The EAHN Annual Business Meeting at the Collegio Erasmus, Bologna
Photograph: Rob Dettingmeijer
 

Maristella Casciato introducing the Ph.D forum presented for the EAHN business meeting participants at the Dipartimento di Architettura e pianificazione territoriale, Università di Bologna, on 20 February 2010.
Photograph: Rob Dettingmeijer
 
 

The Guimarães conference advisory committee discussing conference scheduling with Jorge Correia in Bologna.
Photograph: Karin Theunissen
 
 

A garden in the Collegio di Spagna, Bologna, visited by participants in the EAHN Annual Business Meeting 2010 in Bologna on 19 February.
Photograph: Mauro Bonetti
 
 

Summary of Proceedings, EAHN Annual Business Meeting 2010

The Fifth Annual Business Meeting of the EAHN began at 14:30 on 20 February 2010 at the Collegio Erasmus, Bologna.  The EAHN President Christine Mengin opened the meeting by welcoming everybody present and thanking Maristella Casciato and her colleagues for the fine organization of the meeting and associated tours, dinners, and presentations.

Christine proceeded with the president’s annual report, an overview of organizational activities and developments in 2009. Due to the financial crisis in Delft the network was close to disaster, with the continuation of the EAHN Secretariat there very much in doubt.  Christine thanks Karin Theunissen, Nancy Stieber, and the other committee members involved for managing to negotiate the continuation of the secretariat in Delft for one more year.  Christine also thanks the University of Westminster for its generous support of the EAHN with the Westminster Editorial Assistants.

Network activities in 2009 included continuing publication of four issues of the EAHN Newsletter, and the newsletter editorial team was thanked for its dedicated work.  Thanks are also due to the dedicated international team, headed by Jorge Correia, which is organizing the Guimarães conference for June 2010.  The EAHN expressed its gratitude to Isabel van der Zande for her contribution to the network over the past two years.  The EAHN committee regrets that she will leave the TU Delft and the EAHN as of 1 March 2010, and wished her all the best for her new job with the city of Delft.

At the moment the EAHN has five thematic groups. In addition to the established groups Judicial Architecture, Eastern European and Balkan Architecture, and Colonial Architecture, two new thematic groups were launched in 2009: Eighteenth-Century Architecture and Urban Photography, Film and Video.  The Judicial Architecture group was involved in an exhibition in Luxembourg last year which examined the architecture of European courthouses; Christine presented a copy of the exhibition catalogue (L’architecture des Cours constitutionnelles et suprêmes des Etats membres de l’Union européenne), produced with texts prepared by the EAHN Judicial Architeture group.

In May 2009 a successful joint conference was organized with the SAH-GB in London (British Architecture Seen from Abroad).  During 2009, the EAHN became officially affiliated with two important disciplinary organizations: the College Art Association (CAA) and the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH). The EAHN aims to establish further affiliations with other organizations in the future to establish a worldwide network in the discipline. The committee was reminded that the organization as a whole, or its  thematic groups, are now eligible to propose sessions for the SAH and CAA conferences because of these affiliations.  The thematic groups may also propose sessions for EAHN conferences.

The committee unanimously approved the EAHN annual report for 2009.

Christine Mengin presented the treasurer’s report for Carmen Popescu, who was unable to attend the meeting.  The EAHN treasury was largely inactive since the last business meeting in February 2009.  In absence of an EAHN study tour in 2009, the sole annual income was the traditional voluntary annual dues paid by committee members in Ankara (total € 400).  Currently, the EAHN bank account has a balance of € 670. It remains an urgent organizational task to generate more income through new funding sources beyond the three modest income sources at the moment: the committee members’ dues, voluntary donations from general members, and the small surplus from EAHN tours. Finally, the EAHN bank account should be moved from France to the Netherlands where the organizational office and treasurer-elect are located.  The committee unanimously approved the treasurer’s financial report for 2009.

Isabel van der Zande reported on the EAHN mailing list and membership.  Since the last annual meeting the mailing list of members has grown from 670 to 1070 people (early June 2010: 1178).   In December 2009 the EAHN welcomed its one thousandth member.  Over one hundred members have indicated that they are interested in participating in some way in the EAHN, although at the moment it is difficult to assign volunteers to appropriate tasks (logistic difficulties).   After the introduction of membership fees in mid-2010 (see below) there will be different levels of membership: free access membership (mailing list at no cost) and participating membership (paying at least € 25 per year and thus entitled to participation in conferences, tours and other EAHN events).

In the past year about ninety announcements were sent through the mailing list.  Most popular are the messages with CFPs and those announcing publication of the quarterly EAHN Newsletter. Since members and others may now post announcements on the new EAHN website via “Add a Listing” to the Ongoing and Upcoming database, the number of messages sent to the EAHN secretariat for dissemination via the mailing list has decreased since last year.

