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Presidential address,
by Ricardo García Mira It is now ten months since the Timisoara Conference, where the new IAPS board, which I am honored to chair, launched a new cycle, implementing many of the ideas and initiatives that are now enabling us, in addition to expanding the number of members, to keep our organization alive, streamlining its processes and adapting to changing times. In this adaptation, information and communications technologies are providing increasingly greater connection among us, greater promotion of collaborative work and greater access to information, unthinkable just a few decades ago. So we are updating the website of IAPS, which will soon be operational. We are trying to enhance the operation of research networks, providing spaces for connection and coordination through the new website, which allow IAPS members to be aware of what is happening in each network.
Another objective of our work program is to improve our policy to support young researchers. In this regard, the board of IAPS has just approved its “IAPS Policy on supporting the participation of early career researchers in research meetings”, which is published in this issue.
The 24th IAPS conference is underway. It will be in Lund and Alnarp in southern Sweden in 2016, from June 27 to July 1, under the topic “The human being at home, work and leisure - Sustainable use and development of indoor and outdoor spaces in late modern everyday life”. The first Call for Papers is now close, and will be published in the next issue. Finally, in an attempt to seek the recognition of IAPS in different sectors of the European Commission, we have been promoting a policy of dissemination of our research networks and our research activities in different DGs of the EC, in order to help promote the work of IAPS and build new research agendas from the research that is carried out in our organization.
Furthermore, this has been a long winter in which many of you have enjoyed entrance to IAPS for the first time, others are continuing with, or have already had your Viva exam for your Master’s degree or PhD, some of which we had the opportunity to discover during the Young Researchers’ Workshop at the last Conference. Others, more experienced, have initiated or completed new research projects, publications, and organized diverse activities. And yet others have settled into their new jobs, or moved to other universities and research centers. To all of them we wish you every success in your work, and do not forget to send us your project summaries, completed investigations, summaries of results, theses abstracts, book reviews, and news to spread in this Bulletin.
But this winter has also had its cold spots, such as the death of one of our most distinguished members, and the best known and loved by all environmental psychologists, Professor Terence Lee. His death is a huge loss to our profession. Terence was among the pioneers of environmental psychology in Europe, applying knowledge of psychology to urban issues, conceptualizing neighborhoods with all their socio-spatial and psychological characteristics. He was the founder, together with David Canter, of the Environmental Psychology Group at the University of Surrey, which formed so many generations of psychologists, architects and other professionals worldwide in the Master’s degree in Environmental Psychology which they launched from Guildford. All of us who wanted to learn by drinking from the sources of what is known about how to apply psychological theory to everyday life in urban contexts were there at some point in time. I was there in 1992, during a pre-doctoral stay when doing my thesis on the environmental psychology of neighborhoods in A Coruña; he had already moved to St. Andrews, but had left a noticeable imprint in Surrey. I kept this picture, when we met in Rome in 2002, thanks to our participation in the Italian conference of environmental psychology. Rest in peace.
IAPS - BULLETIN 42 | WINTER 2015