IAMCR Newsletter | November 2013
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ANZCA NEWS
The Australia and New Zealand Communication Association - ANZCA – is very pleased to become an Associate member of IAMCR, and we have also accepted IAMCR as our Associate member. This reciprocal membership agreement which occurred this month paves the way for more collaborative research scholarship between our two associations. We are looking forward to promoting each other’s activities including research conferences and workshops.
Many ANZCA members are already individual members of IAMCR and as such this organisational membership solidifies our common research interests as well as extends the two association’s profiles regionally and globally. For example, ANZCA members are keen to start negotiating the possibility of hosting an IAMCR regional conference in Australia as soon as possible. This interest has been embraced by our incoming executive team which takes office from September 2013, and will be led by Associate Professor Terence Lee from Murdoch university in Australia.
We are also hoping that many people will take the opportunity of our carefully timed annual conference dates to start their IAMCR trips from either Australia or New Zealand. For example, the 2014 ANZCA conference will be hosted by Swinburne University in Melbourne in the first week of July 2014. We therefore look forward to having IAMCR members at the ANZCA conference in Melbourne before heading to Hyderabad, India for the 2014 IAMCR conference which starts from 15-19 July.
Chika Anyanwu
President, ANZCA
ALAIC NEWS
1. IAMCR Conference hosted a promising International Forum for interchange
During the last IAMCR Conference in Dublin, the Latin American Communications Researchers´ Association (ALAIC) and the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) organised a Forum with other relevant international communication associations (IAMCR, ICA, NORDICOM, and AMIC) stimulating comparative studies and a common agenda among entities and researchers. Future ideas and projects were discussed.
The associations agreed to promote more dialogue among their working groups and sections, while they will keep on organising common roundtables to discuss possibilities of cooperation during next conferences in 2014 (IAMCR in Hyderabad and ECREA in Lisbon). In addition, proposals on edited books, special issues of scientific journals and an interchange system within their summer school programs have also been discussed and are expected to be further developed in the upcoming months.
This was the 5th meeting organized by ALAIC and ECREA. Prior to Dublin, these two continental organizations have been organizing roundtables at previous IAMCR (Istanbul 2011 and Durban 2012), ALAIC (Montevideo 2012) and ECREA (Istanbul 2012) Conferences.
The ALAIC-ECREA taskforce intends to investigate and develop closer collaboration between both organizations, recognizing that regional diversity is a significant asset to our field, but at the same time drawing attention to the importance of avoiding counterproductive processes of intellectual isolationism or hierarchization through the organisation of creative dialogues and exchanges.
ALAIC and ECREA have been contributing to this dialogue by emphasising the regional specificity and contextual embeddedness of theories, methodologies and research traditions in Latin America and Europe, critically comparing the strengths and weaknesses, the abundances and gaps, and then articulating these differences as opportunities for the intellectual enrichment of both academic communities.
2. Forum of Association of Presidents of Communication Research Associations in Latin America La Paz Statement: Latin American Critical Thought
Forty years after the important meeting in Costa Rica in 1973, where the groundwork for the organization of the academic field of communication in Latin America was laid, and from which in 1977 the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC) was born, a new call is released by ALAIC and the national associations of the continent, during the ALAIC’s VII Research Seminar, held in La Paz, Bolivia, September 26 and 27.
Presidents of these associations (ABOIC,Bolivia, ACICOM, Colombia, AMIC, México, APEIC, Peru, INCOM-Chile, INVECOM, Venezuela, INTERCOM, Brazil, and SEICOM, Ecuador) signed the Charter of La Paz agreement during the creation of the Forum of Presidents of Latin American Researchers Associations. The charter provides for the associations’ formal stand on “Latin American Critical Thought”. Along with the creation of a permanent forum of presidents, a commission was established for the development of a repository project of Latin American Critical Thought. The Charter of La Paz is available online (in Spanish).