Network Meeting 2019, Hamburg

Network 30 business meeting minutes

Prepared by Stefan Bengtsson and Jonas Lysgaard

The network business meeting was well attended with 53 members showing up. During the meeting we congratulated the local organizers (Jana Timm and Mathias Barth from Leuphana University) of the networks social event, which was held the night before at Craft beer-infused Pizzaria in St. Pauli. The event was an outstanding success with 40 persons registering and over 60 people showing up to join for the feast. The next item was a reflection on the network's contribution to ECER 2019, with a new network record of 107 submissions and 100 accepted submissions. The reviewing process had also been streamlined by increasing the number of reviewers to 25 in order to assure a lesser work burden given the record-breaking number of submissions, with an average of 5-9 reviews per reviewer. Given this record-breaking streak of events at this year's ECER, we thanked, on behalf of the network, the keynote speakers, Heila Lotz-Sisitka and Arjen Wals, for showcasing the network and putting it on the agenda. Given the regulated rotation of positions in the convenor group, the network thanked founding members Jutta Nickel and Marco Riekmann for their contributions as convenor group members and former link convenors. Dafna Gan from our sister network at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) ESE SIG presented the SIG and expressed interest to cooperate with our network in the future inviting members to engage with the network. The link convenors presented the idea of establishing an Network specific Emergent Researcher Award highlighting the best paper submitted by a Master or PhD student. The idea is to be developed further for potential implementation during ECER 2020.

Two new members of the convenor group, Elsa Lee and Lydia Kater-Wettstädt, were elected by the present network members. Further, the convenors raised the issue of revising the EERA Network 30 Management Policy, in order to adopt the model of two link convenors, one link convenor, and one deputy link convenor. Here the model of other education research associations was suggested to have an ingoing and an outgoing link convenor to assure continuity and support of the new link convenor. Further, the idea was raised to establish a consulting group of senior researchers to act as resources familiar with the field and historicity of the network. 

Marco Rieckmann provided as a local representative of ESE research in Germany a presentation on the history of ESE Research in Germany, which can be accessed here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335676994_Environmental_and_Sustainability_Education_in_Germany

Last but not least the session concluded with the network´s own tradition of a group photo (see top of page).