Dear EUGEO representatives,
First of all, a happy and successful new year. With this mail I would like to inform you about some forthcoming activities and events of EUGEO.
Firstly, the “Night of Geography 2020” will be held on 3rd April this year. This will be the fourth edition of GeoNight initiated by our French member society CNFG in 2017, in order to increase the recognition of geographical knowledge among the public. This initiative, has in the meantime become truly European and is increasingly taking on a worldwide dimension due to the active support of the International Geographical Union (IGU). In fact, this is a good opportunity for all of us to give the general public a better understanding of geography and to make awareness the relevance of geographical knowledge in our swiftly changing world. We hope you will also mobilize your members for active participation this year and the number of programmes will further increase. If you have any question regarding GeoNight2020 please let us know.
Secondly, the main activity of EUGEO this year will be the Seminar and General Assembly to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania 23-25 April 2020. Our host will be the Institute of Geosciences, University of Vilnius. We plan arrival on 23rd April (Thursday) during the day and a full day meeting on 24th April (Friday) including our General Assembly in the morning followed by the Seminar. Depending on the number of presentations we may continue on Saturday morning and finish our work with a bus tour. The topic of the Seminar this year will be “Landscape: old meets new”, which provides a good opportunity to discuss some aspects of landscape development, both from physical and human geographical perspectives. During the General Assembly we plan a discussion on possible future activities of EUGEO including the 2021 congress in Prague and the possible contribution of EUGEO to the IGU centennial conference, August 2022, Paris. Please plan your trip to Vilnius asap, try to arrive afternoon 23, and depart afternoon 25 if possible. We will inform you about the detailed programme soon. Local organizers recommended the following hotels lying nearby the venue: „Grata by Centrum Hotels” or „Corner Hotel”.
UPDATE: Seminar and General Assembly have been postponed because of the covid-19 emergency in Europe
Thirdly, the main geographical congress of 2020 at the global scale is the 34th International Geographical Congress (IGC) which will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, 17-21 August, 2020. The theme of the congress is Geography: Bridging the Continents. Submission of abstracts has been extended until 28th January and early bird registration closes 9th March 2020. I very much hope a good attendance of European geographers and visibility of our member societies in Istanbul at the next IGC.
Finally, I hope to see many of you in Vilnius in April.
Zoltán Kovács
Budapest, January 2020