were the key freedoms of the Bill of Rights—speech, religion, gun ownership, property rights—understood to extend? Just how profound was the impact of slavery on the first 250 years of the American economy? What should universities and other institutions do when they (re)discover that they were founded on or greatly expanded using money that had been acquired through the exploitation of enslaved people (and might well not exist today had it not been for those early endowments)? What should land grant colleges do when they (re)discover that the very land upon which they sit had been seized by the federal government from Indigenous communities not long before being “granted” to them? All of these historical questions cut to the heart of today’s most vexing political controversies. History matters.
Challenges
What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?
As social views change, as they do in every era, it is incumbent upon us as historians to go back and look again at what we think we know about how the discipline has developed. Who was left out of previous accounts and why? Among those events that once were not regarded as being terribly important, which are now seen as having historical significance after all? How can the discipline’s past be reframed to answer the questions that are considered crucial today? We face these challenges every day, and social views seem to be shifting now faster than they ever have. We may be in the midst of a social revolution. Paradoxically, as historians, we have to keep our work answerable to the present.
Plans
Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes?
As I mentioned before, one of my priorities is to expand the range of communities represented among History of Psychology’s authors, editors, and reviewers. In the past, historians of psychology have concentrated perhaps too much on Northern Europe and North America. But now there are active communities of historians in Southern Europe, South America, and Asia. I want to include their narratives in the journal’s pages. In line with this, some of History of Psychology’s linguistic policies need to be updated as well. To this end, I am working with APA Publishing to include some non-English précis of articles alongside the English-language abstracts and articles. Canadian journals have long had French précis alongside English articles (and English précis with French-language articles), so there is precedent for this. I want to expand the range of languages in which précis are offered to include those that are native both to our authors and to their colleagues, students, and administrators. How far that might go, it is hard to say.