Since the Ankara business meeting last year, the process of conference organization for EAHN First International Meeting has intensified. Response to the CFP sent out via the mailing list and posted to other lists and websites was overwhelming: session organizers received an average of over twenty proposals per session. Only two sessions had to be cancelled due to lack of suitable proposals; they will be replaced with two open sessions, resulting in twenty sessions and five roundtables.  Twenty-five countries will be represented by speakers or chairs, with 68% from Europe, 25% from North America, 4% from Asia, and 3% from Central or South America.  Chairs and speakers add up to 182 participants in total.

Each panel has been assigned to one of five thematic lines with a coordinator for each line. The thematic lines will be: City & Village; Colonial Geohistoriography, and Architectural Programmes; Politics; Profession & Patronage; and Representation.  The coordinators will follow the panels relating to their assigned theme and sum up the results at the closing session. 

Jorge reviewed the scheduling of the conference program for the committee; there will be a Special Business Meeting of the EAHN Committee on Thursday morning, including a visit to the school of architecture in Minho.

Some random issues remained to be clarified.  The EAHN thematic groups and subcommittees can organize meetings in available lunch hour time slots.  A post-conference tour of Lisbon and environs is being organized (see below).   The official language for conference papers and presentations is English. Papers and abstracts should be edited by native speakers before publication in the book of abstracts and its accompanying CD-ROM. The native English-speaking committee members volunteer to edit the abstracts for the publication of the book of abstracts.  Speakers will be allowed to opt out of having their papers published on the conference CD-ROM.

Jorge ended his conference update by thanking the advisory and scientific committee for all their hard work.

Jorge Correia further reported on the work of the 2012 conference venue selection committee (Jan Birksted, Jorge Correia, and Carmen Popescu).  The 2012 venue committee issued a call for venue proposals to the EAHN committee in autumn 2009.  The best option was Brussels, as proposed by Hilde Heynen and a group of Belgian colleagues from the KU Leuven, Ghent, and Louvain la Neuve--the three institutions are willing to work together to organize the next conference.  The conference can take place at the Belgian Royal Academy (Hilde is a member). The academy can provide the conference venue and some financial support.  The conference advisory committee should be drawn from within the EAHN committee and EAHN membership, as well as the sponsoring institutions, with a good geographical balance.  We should attempt to keep conference fees as low as possible for the next conference.

Jorge Correia also reported on behalf of Carmen Popescu about upcoming EAHN tours.  For various reasons, no EAHN tours could be organized in 2009.  A post-conference tour of Lisbon and environs will take place in June 2010.  The tour (21-24 June, with optional extension to Évora on 25 June) is being organized together with the local scholars Maria Helena Barreiros and Margarida Tavares da Conceição, and will cover a broad historic range of Portuguese architecture up to the contemporary era.  The tour of twentieth-century architecture in Scotland, in planning for some time now, will be held in 2011, and possibly have a specific focus on twentieth-century housing.

After adjourning for the evening, the business meeting continued at 9:00 on 21 February.

Nancy Stieber, chair of the EAHN publication committee, summarized organizational publications during the past year (newsletter, website, and future journal).  The newsletter is currently in transition to a new editorial team, and still looking for a new editor-in-chief as well as book review editors.  The first issue for the next editor-in-chief is projected to be the December 2010 issue, No. 4/10. 

Nancy explained that work on the journal prospectus stalled last year because of the financial crisis in Delft.  This prospectus will influence fundraising, because institutions are more likely to sponsor an organization which publishes a peer-reviewed journal.  One possible fair-access journal model would involve both print and online versions, with a non-printable, non-copy-able online version available to anyone, but with the print versions and enhanced online version available only to paying members.

The Westminster Editorial Assistants are preparing the weblinks page for the website. They presented three different options for the links page:  (1) A traditional list of links, well-edited and expandable; (2) A database with links which will be searchable, like the listings database already on the website; and (3)  An interactive website, like web 2.0, were people can search for links, add them themselves, contact people, place threads in a forum, etc.  In this context, Isabel reminded us of the unofficial EAHN LinkedIn Group.  Murray Fraser suggested making a decision soon so that Westminster could apply for funding to develop the chosen option.  A web development subcommittee consisting of Davide Deriu, Josephine Kane, Daniel Millette and Giulia Sebregondi will investigate the various options (budgets, technical possibilities, maintenance) for all options and find links to good examples already online.

Karin Theunissen remarked that the mission statement of the future EAHN journal should also include reference to architectural research, in addition to architectural history; theory, philosophy and other disciplines should be mentioned as well.  The EAHN should soon organize a competition for selecting a name for the future journal.

