Most important decisions taken by the Board of ESSE during its ONLINE meeting on 27th August 2021

  1. The Board of ESSE re-elected the current ESSE President, Professor Andreas H. Jucker, Switzerland, for another three-year period. His new term of office will begin on 1st January 2022.
  2. The Board of ESSE elected the new Editor of The ESSE Messenger, Professor Laura Esteban Segura, Spain, for the period of three years. Her term of office will begin on 1st January 2022. The ESSE Board thanked Dr Adrian Radu for his dedicated work as the Editor in the past six years.
  3. The Board of ESSE confirmed the appointment of the new ESSE Webmaster, Dr Adrian Radu, Romania. His term of office will begin on 1st January 2022. The ESSE Board thanked Dr Jacques Ramel, France, for his dedicated work as the ESSE Webmaster in the past 20 years.
  4. The Board of ESSE appointed a nominations committee for the election of the ESSE Secretary and the ESSE Treasurer. The term of office for both posts will begin on 1st January 2023. The deadline for the submission of applications is 30th April 2022.
  5. The Board of ESSE appointed the evaluation committees for the ESSE Book Awards for 2022. It was also decided to award winners only and to discontinue the category of honourable mention.
  6. The Board of ESSE accepted the proposed parallel lectures, seminars and round tables for the ESSE-16 conference in Mainz in 2022. The call for papers will soon be published on the ESSE website.
  7. The Board of ESSE strongly reaffirmed its commitment to promote research and to support activities aimed to help both young and established researchers. The Board decided to:
  • continue with the Bursaries and appointed a Bursary committee for 2022. The Board also decided to introduce a new category of bursary to support gender studies within English studies for 2022. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1st March 2022;
  • continue with the Book grants and extend this research support scheme to enable applicants to gain access to resources other than books, for example, specialized online databases, corpora, library collections, etc. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1st May 2022;
  • continue with ESSE Book Awards in the category of English Language and Linguistics, Literatures in the English Language, and Cultural and Area studies in English. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1st February 2022;
  • continue with the Doctoral Symposium in both the conference and non-conference years and, for the conference year 2022, to offer funding to help eligible doctoral students in need of support to participate in the Doctoral Symposium that will be held in Mainz, Germany, for two days during the ESSE 16 conference, 29th August – 2nd September 2022. The deadline for the submission of applications is 15th January 2022;
  • continue the Collaborative Project Workshop, whose purpose is to support a preliminary meeting of European researchers working towards a collaborative research project in the field of English Studies, and to offer funding for it. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1st March 2022;
  • introduce a new research support scheme for national associations with tight resources to propose parallel lecture speakers from their national associations for the ESSE conference and to cover their travel expenses;
  • introduce a new research support scheme for national associations with tight resources to invite plenary speakers from other national associations to their own national conferences and to cover their travel expenses.