ESRS Newsletter 15.2.2010
Dear ESRS Member
A belated Happy New Year. I hope you have all had a good start to 2010.
This newsletter is to let members know about some forthcoming events and remind you about the ESRS website.
ESRS Congress in Vaasa 2009
First, we should again acknowledge publically the success of the 2009 Congress in Vaasa, Finland. As we recorded at the time, the Congress attracted more participants than any previous Congress of the Society. An impressive 37 working groups with 470 registered participants were held as well as the 24 plenary and key note papers. The local organising team led by Erland Eklund and Hannu Katajamaki ensured that the Congress was remarkably smooth running and efficient and we are extremely grateful to them for all their hard work leading up to and during the Congress. We also wish to thank the Scientific Committee led by Philip Lowe for putting together an excellent academic programme that stimulated important debate over a range of topics.
The local organising committee also collected feedback from the participants of the Congress. Feedback given in evaluation forms and sent via e-mails after the congress are almost overwhelmingly positive. This is true for both the scientific content of the congress and local arrangements. With few exceptions the half-day excursion format was positively received. Concerning the scientific content there were some critical comments concerning the gender balance among key note and symposia speakers - the male dominance was quite obvious. The local organizing committee is pleased to announce that the XXIII ESRS Congress in Vaasa has been nominated for “Best Congress in Finland 2009”.
ESRS Congress in Chania 2011
Planning for the 2011 Congress has begun in earnest. The venue for the Congress will be the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Crete (http://www.maich.gr/ ). Many of you may remember a very successful meeting there in 1997. The dates of the Congress are the 22nd to the 25th August, hopefully missing the heat and tourists of the height of the summer season. We have now appointed the Chair of the Scientific Committee for the Congress and are very grateful to Gianluca Brunori of the University of Pisa for agreeing to do this job. We are currently putting together the rest of the Committee. The theme for the Congress has been agreed as ‘Diversity and Inequality in Rural Europe’. A topic that gives an opportunity for a wide range of perspectives on contemporary rural Europe and which should provide an excellent focus for debate.
Details of the Congress planning and, importantly, the call for workshop sessions and then papers will be published on the Society website and in future Members’ mailings.
ESRS Summer School 2010
The bi-annual ESRS Postgraduate Summer School will be held in Cordoba from the 4th to the 10th October 2010. It is being organised by María Jesús Rivera at the Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados (IESA-CSIC). Call for papers: [pdf] More information about ESRS Summer School will be available at www.iesa.csic.es in mid-February.
Website
As we reported at the AGM, the Society has now a new and updated website http://www.ruralsociology.eu/ We hope that Members have visited the site and like the new format. We do need to work on the website to ensure that it is useful and well-used. In particular, we need to ensure that relevant information about the ESRS and also other material (conferences, publications etc.) that are useful to members is regularly posted and updated. This newsletter is partly to remind members to visit the website and also to sent any material that you think should be posted on the site to the Committee. We have decided to appoint a member of the Committee (Tiina Silvasti) as the Communications Officer – Tiina will receive material for the website and liaise with Ville Klemets at Vaasa [ville.klemets@abo.fi] who remains involved as technical support for the website. Tiina’s email address is [tiina.silvasti@helsinki.fi] - please send her items that you think should be posted on the site (we retain the power to decide on which items are posted!).
We are also keen to receive any ideas you may have for the future use of the website and for ways we can ensure it is of benefit to members.
Sociologia Ruralis
This year (2010) is Sociologia Ruralis’ anniversary year. Volume 50 thereby marks 50 years of the journal’s publication ant it is adorned with an appropriately celebratory cover. A number of keynote papers are being published over the year along with a special issue on rural mobilities. In addition, three anniversary ‘Virtual Issues’ of the Journal are being electronically published on the Journal’s website. The themes of these three Virtual Issues are; Food and Farming, Gender and Rurality and Rural Development. Drawing on a selection of papers already published in the Journal, going back over the last 50 years, these Virtual Issues, which will be freely available, illustrate the leading contribution of Sociologia Ruralis and its authors to these critical debates within rural social science.
Executive Committee
At the AGM in Vaasa in August, the following were confirmed as members of the ESRS Executive Committee:
President: Jo Little (University of Exeter)
Vice-President: Charalambos Kasimis (Agricultural University of Athens)
Claire Lamine (INRA)
Pawel Starosta (University of Lodz)
Mark Shucksmith (University of Newcastle)
Tiina Silvasti (University of Helsinki)
Ex officio:
Henry Buller, University of Exeter (Editor in chief, Sociologia Ruralis )
Minna Lehtola, University of Helsinki (Secretary)
Kjell Andersson, University of Helsinki (Treasurer)
Ville Klemets, Åbo Akademi University (Web design and management)
Other topics of interest
The homepage of the IRSA is updated. One new feature there is Rural sociologists in media. For more information, please visit http://www.irsa-world.org/