EuPRA board meeting minutes

bram #Minutes

Minutes of the EuPRA Board Meeting of 4 July 2022

18:00-20:00 (EET)

Present: 

  • Ilaria Tucci 
  • Craig Brown  
  • Anush Petrosyan 
  • Leena Vastapuu 
  • Jusaima Moaid-Azm Peregrina  
  • Bram J De Smet  
  • Stephanie Thiel 
  • Iiris Niemelä 

Absent: 

  • -

Minutes:

  1. Ilaria started the online meeting at 18:00 (Helsinki time).  
  2. Ilaria explained that EuPRA is missing all the legal papers to apply for funding. Stephanie introduced the history and the German legal procedures. She clarified that legal status at the EU level is impossible because the EU lacks a legal framework. To clarify the legal status in Germany, it is required to collect all the necessary documents. Stephanie has already started collecting the documents, and she will share them with the rest of the board. In principle, the following information should be gathered: changes in the board's composition, changes in the presidency and secretaries (name, university, and date of birth), transcripts of the general meetings, and invitations to participate and invitations to the General Assemblies, all the board members need to be listed and notarized by the respective consulate. Unto Vesa was president during 2000-2004, and the Secretary was Attila Fabian. From 2000 to 2011, the information is scattered. Thiel will share the documents with the rest of the board. Stephanie asked whether it is worth doing that. It is not possible to legalize the last four years in Germany. A question was raised about whether there is a less bureaucratic solution in another country. Board agrees to study the legislation procedures in their home countries before the next meeting. However, legal association history would be lost. Discussion continues in the next meeting.
  3. Politiikasta – article about EuPRA conference 2022. It is a Finnish journal. Ilaria has approached the editorial board. The proposals should be submitted in August. The students participating in volunteering at the conference could be involved. The topics could be: where peace research is now, which kind of discussion took part in the conference, what is happening in Finland, and how is it to organize an academic conference. The article should have an academic basis, but it would not be peer-reviewed. Anoush will be in charge of coordinating it with the group of students. The first deadline could be the first week of August.
  4. Publication (with Irene publisher) about the presentation. There is the option of having a book or one special issue in the Journal of Resistance Studies. One issue could have four or five papers. The board prefers publishing one special issue, but they note that there could be difficulties collecting enough papers. The special issue could be aimed to be published by the end of 2023. The papers should be collected during August 2022. Ilaria and Craig will be in charge of this and ask for help from the rest of the board members. The first thing to do is to gather the peer reviewers. When the peer reviewers are contacted, the double-blind process should be considered. There is no financing needed for the publication. Later on, EuPRA can publish special issues regularly. Iiris will gather a list of journals.

  5. Newsletter, website, membership. The newsletter could be published every four months (at least three or four/per year) with calls for papers, conferences, workshops etc. Craig suggested that there could be an introductory article about the new board members in the newsletter. The next newsletter could be published by the end of September 2022. The board is encouraged to keep in mind the newsletter and its material. The newsletter could be used for transparent purposes, for example, to summarize the main points of the board meetings.

    Bram will modify the website to make it clearer and to make it possible to create/manage events for people to register on the website and submit their abstracts through the website within a year. He has also created a youtube channel for EuPRA.

    Ilaria asked whether the membership fees will be retained. Bram will update the membership fees on the website. The money has been used for the website domain and gifts for volunteers. EuPRA is offering access to our affiliation journals as part of membership, which should be remembered to mention.

  6. Internship opportunities. Emily May has contacted the association to ask whether she could do an internship for EuPRA. Ilaria has replied to her that EuPRA does not have the possibility to have paid internship at the moment. Regardless, Emily would be willing to do the internship. The following questions were raised: what can EuPRA offer her and what could she offer EuPRA, how long would the internship last? What are its objectives? How many interns per year? Will there be future interns? The legal responsibilities for internships should be figured out before making an internship agreement. It was also suggested that she could join the EuPRA as a volunteer and later on an internship opportunity could be proposed for her. Ilaria will contact Emily again based on the Board’s discussion.  

    Events before the next conference. Ilaria mentioned the opportunity to organize seminars or workshops, activities or webinars. There is a possibility to organize something in Åland, but it requires looking for funding. The option of Utøya island was brought up as well.  

  7. The board agrees that Granada, Spain is the next conference location.  
  8. EuPRA bank account in Tampereen Seudun Osuuspankki. Unto Vesa’s rights should be removed. Ilaria has rights to the bank account, but they should also be given to Iiris. The account has been passive in recent years.  
  9. Bram creates a Slack account to drop in files, and for further conversations.  
  10. Other issues: Jusaima will share a document in Slack with ideas to develop EuPRA. She briefly introduced the ideas of creating a digital agency for EuPRA, promoting EuPRA as an association researching peace, and promoting that at the European level. EuPRA would create digital space for the relevant groups for peace research, but who are somehow marginalized. It could be a collection of videos on EuPRA’s website or youtube. The second idea was to create a European peace map with different institutions and people. It could be an interactive map of Europe, whereby clicking a certain country, there would be listed the different actors for peace. Thirdly, there could be self-organized, open peace seminars with students.  
    The following actors were mentioned to collaborate with:  
    •    https://www.runipace.org/ to build a European network   
    •    https://bundesstiftung-friedensforschung.de/en/funding-options/  
     

 

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