Dear T2M Members and Friends,
Preparations for our Mexico City conference are well under way and we eagerly look forward to joining together in October 2016. We received the usual number of over one hundred exciting and intriguing abstracts from around the world and we will be sending out acceptances by the end of April. We will write again shortly after that with information on registration deadlines, hotel selection, and travel information, which we encourage participants to arrange as early as possible. Along with all of the committee members we thank Dhan Zunino Singh for chairing the Program Committee and LOC Chair Victor Marquez for preparing for our arrival in Mexico!
Please remember that this is the time to renew your membership. If you have not yet visited, please see our wonderful new website at T2M.org. I want to especially give many thanks to our Secretary Julia Hildebrand, who has been working tirelessly on coordinating this complex project with our web developers. We are still making improvements to the site and welcome your feedback. Most importantly, we will shortly be opening a password-protected members’ page where you will have access to your chosen online journal subscriptions. Have a look at the new special issue of Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 6 (1) co-edited by myself and Judith Nicholson on the theme of ‘Race and the Politics of Mobility’
http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/transfers/6/1/transfers.6.issue-1.xml
While the month of March usually brings a new President’s Letter, I have waited until April this year to give us pause to remember the loss of John Urry in late March. He continues to receive worldwide tributes from students and colleagues here (http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/john-urry/tributes/), with special essays (including my own) soon to appear at the blogs of the journal Theory, Culture, and Society (theoryculturesociety.org) and at the International Sociological Association (http://futureswewant.net). You will also find our last co-written article published in the new journal Applied Mobilities, co-edited by our Vice President Sven Kesselring along with Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Kevin Hannam, now available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rapm20/1/1
We were happy to see several T2M members at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers in San Francisco in early April, where Julia Hildebrand presented on the Imagine Trains project in a panel on High Speed Rail, and I spoke in a panel discussion on Mobility Transitions and gave a paper at a session on Mobility Justice. Julia will also be joining the Transportation Research Board’s History Committee as a student member, and we encourage T2M members to visit their blog: https://transporthistory.wordpress.com/2016/04/
Remember that even if you are not joining as a member you can still sign up for our free monthly newsletter, which will shortly be distributed using a new MailChimp format. And you can now follow T2M on various social media platforms:
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/T2Minternational/)
Twitter (https://twitter.com/T2M_Association)
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-association-for-the-history-of-transport-traffic-&-mobility)
As we build our organization, transition to new online formats and build an expanded membership bridging transport history and mobility studies I want to give special thanks to many of you who contribute to our association, and a thank you to all our membership for your part in ensuring a strong T2M. Please note that we will be holding elections for new EC members at our next conference, and we welcome nominations from anyone who wishes to play a bigger role!
Best wishes,
Mimi Sheller
President, International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility
