Dear friends and fellow Shavians, warmest greetings from the chilly winter of southwestern Ontario, Canada! I’m honoured and excited to be donning the mantle of ISS President for a 3-year term that began January 1. With Vice-President Audrey McNamara in Dublin, we are really leaning into the “International” aspect of the society’s name.
I want to start by expressing my gratitude to outgoing president Bob Gaines for his leadership over the past 6 years, and especially for his efforts in making the transition such a smooth process.
Thanks also to Bob and his Vice President Jennifer Buckley for brilliantly maintaining some of the core ISS events even during the challenging period of restrictions on travel and gathering. Bob worked tirelessly with site organizers Gustavo Rodriguez Martin, Lori Wolf, and Audrey McNamara to get conference events back on track post-pandemic, helping to bring us together in Spain, Virginia, and Dublin. The annual Summer Symposium not only continued uninterrupted, but indeed thrived online under Jen Buckley’s expert organization, and she continued to creatively refocus and reimagine that event to take better advantage of our access to the Shaw Festival company when we returned to an in-person (and sometimes hybrid) format. I’m delighted that Jen has agreed to organize the 2025 Summer Symposium program, and you’ll be hearing more about that as details emerge.
As we continue to find our equilibrium after the upheavals of the last few years (and hope there aren’t more to come), we’ll be slowing down the conference events and returning to the former pace of holding a major conference every few years. There will still be lots of opportunities to meet up during the in-between time: we’ll continue to support Shaw sessions at the Comparative Drama Conference and the MLA whenever possible, and we’ll still co-host the annual Summer Symposium at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, mingling with the creative professionals who bring Shaw’s works to life. We’ll also look for other opportunities to organize or join in with events that might be locally accessible for members, and would be pleased to hear from anyone with ideas in that regard.
Many of the conversations that Audrey and I have already had–via Zoom in slots that work for time zones 5 hours apart–have revolved around the challenges of fostering a strong sense of community when we’re so geographically dispersed. The ISS is extremely fortunate to have a unique mix of academics and ardent enthusiasts in a dozen or more countries, all brought together by our common interest in a figure whose own presence and accomplishments spanned the globe. We’re both committed to doing what we can to help forge stronger connections among members and make sure the ISS remains a vigorous champion for the wit and wisdom of George Bernard Shaw in an era that could use a dose of world-bettering energy.
Best wishes for an energetic and productive year ahead,
Dorothy Hadfield
(University of Waterloo)
PS: If you haven’t yet renewed your membership for 2025, please use our handy webform to do that now and join us for the exciting year ahead!
2 Responses
When I click on “You can read message here” and “A Message from the President of the ISS” & “Read More,” I’m getting no response. I must be misunderstanding something. Am I supposed to login as ISS Member first?
I believe by clicking on “you can read the message here,” your browser must download the file automatically. It should be in your default download folder.