Dear T2M Members and friends,
It has been a great honour to serve as T2M’s President for the last three years. We have accomplished so much together, and I am now pleased to hand over a stronger organization and vibrant association to our new President Mathieu Flonneau, who will be assisted in the Secretariat, now based in Paris, by Etienne Faugier and Cecile Welker.
From the beginnings of my service in 2014, the year I chaired and hosted the annual conference at Drexel University in Philadelphia, to our wonderful subsequent conferences in Caserta, Mexico City, and most recently Lancaster, I thank you for placing your confidence in me. I also thank all of our members for your energy, commitment, and enthusiasm, which have made our success possible. Our more than 90 members live in 24 different countries, and I am pleased that we continue to attract students, who are more than 25% of our membership. This year’s joint conference on Mobile Utopia attracted 180 participants from 31 different countries. We are truly an international organization and a bridge for scholarship from around the world. We owe great thanks to the Centre for Mobilities Research and the Cosmobilities Network for co-organizing such a successful event that included not only scholarly panels, but also a stimulating art exhibition, mobility experiments, and a PhD school, as reported on more fully elsewhere in our Newsletter.
I especially want to thank this year’s Executive Committee members who have each contributed their time and efforts to T2M in so many ways: Vice Presidents Dhan Zunino Singh and Martin Emmanuel, Treasurer M. Luisa Sousa, Secretary Julia Hildebrand, Newsletter Editors Robin Kellermann and Thiago Allis, Webmaster Hiroki Shin, Mobility in History Blog Editor Mike Bess, Journal of Transport History Editor Massimo Moraglio, Scholes Prize Committee Chair Mike Esbester, and general members Irene Anastasiadou, Jorgen Burchardt, Anne Conchon, Peter Cox, Valentina Fava, Carlos Lopez Galviz, Anna Lipphardt, Victor Marquez, Paul Stephenson, and Paul van Heesvelde. We are happy to welcome new EC Members Pierre Barrieau and Tarini Bedi, and returning members Julia Hildebrand and Robin Kellermann.
As she will be stepping down as Secretary, I want to especially mark the incredible contributions of our Secretary Julia Hildebrand, who as you know has served so admirably as the first port of call and public face of T2M, while also doing the hard work of updating all of our back office systems. We are thrilled that she will still be playing a role on the Executive Committee, as well as helping to hand over day-to-day running of the Association to the new Secretariat.
We also must include thanks to Gijs Mom, Editor of the journal Transfers, who has facilitated its extension to our membership. We took the opportunity this year to celebrate his contributions to the Association and to the field with a reception sponsored by Berghahn, and to mark the occasion of his retirement and announcement of the new editor of Transfers, Dagmar Schäfer, who will be assisted by Georgine Clarsen and Peter Merriman.
I look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting in Montreal 2018, where Pierre Barrieau will be chairing the Local Organizing Committee and several of our EC members will join the Programme Committee. Save the dates, October 31-November 3, and start making your plans!
best wishes,
Mimi Sheller
