A message from the Academic Convenor

As Congress 2013 draws ever closer, the faculty and staff at the University of Victoria are starting to really feel the buzz. The whole university is fully immersed in designing ways to profile our research, our facilities and our region for the benefit of the 7,000 attendees we anticipate greeting. As Academic Convenor for the event, I have been delighted to see so many of my colleagues step forward to take responsibility for local arrangements on behalf of the 70 societies who will gather here over the week in June.

Being Academic Convenor for Congress certainly has given me a different view of the depth and breadth of the humanities and social sciences across Canada. Traditional institutional structures tend to limit the definition of those categories: at the University of Victoria for example, our faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences encompass only a modest portion of the disciplines represented at Congress; the reality is that seven of our nine faculties find themselves involved to some extent in the event. Such a gathering is thus interdisciplinary in a way that is far beyond what we would normally even conceive. This makes Congress a very special event!

I look forward to welcoming my colleagues from across the country and around the globe to Victoria in June. I am certain that you will find the experience of Congress here memorable: we are making every effort to make sure that is the case.

Andrew Rippin