Dear Colleagues and Friends,

My last letter to you in August was a time of enormous uncertainty. The ISA Forum had been postponed to February and it was frankly unclear whether it would be held in person (yes, some were still campaigning for this), on-line, in a hybrid format, postponed again, or simply cancelled.

The ISA Vice President for Research, Geoffrey Pleyers of Université Catholique de Louvain, had few good choices to choose from and many constituencies within the ISA with conflicting interests. On behalf of RC02, the Board and I provided our input in an attempt to shape the Forum to be helpful for Research Committees like our own—large, active, geographically diverse, and with members from radically different income levels. The ISA chose to have the ISA Forum in an entirely online format, but centered in the Porto Alegre time zone, and on almost the exact same days as an in-person conference. Frankly, the execution of the Forum continues to be an ongoing experiment with many of the details yet to be worked out.

I’d like to publicly thank my ISA Forum Co-Program Coordinator, Nadya Araujo Guimaraes of Universidade de São Paulo, for her enthusiasm, time commitment, and flexibility. Before COVID-19, she had taken the lead role in organizing our one-day ISA Forum Pre-conference, “Cultural Analyses of the Economy,” with several excellent sessions and opening and closing plenary speakers (Philippe Steiner of Sorbonne Université and Frederick Wherry of Princeton University). When the conference was postponed, and then moved online, it became logistically impossible for RC02 to host the pre-conference online. Fortunately, Nadya was able to help shepherd several of the Pre-conference papers into the ISA Forum, and both Fred and Philippe graciously agreed to move their plenaries to the ISA Forum.

I would also like to thank our 30 session organizers who, often under very tight deadlines, had to re-organize their sessions under challenging circumstances as friends, family, and colleagues were confronting COVID-19 and its avalanche of social consequences. It is a testament to their hard work that we only lost a net of four sessions, while gaining some superb sessions, such as Steiner’s and Wherry’s plenaries.

Please mark your calendars for the RC02 Business Meeting on Sunday, February 28, 14:15-15:45 (Porto Alegre time zone, 17:15-18:45 UTC). Usually our business meetings are held at the Forum or Congress, and therefore one must attend the conference to participate. At the Forum, to promote democratic engagement and transparency, we will have the Business Meeting be open to all regardless of whether one has registered for or is attending the conference. Details on how to access the Business Meeting will be emailed to members as we get closer to the event. That said, I acknowledge that the time is highly inconvenient for members located in Asia and the Subcontinent.

If you have any ideas on how to promote connections within RC02, of if you have an initiative that you’d like to volunteer for, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me (Aaron.Pitluck [at] IllinoisState [dot] edu).

Aaron Pitluck
RC02 President (2018-2022)
Illinois State University