Hilde Heynen reported on the periodical classification committee, which now has twelve members. They are developing a focused list of international periodicals in the discipline, published in various languages, but all featuring English abstracts of their articles.  Instead of ranking the periodicals (considered too judgmental) the committee now prefers to speak of “classifying” the publications: periodicals classified as “A” have international standing and anonymous peer review; “B” periodicals have a lower international impact, and an international editorial board instead of anonymous peer review; “C” periodicals are national in scope with abstracts in English.  The committee’s concept for the project has evolved: they now aim to produce a list of journals in the field which informs scholars of the kind of editorial procedures and support offered at each publication, and advising them of the journals’ various levels of impact.  Access to such information is particularly important for younger scholars.  The EAHN has the potential to reorient current systems of journal ranking with this approach, also in other (humanities) disciplines. The European Science Committee (ESC) should review the final EAHN journal classification list.   Javier Martínez will take over as chair of the periodical committee, since Hilde will chair the 2012 conference in Brussels.  A partial list will be presented in a noon session in Guimarães, with the opportunity for further discussion and input from the committee and general members.

Maristella Casciato reported on the activities of the fundraising and long-range planning committee which she chairs (with other members Karin Theunissen and Nancy Stieber). Fundraising should help the EAHN to move forward, but the committee’s work this year largely concentrated on the crisis in Delft.  The time has now come to institute membership fees, and also other concepts for long-range support of the organization.

Membership involves two issues: (1) individual and institutional membership fees, and (2) the creation of a consortium of several invited institutions which will provide financial support and disciplinary advice to the EAHN. This year, Delft will fund the secretariat for a half year.  We need to raise additional funds very soon to pay for the second half of the secretariat’s 2010 budget.  The TU Delft can be one part of the invited consortium, among the other possibilities are the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) which have already held informal discussions with the EAHN.  The fundraising committee will pursue development of the EAHN Consortium in the course of 2010.

A budget should be available for potential supporters detailing the specific operational costs of the EAHN, such as the salary of the office manager, the manager’s travel costs, and the website and mailing list costs. Since new members always ask what they should pay, it is clear that people are willing to pay a fee for the organization’s services.  We should keep in mind the possibility of moving the secretariat to a different supporting institution periodically.

The committee presented its model for the membership fees (detailed elsewhere in this issue of the newsletter). Committee members should also seek out institutional members, beginning with their own institutions.  The new membership levels will be announced in June, and take effect as of 1 July 2010.  The committee emphasized that the dues are still voluntarily and those who do not pay will still receive the same membership benefits as they do currently.  An additional membership level (“Subscribing Membership”) will be launched when an EAHN journal is available.

Nancy Stieber reported on the necessity to develop a Règlement Interieur  for the organization (regulations for internal governance supplemental to the official by-laws).  The EAHN has become more mature and complex in recent years, and needs to establish official organizational procedures for processes which are not defined in the current minimal French by-laws.  A committee will be established to develop these regulations and present a draft at Guimarães for vote by the committee and membership.  The regulations should take into account the projected future development of the organization, providing a durable basis for the growing organization over many years.  The Règlement Interieur committee will consist of Nancy Stieber (chair), Murray Fraser and Daniel Millette.

Hilde Heynen reported on the activities of the nominating committee, which was formed in summer 2009.  Members of the nominating committee were Murray Fraser, Hilde Heynen, Alice Thomine-Berrada, and Caroline van Eck.  They presented the following slate of nominees for new organizational officers: Adrian Forty (London, president), Mari Hvattum (Oslo, vice president), Tom Avermaete (Delft, treasurer), Maarten Delbeke (Ghent, secretary).  All nominations are for a two-year term, with the exception of the secretary, which will start with a one-year term to enable a better geographic representation among the officers beginning next year.

Before the annual election of officers and committee members, some points were clarified.  The new officers will take office at the EAHN First International Meeting in Guimarães; the outgoing and incoming officers will meet in the spring to discuss the transition.  It is understood that Mari Hvattum will be nominated for president after serving as vice president for two years.  A new nominating committee should be set up to begin the search for the next secretary, and for other positions as need arises.  The candidates for officers were unanimously and enthusiastically elected by those present.

Committee members long inactive (absent from annual business meetings or not active in other organizational business) will be removed from the committee, to make room for more active new members attending in Bologna: Davide Deriu, Murray Fraser, Josephine Kane, Javier Martínez, José Medina, Daniel Millette, and Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi.  Those present voted unanimously to remove the inactive members, to confirm the other active members, and to add the above-mentioned seven new members to the committee.  The list of committee members in the colophon of this issue of the EAHN Newsletter reflects the results of this vote.

The next annual business meeting will be held early in 2011 either in Haifa (hosted by Alona Nitzan-Shiftan at Technion), or London (at the University of Westminster), with the final decision on meeting venue and date to be left to the incoming officers in consultation with the institutions under consideration. 

The meeting adjourned at 12:00.  The full minutes of the 2010 Annual Business Meeting may be consulted on the EAHN website at http://www.eahn.org/site/en/annualmeetings.php.