Editors’ Notes

Abstract

I began writing this note introducing the fourth installment of Biography’s International Year in review on the first day of June 2020, which meant that I couldn’t help reflecting on this year’s collection of essays across a horizon defined by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25. These uprisings have inspired people in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and other cities around the world to take to the streets, despite stay-at-home orders and curfews, to express their outrage at systemic injustice in the US and in their own countries.