Our mother organisation, the ESSE, convened in Lausanne in August, for a board meeting and a conference. From NORSES, Knut Øystein Høvik and Stephanie Hazel Vold both gave papers in the seminar Critical Issues in English Language Teacher Education (which was the session with most participants). Høvik also chaired Charley Armstrong’s parallell lecture (the level below keynote) entitled The Wanderings of the Modern Myths: Exemplarity, Adaptation, and Spatiality.
As leader of NORSES, Høvik also serves on the ESSE board, which supplied the following list of their most important decicions this year:
1.
The Board of ESSE elected a new President, Professor Lieven Buysee from Belgium for a three-year period. His term of office will begin on 1st January 2025 when he will replace the current president, Professor Andreas H. Jucker. The Board expressed their gratitude to the current president for his services to ESSE during two terms of office from 2019 to 2024.
2.
The Board of ESSE appointed a nominations committee for the election of the ESSE Treasurer and the ESSE Secretary. The call for applications will be published on the ESSE website in October 2024. The deadline for the submission of applications is 30th April 2025. The term of office for both posts will begin on 1st January 2026.
3.
The Board of ESSE agreed to discontinue the reduction of annual fees from €9.00 to €7.00. In 2025, the fees return to €9.00.
4.
The Board of ESSE strongly reaffirmed its commitment to promote research and to support activities aimed to help both young and established researchers. The Board decided to:
• continue with the Bursaries and appointed a Bursary committee for 2025. The Board also decided to continue with bursaries for Gender Studies within English studies for 2025.
• continue with the Book and Resources grants.
• continue with the Doctoral Symposium in both conference and non-conference years and, for the non-conference year 2025, to offer funding to help eligible doctoral students in need of support to participate in the Doctoral Symposium that will be held together with the Board Meeting in Malta.
• continue with a special research support scheme for national associations with tight resources to invite plenary speakers from other national associations to their own national conferences and to cover their travel expenses.
• discontinue the Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme.
5.
The Board of ESSE delegated four members to represent ESSE in the Academic Programme Committee for the ESSE-18 conference in 2026 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, together with the APC members from the host association.
6.
The Board of ESSE accepted the bid of Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, as the venue of the ESSE–19 conference in 2028.
7.
The Board of ESSE unanimously nominated a new co-editor of the European Journal of English Studies. This is Dr. Frederik Van Dam from Radboud University, Nijmegen, who is going to replace the current co-editor, Professor Greta Olson, as of 1 January 2025. The Board of ESSE expressed their gratitude to Prof. Greta Olson for her long
and dedicated service to EJES.
8.
The Board of ESSE agreed to adhere to the rule established back at the Board meeting in 2019 to have only one date for membership updates per calendar year. Fees will be collected according to the membership lists sent to the ESSE Treasurer by 15th November of the current year. Members whose names are included in these lists will be able to apply for ESSE privileges the following year, such as ESSE Bursaries, ESSE Book grants, ESSE Book awards, conference fee waivers and the Collaborative Project Workshop Schemes. The only exception continues to be the ESSE Doctoral Symposium, for which different rules apply as specified in the Symposium announcement.
NORSES 