Holiday greetings from the EISA office

Dear EISA community and friends,

We hope this end-of-the-year message finds you all at peace and well. What a year it has been.

Along with other professional associations, EISA had to defer the physical gatherings of our main events - the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS), the Pan-European Conference (PEC), and the Exploratory Workshops in Rapallo – due to the Covid-19 pandemic this year. But while our core conferences had to be moved forward to 2021, 2020 was nevertheless the year in which we finally signed the contract with our trusted management company C-IN. We are delighted that our relationship with C-IN who have been a bastion of support and good cheer during a difficult year now rests on a firm basis.

Regardless of the pandemic restrictions, there have been many delightful online research exchanges organised by our members throughout 2020. EISA community has been active offering a variety of webinars, professional skills workshops and early career workshops. A selection of our recent 2020 online events is now available on EISA website: open to general public over the holiday period as a gift from the EISA community to the global International Studies field. While we have been keen to make our events in the virtual space accessible for everyone, it is your continuing membership contributions that make EISA’s long-term sustainability possible. Without members dedicated to making sure our community would survive and flourish in a post-Corona future, EISA will dwindle.

We have been thrilled to celebrate the research gems of the year by awarding the Best Article in the European Journal of International Relations 2020 jointly to Dr Deepak Nair for his article ‘Saving face in diplomacy: A political sociology of face-to-face interactions in ASEAN’ and Dr Ida Danewid for her article ‘The fire this time: Grenfell, racial capitalism and the urbanization of empire’. The 2020 Best Article in Global Affairs Prize was awarded to Dr Oliver Daddow for his article ‘Global Britain: The Discursive Construction of Britain’s Post-Brexit Role’. The winner of the Best Dissertation Award 2020 is Dr Sean Fleming from the University of Cambridge with the dissertation ‘Leviathan on a Leash: A Political Theory of State Responsibility’. Congratulations, again, to all EISA awardees for your stellar research achievements!

As the vaccine for Covid-19 has now become available, we are looking forward to a more hopeful 2021 with the gradual return of in-person encounters and conference gatherings in the beautiful campuses across Europe, as has always been the EISA way.
Let us wish you a restful winter break, with the words of the American poet Hayden Carruth: ‘Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.’ But let us also hope together that the curtain of snow will eventually lift.

A happier 2021 to you all – thank you for your commitment to our association, and many happy returns to EISA.

Prof. Beate Jahn Dr Maria Mälksoo

EISA President EISA Executive Secretary