Dear Colleagues,
I’m sorry for the delay getting this message out to you. All of us on council, like all of you, have been completely pre-occupied with COVID-19 related activity in recent weeks.
You will mostly be aware that we have had to take the decision to cancel our Spring meeting in May. Although it has been obvious for some time that we would have to do this, we had to time a formal decision to minimise the financial loss to the Association. After some consideration we have decided against trying to fit a meeting into the Autumn. I hope by then we will all be able to throw our energy in to making this year’s FIS a success.
The Spring meeting is of course the event where we usually hold our AGM so this also needs to be postponed. We plan to hold the Association’s AGM this year during FIS and have placed the council elections on hold until then. We will be in touch with more information nearer the time as your input is vital to complete the elections and get good input to decision making at the AGM. Council members who were due to demit have kindly agreed to stay in post until the elections can be completed.
You will also be aware that we have been reviewing our research funding commitments and had been planning to announce the funding call for 2020 at the Spring meeting. The Association is very dependent on the value of its investments and the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on global stock markets has taken considerable value out of our investments. Again, we will review the situation over the summer with a view to setting our position on research funding for the year in the Autumn.
Looking forward to next year, we have already reserved the Manchester Conference Centre for 19th & 20th May 2021 for the next Spring meeting.
Wishing you all the best in these challenging times.
With kind regards
Martin Llewellyn
BIA President