Editorial: Envisioning future research on the education and learning of adults

Establishing a new scholarly journal can be justified by the functional needs of a welldefined scientific discipline – or as opposition to its institutional and paradigmatic framework. This is, however, not the case with the European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults (RELA). It is, rather, so that the journal is part of the emergence of a scientific community, very deeply embedded in societal practices at the same time as it is reconstructing intellectually these practices and their context as scientific objects. In this case, the journal can attempt to provide an arena and some of the communicative resources for academic and broader social development of such a community. To fulfil this mission, its rationale and specific goals are equally related to a diagnosis of these societal practices and some visions for the role of scientific inquiry in these practices. As two of the six editors of RELA, and responsible for the editorial work of the first issue of the journal, we will discuss why this journal has been launched, and how the editors want to position it in the area of the education and learning of adults.