The year 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, and the Editorial Board thought the occasion should be marked by a special issue. Eagle-eyed readers will note that the fiftieth anniversary finds the journal only at volume 49: just one volume appeared in the years 1982–3.

The journal's fortieth issue in 2016 contained a dozen survey pieces of around 4000 words, all by established, indeed eminent, names who had published important contributions in BMGS over the years: Haldon, Magdalino, Averil Cameron, Brock, Margaret Alexiou, Angold, Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys, Holton, Ursinus, Herzfeld, Tziovas, Beaton. (An obituary for the much-missed Elizabeth Jeffreys appears at the end of this issue.)

There seemed little point in updating such surveys for the fiftieth anniversary, in the manner of the curiously titled Fifty Years (and Twelve) of Classical Scholarship (Oxford 1968). Instead, the Editors of this special issue (Ingela Nilsson and David Ricks) have broadly followed the astute suggestion of a board member at the time, Henry Maguire, to solicit contributions from scholars born after (or, in one case, just before) 1975.

Contributors have been given an open brief: some have chosen to provide concise and up-to-date surveys of their field, others to delve into a specific case study or problem in a little detail. (Likewise, the nature and style of documentation has been left to authorial discretion.) Inevitably, there could be no attempt to cover all the areas to which BMGS has been and remains hospitable, but this snapshot of research being carried out from eight national bases, and often on topics or approaches which were scarcely addressed, if at all, back in 1975, presents a picture of intellectual vigour. It is the hope of the Editors hope that this special issue will stimulate an increased flow of what are already numerous submissions to BMGS and contribute to ongoing debates across the various fields.