Dear ISHPES members,
for 2017 my best wishes to all of you. Besides extending to you my greetings, I would like to take the opportunity to remind all of you to pay your annual dues. Please see our homepage under Membership Renewal.
ISHPES is an international association and has members from many cultures and countries around the world. Although world politics are quite frightening right now, I think our successful academic collaborations, cooperations and friendships will overcome these problems.
Still, we, as an international academic organization, are also facing challenges. These are connected with the sites of our future conferences. It is hard to predict which locations can be considered as safe and which not. Which country is respecting human rights, where is academic freedom guaranteed so we can feel good about holding our conferences there? In the future we will probably have many more discussions on these issues than we had before, and opinions will always differ on how to find solutions. But I am sure we will find a good way as we have always done in our almost three decades of existence.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank our French colleague, Pierre Olaf Schut, for holding our last conference at the University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. We had over 100 participants. For the first time the PhD Summer School, which was formerly organized by Gertrud Pfister at Copenhagen University, took place simultaneously. This Summer School for graduate and PhD students in the social and historical fields of sport studies has always been supported by ISHPES and quite a few of our members have attended it.
Our next conference is coming up in a few weeks. It will be held from April 3-6, 2017, in Alexandria, Egypt, and is organized by Maha Ebeid under the patronage of the Faculty of Physical Education for Girls at Alexandria University, the Ministry of Higher Education, and the Ministry of Sports.
2017 is also an election year for ISHPES. This means in a few weeks you will receive information on the election procedure and how to run for an office. Please be aware that only paid-up members are eligible to run for an office and/or vote.
The very best to all of you
Annette R. Hofmann
ISHPES President
