The editor-in-chief is Ewout Frankema (Wageningen University & Research).

Articles are meant to engage in interdisciplinary debates among historians sociologists, economists, and political scientists, as well as specialists in non-written histories, such as geographers, archaeologists, and biologists.

[1] Early ideas for a journal of global history began at the Institute of Historical Research when its director Patrick K. O'Brien created a new seminar in 1990.

[2] Subsequently, a graduate degree was created at the London School of Economics that focused on "meta-narratives in history", focusing on environments, geopolitics, religions, cultures, economies, gender, ideas, and science.

Five years after the degree was launched, the London School of Economics and Cambridge University Press co-sponsored The Journal of Global History.