IGALA: Important Updates and News

[Victoria L. Bergvall]

Dear IGALA members and friends,

The International Gender and Language Association board is presently undertaking an e-mail meeting, and I wanted to update you all on a number of activities underway. (Please note the many links from this message to other sites with more IGALA information.)

**ELECTION RESULTS**
I am pleased to welcome Ana Cristina Ostermann, moving from secretary to new duties as the IGALA Vice President, and Mary Talbot as the new IGALA Secretary, and to thank our other two fine candidates for agreeing to stand for election: Ann Weatherall and Jocelyn Ahlers. We are also very thankful to Ana for her wonderful work serving as our past secretary, and to Jane Sunderland as our past President. We are fortunate to have such a rich pool of talent to work with! 
And again, thanks to all of you who registered and paid dues as members of IGALA and voted in the election.

**MEMBERSHIP**
Membership is run on a calendar-year basis, so if you haven’t yet renewed for 2009, you may do so at this site: http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/GL/about/subscriptions
     Your dues, which include the journal subscription to Gender and Language, are very well priced: you gain membership in the IGALA organization which gives you voting rights, the ability to submit abstracts to present at the IGALA conferences, and full access to all the parts of the IGALA webpage (see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/Index.html). 
     A new feature of membership is access to participate in the IGALA blog (see more below). Payment of your dues also helps to support the access of those from developing countries to our journal and conferences, as we strive to make IGALA truly international in scope and reach. 

**BLOG**
Our IGALA web weaver, Maryam Paknahad, has been hard at work updating the IGALA website, and creating a blog site where IGALA members can interact on issues of interest to us, post book notices, conferences, etc. Please visit both our web page and the new discussion blog at http://igalablog.blog.com/. 

**IGALA6 2010 CONFERENCE, JAPAN**
You will have already seen from a posting to GALA-L by Claire Maree that planning is well advanced for the IGALA6 conference, to be held18-20 September, 2010 at the Kodaira Campus of Tsuda College in Tokyo, Japan. Save the date now, and stay tuned for announcements of the call for papers and website, which will be posted on the GALA-l and sent to other cognate organizations. We are excited that IGALA members will be able to visit this country, with its rich and intriguing history of research on gender and language issues.

**2009 EXECUTIVE E-MEETING ISSUES & AGENDA** 
Following are some of the issues that the Executive and Advisory Boards are currently discussing. (Please let us know if there are other issues you think we need to address.)

1. Approval of minutes from IGALA5 board meeting in Wellington 
2. Election results, membership & voting issues, proposed changes 
3. Journal subscriptions, costs, handling 
4. IGALA Website, and feedback 
5. IGALA6 in Japan, Sept. 2010 (report and update)
6. Raising Funds for travel grants/bursaries for IGALA6 
7. Undergraduate/Graduate Student Paper contest
8. Other kinds of awards IGALA might give 
9. Local branches of IGALA
10. Speaking to the world 
11. Thinking ahead to IGALA7
12. Update on specific task assignments
13. Other business

You can discuss these matters with any of the Executive Board, or contact the Advisory Board as well (see contact information at the website pages listed).

**IGALA EXECUTIVE BOARD**
 (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/Officers/Officersec.html)
President: Victoria Bergvall, USA
Vice President: Ana Cristina Ostermann, Brazil
Secretary: Mary Talbot, UK
Web Weaver: Maryam Paknahad Jabarooty, UK

**IGALA ADVISORY BOARD**
 (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/Officers/Officersac.html)
Mercedes Bengoechea, Spain
Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, UK
Jenny Davis (graduate student representative), USA
Laurel Kamada, Japan
Allyson Jule, Canada
Michelle Lazar, Singapore
Lia Litosseliti, UK
Ann Weatherall, New Zealand

Thanks again for your interest in and support of IGALA and language and gender research and teaching.

Vicky Bergvall

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Victoria L. Bergvall
President, International Gender & Language Asso. (IGALA)
   (join at http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/GL/about/subscriptions)
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Department of Humanities
Michigan Tech University
Houghton, MI 49931
USA
www.hu.mtu.edu/~vbergval