Editorial Editorial: Twenty years of Ethnicities Tariq Modood University of Bristol, UK Stephen May University of Auckland, New Zealand Ethnicities was first published in 2001, having been officially launched at the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights Conference at the University of Bristol in September 1999, convened by Stephen May, Tariq Modood and Judith Squires. The Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, in the then Sociology Department (now School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies) at the University of Bristol, was also launched at that conference (May and Modood, 2001), with Tariq Modood as its director. The Centre hosted Ethnicities for the next 18years, with its administration moving to the University of Auckland in 2018. The University of Bristol was a particularly apposite place for Ethnicities, as it was the host of the first research council funded social science unit on ethnic relations in the UK (1971–1978). That earlier unit, led by Michael Banton, who was writing and publishing right up to his recent death (An Obituary, 2019; Barot, 2006), was marked by the active cross-fertilisation of sociology and anthropology. The Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship continued that legacy but shifted its focus to the interdisciplinary nexus of sociology and politics. This focus is also at the heart of Ethnicities, which has specifically promoted interdisciplinary engagement across sociology and politics, and related disciplines, as a means of addressing more adequately the pressing issues attendant upon racism, ethnicity, nationalism, multiculturalism and minority rights. Another distinctive feature of Ethnicities has been that from the start it included a focus on religious identities, especially Muslims in western societies, arising out of Modood’s interests, and of indigenous and linguistic identities out of May’s academic work. Today, these may now look unremarkable features of a journal specialising in ethnic identities. However, this was not the case in 1990s when disciplinary Corresponding author: Tariq Modood, University of Bristol, UK. Email: t.modood@bristol.ac.uk Ethnicities 0(0) 1–2 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1468796819872357 journals.sagepub.com/home/etn