Dear T2M Members,
As the incoming President of T2M as well as host of our recent conference, I want to thank those of you who joined us in Philadelphia for the 12th Annual Meeting. It was a great success (if I may say so) with over 130 participants from more than twenty countries, excellent panels, and a very high quality of work presented. For those who could not make it, we have some brief news to report and look forward to seeing you at our next meeting.
First, I want to warmly thank the membership who has elected me as President of T2M, a great honour and responsibility, which I am happy to share for the short term with our excellent outgoing President Hans-Liudger Dienel (who will gradually hand things over to me over the next few months). We look forward to marking the special occasion of his departure with an appropriately ceremonial Adieu when we meet again in 2015 – I hear that he gave the past departing president a balloon ride, so we will have to cook up something fitting!
Next I want to congratulate and welcome our new Executive Committee members. Elected as Vice-Presidents are Marie-Noëlle Polino, Massimo Moraglio, and Sven Kesselring. Elected as Executive Committee Members are Jørgen Burchardt and Martin Emmanuel. I look forward to working together with them and all of our current committee members in bringing about future growth and success of T2M. We also should mention the role of Arnaud Passalacqua as Treasurer, and Newsletter editors Andrey Vozyanov, Samuel Merrill, and Robin Kellermann to whom all members are invited to send their news items. Our outstanding Secretary Nathalie Wachotsch will be continuing to fill this role temporarily, for which I am thankful, until a replacement has been found.
Now we can begin to look forward to our next meetings! We have accepted the generous offer from University of Naples II in Caserta, Italy, to host our next conference, under the auspices of local organizers Federico Paolini and Andrea Giuntini. We have also agreed to have the Cosmobilities Network co-sponsor this meeting with T2M, and towards this end we have invited Sven Kesselring and Malene Freudendal-Pederson to also serve on the Programme Committee. Please reserve the conference dates of September 14-17, 2015, which should promise lovely weather.
After a number of tempting offers we also voted to seek a formal proposal to hold the 2016 conference in Mexico City, where a team led by Victor Marquez and several other members will investigate exact locations and dates. Holding the conference in this burgeoning and exciting city offers the opportunity of co-sponsorship with the Pan-American Mobilities Network. I have just returned from their recent conference in Santiago, Chile, where I met many transport and mobility researchers from Latin America, and they would welcome the chance to join our meeting in Mexico City.
So we have some exciting things on the horizon. Other topics that came up at the committee meetings during the conference include a possible reduction in the membership fee linked to some changes in our journal offers to members. We also have plans to develop a new website,
with a simplified design, greater interactivity, news of upcoming events and ongoing research, and perhaps a bibliography of new publications by members. Many positive developments are therefore in the pipeline, and we hope that all of our existing members will rally to our cause by promoting the organization and seeking out new members. If we each bring in just one new person we can double our numbers in no time, and help to support the building of our interdisciplinary endeavours and professional networks.
With very best wishes,
Mimi Sheller
President, T2M
