President's letter 2013

President's letter

Dear AIEGL members, esteemed colleagues, friends,

With the new year 2012/2013 the elected members of the Bureau and Comité began their work. Since only 13 colleagues had been put forward for a total of 14 elected positions on the Comité, the Bureau, in consultation with the Comité, has co-opted Christina Kokkinia into that body as the representative of Greece.

International Congress in Berlin 2012

The XIV Congressus Internationalis Epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae: “Public – Monument – Text” was organized and held on August 27-31 in Berlin under the auspices of the Epigraphic Project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and Inscriptiones Graecae, together with the Humboldt University of Berlin, the State Museums of Berlin (Prussian Cultural Heritage), and the German Archaeological Institute, with financial support from the German Research Foundation in Berlin. More than 550 registered participants, including 167 AIEGL members, discussed and read papers about topics under the Congress theme in five plenary sessions and twelve sections. Current research projects were presented on 78 posters at an exhibition.

A presentation by Stefan Rebenich (Bern) „Berlin and the Epigraphy of Antiquity”, in which the history of epigraphy at the Berlin Academy was knowledgably traced, formed a prelude to the event. In the concluding lecture, Jürgen Hammerstaedt (Cologne) presented the many new fragments of what is probably the longest ancient inscription: „Writing and Architecture. The Philosophical Commentary of Diogenes of Oinoanda”.
In a festive setting in the Pergamon Hall of the Berlin Museums, AIEGL prizes were awarded for the best work by young researchers in the fields of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, to Diana Gorostidi Pi, for her work on the inscriptions of the ‘Ager Tarraconensis’, and to Nathan Badoud, who wrote about ‘Les temps de Rhodes’.
More information about the program of the Berlin Congress can be found at http://www.congressus2012.de. The next Congress will be arranged by our Austrian colleagues in Vienna in 2017.

Thanks

We thank all colleagues who have been involved in the last quinquennium in the governing board of AIEGL, above all Angela Donati, who has worked on the Bureau as Secretary General over a period of 10 years and continues to inform us about current events in epigraphy. She has given us space in this journal [Epigraphica] also in the future for the publication of the ‘Nouvelles de l’AIEGL’. Similarly, Stephen Mitchell has supported the business of the Bureau as a sort of ‘elder statesman’ well beyond the period of his presidency, for which he is here warmly thanked. With gratitude to the outgoing members of the Bureau and Comité we combine a warm welcome to the new ones and hope for effective cooperation and many new ideas on how we can strengthen international cooperation in the future.

Registration on the website of the Association

An important step towards closer cooperation across borders is participation in the virtual life of AIEGL. All members are asked to register on the website, in order to participate actively in the Association and to show a presence there. In the future our website will become increasingly important for internal communication among members, in many possible ways: blogs, announcements of conferences and new literature, notices of job positions and scholarships, membership lists, newsletters, and balloting for elections by e-voting: since we are an international organization, a full assembly of members cannot always be convoked as “sovereign” for our decisions.

Technical assistance, if needed, will be provided by Anika Strobach (webmaster); questions and suggestions regarding the homepage will be gladly received by Camilla Campedelli, as adjunct Secretary General and delegate for the homepage of the Association. Please register at http://www.aiegl.org/register.html.

Joint meeting of the Bureau and Comité

According to the Articles of our Association (Article 8), a meeting of the Comité and Bureau is called for at the beginning of the new quinquennium. At the kind invitation of Attilio Mastino (Sassari), a meeting of the Bureau and Comité will therefore be held at the Convegno di Studio, ‘L’Africa Romana’, in Alghero, Sardinia, in September 2013. We want to ensure that the actual significance of this meeting, which is traditionally under the patronage of AIEGL, is particularly worthy of the Convegno’s 20^th anniversary. The “Arab Spring” raises both hopes and concerns for the life and work of our colleagues in the Maghreb. In this unstable political situation, the support of our Association ought to be a particular concern of ours.

Membership fee

Toward our stated goal of strengthening international cooperation in the epigraphic community for the future, the financial support of members is needed at the modest annual fee of € 20, which preferably, in order to save bank charges, can be paid for several years in advance. In accordance with the regulations of AIEGL, the membership fee is to be paid by 31 March of each year. In the coming months we will write to remind all defaulting members of their status with a message inviting them to renew their membership and to become active members again and to promote epigraphic research in this way also in the future. For details about payment methods, see http://www.aiegl.org/membership_payment.html.

With best wishes and hopes to see you soon at the “XX Convegno di Studio ‘L’Africa Romana’” in Alghero, Sardinia, and to working together over the next five years!