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Happy new year from ERSA President
Dear ERSA members,
At the outset, I must say that I am deeply honoured to be the new president of ERSA. I am very much looking forward to cooperating with you, the sections, EOC, ERSAC and the ERSA secretariat in Louvain-la-Neuve to further develop the interests of ERSA. ERSA has developed very positively in the last two decades and it is my hope that we together will be able to further strengthen ERSA in the coming years. Under the presidency of Professor Paul Cheshire, an important process was initiated to develop ERSA into a truly professional scientific organisation. It will be one of my priorities to see to that this goal is reached in the near future. Becoming recognised as a professional scientific organisation will make it much easier to promote ERSA and the expertise of its members in the European policy community. Regional problems are high up on the policy agenda in Europe and there is a very substantial interest in regional and urban development, local economic development and spatial planning. ERSA embodies the dominant reservoir of regional expertise in Europe and there is a substantial scope for promoting this expertise at the European level for the benefits of both the policy makers and our members.
Another important priority will be to increase the interest among young scientists for regional science. I see it as important that we continue with the special young regional scientists’ sessions at our congresses and that we acknowledge the work done by our colleagues to organise these sessions. ERSA’s summer schools are also extremely important. We have funding for a summer school in 2009 but there is yet no funding for 2010. However, we are trying to solve this issue. An ongoing priority is of course the ERSA congresses that in recent years have developed into major scientific events. With our secretariat in Louvain-la-Neuve fully operating and our new congress software installed we anticipate that we will be able to make the organizing of congresses still more professional and improve the services to the congress participants. The new system for organizing congresses is now put on a real life test in connection with the organizing of the 2009 ERSA congress in Łódź , Poland. Thus far everything seems to work well as expected.
I now wish you all the best for the New Year and I am looking forward to seeing you in Łódź in August.
Jönköping, Sweden, January 2nd, 2009
Charlie Karlsson
Professor
President of ERSA
