Dear SGIR members,

We are very happy to reach out to all of you to introduce the members of the Steering Committee of the Standing Group on International Relations that officially took office this month. This is also an opportunity to share with you some of the activities that we have been working on since being elected.

First we will have an annual summer school in international relations, starting next year. The first summer school will take place from 7-14 June 2017 at Stockholm University. It is entitled “Legitimacy and effectiveness in regional and global governance” and will be taught by six of the foremost scholars in our field. We will send out a call for this summer school in two to three months.

Second, we are establishing a website (http://standinggroups.ecpr.eu/sgir/) and a mailing list with the help of ECPR Central Services. This will enable us to spread news and useful information to all SGIR members.

Third, we established working relations with our colleagues in EISA with regard to the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR) and the Pan-European Conference on International Relations. Our first task will be to contribute to selecting a new editorial team for EJIR. We will also put together a section for the Pan-European Conference in Barcelona in September 2017.

Last but not least, we are involved in the establishment of a new ECPR book prize in IR (‘Hedley Bull prize’), which will be launched by the ECPR Executive Committee soon.

We are in close contact with the ECPR Executive Committee and Central Services about our activities and would like to thank them for being welcoming and very helpful.

We very much welcome the opportunity to serve the community of European IR scholars as members of the SGIR Steering Committee, and help enrich academic networks dedicated to research and training of future generations of scholars in all areas of IR. We welcome any suggestion from you and invite you to contact us with any advice and comments you may have.

Best wishes,

Lisa Maria Dellmuth (Convenor, Lisa.dellmuth@ekohist.su.se). Responsible for the summer school.
Manuela Moschella (Treasurer, Manuela.moschella@sns.it). Member of the Hedley Bull Prize Committee.
Piki Ish-Shalom (Secretary, pikiis@huji.ac.il). Member of the Joint Management Committee of the EJIR. Member of the Hedley Bull Prize Committee.
Andreas Dür (andreas.dur@sbg.ac.at). Member of the Joint Management Committee of the EJIR.
Daniela Irrera (Dirrera@unict.it).Responsible for the SGIR’s section at the EISA Pan-European Conference.