The time has come to embrace our changing world and its new technologies: with this in mind, the board of ESSE, convened last year in August in Braga, decided that The Messenger should finally go electronic. Our Newsletter was traditionally sent to you twice a year from Portugal, sometimes with real difficulties and at a considerable cost. The move to an online and electronic version seemed a most effective move, not to mention a timely one, considering The Messenger is now well beyond the age of the majority (being 25 in 2015 as we advertised in its last Winter issue).
This was a difficult decision to take, as quite a number of our members, I am sure, still hold their paper copies in great esteem as they reminded them of the presence of ESSE in their lives. We were fortunate to find in Adrian Radu (Romania) – in cooperation with Jacques Ramel, our website webmaster – a ready individual to undertake the challenging task of transferring The Messenger into its new format. I want to thank here the former editors of the paper version who performed a brilliant (often difficult) task; in particular Dr. Hortensia Parlog who helped make the transition and was in charge of the last edition of The Messenger.
We still have our academic scholarly Journal of English studies, EJES, in paper form and let me say that The Messenger will not compete against it or play the same role. Having realized that our website plays the role of a Newsletter with all kind of information published quickly and easily, The Messenger, as of January 2016, will be our new online Journal. It will retain part of its former duty as newsletter continuing 25 years of tradition of spreading information, but also publishing poetry and book reviews; it will also be an online journal publishing articles dedicated to professional issues, as well as more academic papers (such as the best papers given by doctoral students during our – now as of 2016 – yearly PhD sessions).
This year will be a year of transition, as The ESSE Messenger will move from paper version to the electronic format. It will continue its policy of offering a variety of contributions, some of which will be selected by the new editor, Adrian Radu, for peer-reviewing following the established tradition of this publication.
Let me add that it seems of the utmost importance that The Messenger should have a wider international spread for we know that today this the sine qua non condition for us, working in the field of humanities, to be read and to have our results quickly shared in our academic community and beyond.
Let me then wish The Messenger a fruitful further 25 years of good services in the interest of us all.
Liliane Louvel
Emeritus Professor,
Poitiers University
ESSE President