I am delighted to be taking on the role of President of EASST for the next 4 years. First of all, many thanks from me and the Council for the leadership and energies of Christine Hine, who has led the organization so ably and left it in such good shape.

As I stated in my election address I am committed to ensure that EASST strengthens its role as the broad and inclusive voice of the international science, technology & innovation studies community. During the next 12 months we will be reviewing the position of the organization in order to achieve this and initiating a discussion among the membership.

The next EASST conference, provisionally titled, ‘Practising science and technology - interfaces of organizing and communicating’ will be in Trento, Italy on 2-4 September 2010. We held a meeting of the new EASST council in Trento in May 2009 in order to prepare for this event. This is going to be an excellent conference in a great place. The Faculty of Sociology has first class facilities and is in a wonderful location in the Dolomites. Staff at the University and their colleagues in STS Italia will be our knowledgeable hosts. It is a small and delightful town and there will be a ceiling of 600 participants – my advice is to make sure that you book early to avoid disappointment.

The conference will be designed to involve a range of specialist networks in its organisation. The initial call which will be published in September will ask for proposals for streams to run through the whole conference as well as nominating the people who will take responsibility for them. The organisation of these streams will then be assigned to those selected so it will be a more decentralised model. This is an interesting experiment which should deliver good results.

The Council meeting in Trento was a rewarding experience and members should be assured that they have elected an energetic and enthusiastic team. We have also instituted a new administrative support structure managed by Dr Sonia Liff. A priority is to get the membership subscriptions up to date and you will have heard from us with regard to this. Please respond soon or, if your contact details have changed, please email admin at easst.net