Greetings from the new EISA President and Executive Secretary

Dear friends and colleagues,

We are honored to be nominated by the Governing Board and humbled by the General Assembly’s decision to elect us as the new President and Executive Secretary of EISA. We wanted to congratulate the past Presidency and Board for their extremely remarkable achievements and give you a quick update to highlight some of our immediate plans and objectives for the association.

In the last two years, the return of EWIS and PEC has been extremely successful with high number of participants at each. Moreover, the organisational and financial structures of EISA have been strengthened and new initiatives have been launched (‘Voices: the EISA Podcast’, online events, the new book series with Oxford University Press ‘Voices in International Relations’ and our Postdoctoral Bridge Grant scheme). We would like to recognise the resolute leadership of Cemal Burak Tansel (President 2021-2023) and Gabi Schlag (Executive Secretary 2021-2023) in expertly guiding the association and introducing these initiatives. We would also like to extend our sincerest thanks to the departing board members Felix Berenskoetter, Catherine Charrett, Marieke de Goede, Vinteet Thakur, Juha A. Vuori for generously committing their time and labour to EISA over the past 4 years. We are thrilled to welcome Nora El Qadim, Beatrix Futàk-Campbell, Magdalena Kozub-Karkut, Daniela Lai, Revecca Pedi, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Joana Ricarte to the Governing Board. Our new members are bringing significant organisational expertise and intellectual diversity to the board and have already begun working on their respective portfolios.

For the 2023–2025 term, we are committed to building upon the excellent work of previous board members and taking further steps to make the EISA more inclusive and diverse for the IR community in Europe and beyond. In this endeavor, we will enhance EISA’s existing activities and undertake further initiatives to broaden our outreach and exchanges. We will be particularly devoting resources to:

• Increasing our financial and organisational support for PhD candidates, early career researchers and those who face different forms of structural inequality and discrimination.
• Strengthening EISA’s existing Mobility Fund to support access to our flagship events and upgrade other existing sources to reinforce collaboration and exchanges among our members.
• Expanding our existing event portfolio by further investing in EISA’s onsite and online activities with an updated programme of scholarly events, professional development and policy-oriented initiatives.
• Improving our digital infrastructure with new investments in our website and membership and conference management platforms.
• Further developing our publications portfolio.
• Widening connections with colleagues and institutions beyond the ‘core’ of Europe’s IR community through new cooperative arrangements.

In their welcome speech as EISA’s President and Executive Secretary, respectively, Cemal Burak Tansel and Gabi Schlag emphasised their commitment to “steer the association democratically and transparently in continual communication with our members.” Taking over the executive committee, we will follow this mission by means of close dialogue with the EISA membership.

We all look forward to seeing you at our forthcoming events. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any feedback or if you would like to take part in EISA activities.

Beste İşleyen (President) & Sonia Lucarelli (Executive Secretary)