Letter from the President
Update from Richard Raiswell, President of the Executive Committee, concerning the Montreal Conference, the Scientiae Summer Series, and other Scientiae-related news and updates.
April 2022
Friends and Colleagues,
It was with great regret that the Scientiae Executive Committee made the difficult decision to cancel our annual conference slated to be held in Montreal this June. While health restrictions across Canada are easing up now, we sent around our call for papers at the height of the Omicron outbreak. As a result, we received less than a quarter of the number of abstracts we usually receive. Quite understandably, many would-be delegates were reluctant to commit to long-distance travel and all the ancillary expenses that go along with a conference in such uncertain circumstances. Many other medium-sized learned societies are facing similar difficulties.
Beyond the numerous high-quality papers that always feature at our conferences, our gatherings are conducted in a spirit of interdisciplinary conviviality. Whether during the probing question period after a series of stimulating papers, over coffee, or perhaps even a few glasses of wine at the conference banquet, one of the goals of Scientiae is to bring together scholars researching analogous fields from differing perspectives and to think about connections and commonalities. We strive to revive something approximating that pre-disciplinary intellectual environment in which many different approaches to knowledge-making thrived, clashed, or appropriated from each other. But this is only possible with a critical mass of scholars—and without such a base, we reluctantly decided to cancel the Montreal gathering.
However, our conference committee has pivoted, and we’re very pleased to announce that we will be hosting a number of “Scientiae Days” at various points in the summer. These will each feature two sessions that examine aspects of a particular theme from a number of perspectives. We already have a very strong line-up for days on 3 and 10 June—and you can read about these elsewhere in the newsletter and on our website:
https://scientiaeacademic.com/
And watch for more announcements in your in-box in the coming weeks. I’d like to thank Danielle Skjelver and Vera Kirk for working with me on these events.
That said, planning is already well underway for our summer 2023 conference. This will be held in-person—fingers tightly crossed—in Prague. The Conference Committee led by Scientiae Vice President Stefano Gulizia are still working on details. But watch for the CFP which should be sent out in September. Do consider submitting a paper or a panel proposal. We’re keen for this to be our biggest and best conference yet—and really, can you think of somewhere else you’d rather be than Prague in early June!
Our Communications Committee has been hard at work over the last few months. We have been through a comprehensive “re-branding exercise”—a terrifying phrase to many an academic these days—and have a completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate website. I’d like to thank Karen Hollewand, Nikola Krestonosich, and Maria Kavvadia for their tireless toil on this front.
One of the things that we’d like to do is to make the Scientiae website a hub for information about forthcoming events or new publications of interest to our broader community. If you have an event you’d like publicised or a publication notice, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line at conference@scientiaeacademic.com.
Finally, I’d like to thank Cassandra Gorman for all her work over the years with Scientiae. Cassie finished her term with the Executive earlier this year. We all look forward to hearing more about her research at future Scientiae conferences.
Richard Raiswell
Univ. of PEI
Fellow, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Toronto