EISA Update on Events 2021

Dear EISA members, friends, and colleagues,

I am writing to wish you all a very happy new year – and to update you on EISA developments.

As you know, like other professional associations, EISA was forced last year to cancel its physical events and to offer instead a number of online activities – ranging from EWIS workshops through a virtual conference in September to excellent Early Career and Professional Skills Workshops at the end of the year. And like everyone else, we are absolutely delighted about the development of covid vaccines that suggest that an end to the really hard times is in sight.

Yet, while there is light at the end of the tunnel, it will take quite some time to actually reach that point. The vaccination of large populations presents a significant challenge and current forecasts suggest that travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, and social distancing rules will remain in place (to varying degrees for different countries) for quite some time. Under these circumstances, holding international conferences is neither realistic nor feasible.

We have therefore decided to run EWIS and PEC in 2021 online – and to delay the Exploratory Symposia in Rapallo until 2022.

This was not an easy decision, but it promises the best and most equitable opportunity for intellectual exchange and networking in the current context – including the participation of colleagues from other parts of the world who would not be able to travel to Europe. We are going to draw on all the lessons with online events and intellectual cooperation that we have had to learn over the past 9 months and are determined to provide you with fantastic workshop and conference opportunities. We will share the details with you as soon as we have worked them out. So watch this space!

In the meantime, we are extremely hopeful that we will be able to return to in-person events in 2022. In order to reduce further disruptions, we are hoping to stick with the original plan of holding EWIS in 2022 in Brussels and the Pan-European Conference in Athens. And we are planning to return to Thessaloniki and Malta, destinations that so many of us had been looking forward to for 2021, a year later in 2023. This will provide organizers in Malta and Thessaloniki with a bit of breathing space after the cancellations and delays - and our members with something to look forward to.

The programme chairs of EWIS and PEC will be in touch in due course with updates on practical developments. In the meantime, please do not forget that we depend on your support in these difficult times and renew your membership.

Wishing you all the best for 2021,

Beate Jahn