A very successful IGALA6 conference in Tokyo!

[Victoria L. Bergvall]

To all GALA-l members, and IGALA members far and wide: 

I wish you all had had a chance to be with us at the IGALA conference in Tokyo. Claire Maree and her team did a superlative job of organizing IGALA's first visit to Asia, and what a glorious experience it has been! The conference ran like clockwork; the standard of papers presented was very high; the plenaries by Momoko Nakamura, Ingrid Piller, and Deborah Cameron were inspiring, thought-provoking, and insightful; and Jenny Davis and Sally McConnell-Ginet hosted any excellent panel of distinguished faculty giving advice to graduate students.

The food has been wonderful and beautifully presented (with world-class sushi and sashimi at our banquet and lunches). And the treks between the hotels and the conference venue site were negotiated easily with the help of numerous English postings.

All this, and the glories of Tokyo too!

If you aren't yet a dues-paying member of IGALA, if you weren't here to participate with us in this delightful, intellectually invigorating experience, you have missed out on a great experience, alas.

So: start thinking ahead to 2014 when our new IGALA President, Ana Cristina Ostermann, will chair the conference in Brazil!

My thanks, as out-going president, to all the wonderful board members I have worked with, especially to Jane Sunderland, who has completed her 6-year stint as Vice President/President Elect for 2 years, President for 2, and Past President, serving on the IGALA Executive board for the last two years. From long before her chairing the IGALA conference in Lancaster, England in 2002, she has been a tireless advocate for language and gender research, and for working to get funding for members from Africa and other under-represented areas who might otherwise not be able to come.

Stay tuned for an official set of minutes of the Business meeting and report from the IGALA6 conference.

And again: if you aren't an IGALA member yet, help support us by joining (http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/GL/about/subscriptions): your membership entitles you to the journal, Gender and Language, and helps support these conferences and the goal of advancing the best in language and gender research around the world. We are also working on a system so that you may donate to the bursary funds by credit-card, so that you can help support future scholars, to continue to make this a truly international endeavor.

Good bye from Tokyo; I'm sorry to have to leave so soon!
Wish you were here.

Vicky Bergvall



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Victoria L. Bergvall
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Department of Humanities
Michigan Tech University
Houghton, MI 49931
USA
www.hu.mtu.edu/~vbergval

Past president, International Gender & Language Asso. (IGALA)
   IGALA Website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/Index.htm
   To join: http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/GL/about/subscriptions