Last December, in the university town of St Andrews, the British International Studies Association (BISA) celebrated its 30th anniversary conference. As it was a rather special occasion, BISA members took this opportunity to indulge in some reminiscences about its founding, some studies of the work that had been carried out since the founding of the Association and reflect upon the relationship of British scholarship in international studies to scholarship elsewhere. It has been customary for there to be, at the BISA conference, a plenary address given by a prominent British or overseas scholar or (on occasion) a practitioner. It has also long been a tradition that The Review of International Studies, the Journal of the Association produced in association with Cambridge University Press, publishes the plenary of the conferences. For the thirtieth anniversary, however, BISA commissioned three plenary lectures. In this edition of the Journal, therefore, we devote a section to the lectures that were given by Professors Chris Brown, Lawrence Freedman and Geoff Roberts. We will come on to the content of these lectures in a moment, but thought that, by way of introduction, it would be timely to reflect upon the circumstances in which BISA was born, and say something about the changes in the environment of British International Studies from the mid 1970s until today.