Dear T2M members,
We enjoyed a very successful conference in Mexico City in late October and we are about to launch the Call for Papers for our 2017 Conference, which will be held jointly with the Cosmobilities Network at Lancaster University, UK, from 2-5 November 2017. We look forward to joining the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), the Lancaster Institute for the Future, and the Cosmobilities Network in this ideal chance to really consolidate our energies and celebrate our achievements in the growing and vibrant fields of transport history and mobility studies.
The theme will be “Mobile Utopias: pasts, presents, and futures”, drawing our attention to the motivating hopes, utopian projects, as well as disappointing dystopias, associated with the history of and current plans around transport visions, travel alternatives, mobility transitions, and diverse worlds on the move. Our Local Organizing Committee, led by Monika Büscher and Carlos Lopez-Galviz, plan to incorporate live experiments with utopian mobilities, mobility-related arts projects curated by Jen Southern, and possibly even a PhD school preceding the conference itself. So please save the dates and start preparing your papers and panel submissions, and more news will be out soon!
In January you will also notice some updates in our T2M.org website. Most importantly, we are offering a SPECIAL SALE on our membership rate! Please take advantage of this attractive offer to renew your annual membership before the promotion expires. Membership gives you a discounted conference registration rate, as well as all members now having free access to the excellent Journal of Transport History, which has launched a new online platform with Sage. Members also can choose discounted subscriptions to our companion journals, Transfers and Mobilities.
In other news, we are happy to announce the election of new Vice Presidents Dhan Zunino Singh and Martin Emmanuel, and the election of new Executive Committee Members Anne Conchon, Peter Cox, Paul Stephenson, and Massimo Moraglio who follows Gordon Pirie as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Transport History. We also voted for an important change in our statutes, which will now allow for direct election of the President and Vice-Presidents, as well as EC members. We also welcomed Mike Bess as the new editor of Mobility in History, which will be transitioning to a new online format in 2017, with the aim of becoming an Open Access journal in 2018. We kindly thank Kyle Shelton for his service as Editor in Chief of Mobility in History.
As we start the new year of 2017 we seem to be entering a new phase of global politics, with terror attacks and the rise of right wing parties threatening stability and unity in Europe, Donald Trump’s election rocking the status quo in the United States and bringing the oil industry into power, and a growing potential for instability around the world. In a world connected by networks of circulation, travel, resource flows, and migration, there may be appearing on the horizon new mobility regimes to control and secure borders and flows, to seize common resources, and to militarize conflicts. Yet even as we face this possible retreat from cosmopolitanism, we may take solace in the strength of social justice movements, the commitment of cities around the world to advance low-carbon and more just mobilities, and the seriousness of those who seek to pull together to save the planet from ecological destruction.
Let us enter the New Year, then, with renewed hope that our international academic and professional projects, as well as our life commitments to teaching, research, and public advocacy, can help us make together a different future in peace and solidarity with one another.
Happy New Year!
Mimi Sheller
President, T2M
December 2016
