LAUSR

That Amartya Sen had a seminal and profound influence on the human development paradigm and the capability approach hardly needs a reminder. He served as an advisor to the very first Human Development Reports and contributed to the development of the human development index. Sen is also generally regarded as the contemporary initiator of the capability approach, although it has been pointed out repeatedly, by Sen himself and by others, that the core notions of a functioning was crucial in the work of Aristotle, and hence also in the work of philosophers and economists who have been greatly influenced by Aristotle. It is unlikely that Sen had expected the enormous influence that his work on the capability approach would have had a few decades later. Today, as the publications in this journal testify, the capability approach is used by scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines and fields, in countries across the world. The type of work in which the capability approach is used also differs remarkable—ranging from the development of philosophical theories to applied empirical studies that guide policies for the government as well as civil society organizations, to theoretical or empirical measurement. It is not unlikely that the founding of the Human Development and Capability Association 15 years ago has positively contributed to the further development of the human development paradigm as well as the capability approach. The HDCA, of which Amartya Sen served as the first president, has tried in various ways to connect students, scholars and practitioners across disciplines and across continents. Members of the HDCA have also collaborated and contributed to a better understanding of the human development and capability approaches, for example by offering accessible Summer schools preceding the annual conference, or by drawing on the growing number of experts in this field for providing comments on papers submitted to this journal.