Dear IAMCR member:
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research and to invite you to renew your membership for 2017.
IAMCR and its members can be proud of our achievements over the past year.
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Our conference in Leicester attracted more than 1,300 scholars from more than 80 countries. It was an intense five days of panels, presentations and plenaries interspersed with lunches, social events and the opportunity to revisit Leicester, which last hosted an IAMCR conference forty years ago.
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The Leicester conference also featured twelve pre-conferences, reflecting on topics ranging from the Brexit campaign, media and development, digital surveillance and the Spanish Civil War.
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Once again, we offered various grants and awards to encourage scholarship in the field and to support diversity at our conferences. These included twenty-three travel grants, the Herbert I. Schiller Award, the Climate Communication Research in Action Award and the Urban Communication Research Grant.
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This year was a General Assembly (GA) year for the association, a chance to report back to the membership and to decide on future direction. Among other things, the GA confirmed the election of a new International Council and Executive Board, both to serve four-year mandates, and passed motion in support of the academic freedom of Turkish colleagues, an issue that has occupied our Clearinghouse on Public Statements throughout 2016.
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IAMCR has also been active as head of the research agenda of UNESCO’s Global Alliance for Media and Gender (GAMAG) and we co-sponsored academic events in Finland, France, Russia and the United States. Various sections and working groups have also been busy, with activities ranging from the Participatory Communication Research Section’s PhD Winter School, to be held in Guangzhou, China in December, and the journal of the Political Economy Section, the Political Economy of Communication.
Of course the highlight for 2017 will be the conference in Cartagena, Colombia from 16-20 July. Situated on the Caribbean coast, Cartagena is a beautiful city famous for its architecture and its culture (it was the home of Gabriel García Márquez) and Colombia is home to some of Latin America’s most dynamic communication experiences as well as leading thinkers in the field. The conference website went live recently and the calls for papers of our sections and working groups will be published this month.
2017 also marks 60 years since IAMCR’s founding conference in Paris, France. Watch for announcements of special anniversary events being planned for Cartagena .
We have lots of other plans for the year but I want to remind you that all of these activities are only possible because of the support we receive from you and other IAMCR members. Membership fees provide us with the majority of our operating income and your ongoing support is vital to the ongoing health of the organization.
Thank you again for your continuing support of IAMCR -the leading worldwide professional organisation in the field of media and communication research.
Sincerely,
Janet Wasko
President, IAMCR