Call for Scientific Committee Members

June 5, 2023

Dear fellow archaeobotanists,

Almost a year has passed since we met each other in České Budějovice. After this amazing conference, the organization for the 20th IWGP conference in Groningen in 2025 is in full swing now already. At the moment, as an organization committee, we are busy composing the Scientific Committee.

We aim at forming a committee that consists of 22 members, including two representatives from the Steering Committee. The first ten members are already invited based on individual publication rates in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (the main output journal of the IWGP) in the past 9 years as well as active presence during the last three IWGP conferences. As such, we guarantee the presence of experienced and dedicated archaeobotanists.

At the same time, we envision a diverse committee, in terms of gender, geographical background, age, and career stage. Therefore, through this message, we especially encourage Early Career Researchers and/or non-European archaeobotanists to apply for one of the ten remaining seats in the committee. Joining this committee offers the opportunity to gain valuable experience and meet inspiring international colleagues for you, but the committee will also greatly benefit from your ideas and perspectives.

As a member of the Scientific Committee, you can help us to guarantee sound scientific content and a suitable conference structure. This would include deciding upon themes for sessions, and reading/selecting abstracts for sessions and talks. We expect to organize 3-4 virtual meetings of 1-1.5 hours  whereby these issues will be discussed and decided upon. In addition to this, you would have to spend some time in the evaluation of the submitted abstracts. As a Scientific Committee member, your physical presence at the 20th IWGP conference is preferred, but not required.

If you are interested in joining the committee, please send an email to this email address (iwgp2025@rug.nl), addressing the following issues:

  • Why do you want to be a member of the IWGP2025 Scientific Committee?
  • What will your particular contribution to the Committee be?

This is a bit of an experiment for us as well, so we have no idea how many people will apply. We will try to be as transparent as possible throughout the process, and let you know personally why you were or were not selected as a member of the committee in the end.

Best wishes,

The 20th IWGP steering committee

Sonja Filatova
Otto Brinkkemper
Mans Schepers
Ana Smuk
Arnoud Maurer
Merit Hondelink