Letter from your president

Dear RC33 members,

Another unpredictable year has passed. RC33 has never had such a turbulent year, as far as I can remember. But we made the most of it!

We have tried to organize our RC33 conference on site in Cyprus after postponing for a year, but regrettable we had to make the decision to do the conference online. Without the help of a local organizing team, the RC33 board worked very hard to make the online conference possible. Although it cannot be compared to an on site conference, the online conference was a big success. We were very happy to see each other again, and the ease of use of the online system had as positive by-result that we could offer the conference free of charge. A big thank you to all board members, presenters and attendants to make this conference such a nice get together! And also congratulations to Tobias Rüttenauer and Ruben Bach for their amazing papers that won the RC33 Award for best Best Paper and Best Paper by a Young Scholar, respectively.

Together with the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability we held the “1st International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods in Botswana” (SMUS Conference). This conference was also a big success, and a very nice way to connect with the global south. In 2022 we will organize together with RC20 the Regional Conference on Comparative Sociology & the 2nd RC33 Regional Conference on Social Science Methodology: Asia (online, 12– 16 September 2022, hosted by Japan Women’s University). We hope to see you there!

ISA has decided to postpone the next World Congress – hopefully to be held in Australia – to 2023. ISA has also decided that the next forum will be held online.

With regards to RC33, we have been working very hard to get online access to the full BMS archive for RC33 members. Unfortunately we had to cope with a lot of unexpected difficulties. We hope to give you all access in the beginning of 2022. A big thanks to Claire Wagner for all her efforts in this!

Finally, I would like to mention that we have a new board member. Biagio Aragona (Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II) will be our new Vice President for RC33’s ISA World Congress Programme.

Let’s hope we can meet soon, because nothing beats an onsite conference!

Vera Toepoel

President RC33