By Carlos López Galviz, forthcoming President

  I shall start by saying that I’m very honoured for being asked to put forward my candidacy to the presidency of T2M. Nearly a decade and a half have passed since my first T2M conference in Helmond, NL, in 2007. I’ll explain my vision by covering three main points: the intellectual space that I think T2M should fill; the operations side of T2M, in particular, a transitional period to assess how the organisation works; and the plan for conferences to 2023. The main purpose of this brief outline is to give us a framework to start off our conversation. Intellectual Space I think we ought to engage with the now vast field of socio-technical transitions. As an established international network of historians of transport, traffic and mobility we are uniquely placed to historicise these transitions and critique teleological accounts related to, for example, the 4^th industrial revolution and, in the USA, the New Green Deal. My particular interest is to develop a programme of work around History and the Future, building on the work of several T2M members over the years and recent work happening in Lancaster, specifically in the Institute for Social Futures of which I am Associate Director. Operations I will continue with a very similar structure as it currently stands, with a view to assess its effectiveness in the longer term. Key tasks such as finance, communication, outputs (newsletter, blog, journals) can be better served by a clearer allocation of tasks across the EC membership, as has been discussed by EC members, especially by Dhan, Julia and Martin. An important step is to focus on what works and enhance it. Similarly, I’ll seek a closer integration with mobilities networks including Cosmobilities, the important cluster of mobilities and tourism scholarship in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as the two new Academies of Mobility Humanities in Seoul and Padua. There are well developed relationships with these via Lancaster, CeMoRe, and myself. Conferences The annual conference is, perhaps, the T2M event that gathers the most interesting and stimulating debate as well as the collegiality of its members. The Shanghai conference is going ahead as a smaller online event in 2020, with a view to have a face-to-face conference there in 2022. The following conference in Lisbon (2021) is on track for the time being, but we need to monitor how covid-19 develops starting this autumn and into spring 2021. My two suggestions for the following two conferences in 2023 and 2024 are:

• 2023, Havana, Cuba. This is related to a new GCRF-funded 3-year project which I lead and has partners in Cuba and Colombia. More information on the project here: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/great/
• 2024, we could bring the conference back to Lancaster, or, the UK (London). Lancaster University is likely to have a campus in Leipzig by then. I’ve seen from the minutes that Vienna has been discussed. I know well the new group on Critical Automobility Studies in the Institute of Advanced Studies, so can float the idea with them if that is a route we wish to explore.

I have two main additional goals related to the conferences. To increase the number of PhDs and ECRs attending (via sponsored bursaries); and to include at least a quarter of all conference panels/papers delivered/happening online (within the conference dates) by 2023.