Given widespread travel restrictions and other measures that have been set by state and local authorities in response to the spread of COVID-19, the AABS Board of Directors regretfully announces that the AABS 2020 Conference, scheduled to take place from May 28–30, 2020 in Charlotte, NC, has been cancelled.
We realize that many AABS members had already made travel plans to attend the conference and had paid a registration fee. The conference organizers have worked with the host university and conference hotel to ensure that the process of receiving a refund for conference registration and cancelling accommodation will be as seamless as possible.
Registration fees
AABS will refund all registration fees in full. Conference participants who had already paid a registration fee should expect to receive a refund in March 2020. They do not need to contact AABS to initiate the reimbursement process.
Hotel reservations
The conference hotel, Hampton Inn/Hilton Garden will cancel all room reservations associated with AABS 2020 and will not charge cancellation fees from those who had booked a room. Conference participants who had reserved a room at the conference hotel, should expect to receive a room reservation cancellation from the hotel in March 2020. They do not need to contact the hotel to initiate that process.
Airfare
Many airlines offer flexible cancellation policies and we ask conference participants to contact their airline to request a refund for their airfare. Feel free to present this email as proof of the cancellation of the AABS 2020 Conference.
Conference presentations
We truly appreciate AABS members’ input into the conference program and would like to ensure that their work, as well as the work of the conference’s program committee, will not have been in vain. We thus invite all scheduled participants of the AABS 2020 Conference to attend the 14th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE), “Rights and Recognition in the Baltic Context,” being organized by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) at Uppsala University from June 3–5, 2021.
The CBSE 2021 program committee, led by Matthew Kott, has agreed to incorporate into its program all papers, panels, and roundtables scheduled to take place at AABS 2020 if the authors of these submissions wish to do so.
The 14th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE)
“Rights and Recognition in the Baltic Context”
June 3–5, 2021, Uppsala University, Sweden
In 2021, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will mark 100 years of international recognition de jure as modern independent states, and 30 years of recognition of their reestablishment as independent democracies following a half century of Soviet domination. At the same time, it will be 300 years since the Treaty of Nystad ended Swedish rule in the Baltic territories, resulting in the creation of provinces of the Russian Empire with their own particular system of rights and regulations. Similar to today, however, these rights were not applied evenly across society. Then as now, some voices are suppressed, and some groups struggle for recognition. Thus, the main theme of the CBSE Uppsala in 2021 will be to look at aspects of rights and recognition in their broader meanings, as they pertain to the societies of the eastern Baltic littoral.
Student travel funding
AABS will carry forward its 2020 student travel funding and make it available to students who will attend CBSE 2021. We will reach out to the applicants of the 2020 student travel grants outlining the next steps.
In order to move forward with incorporating the AABS 2020 submissions into the CBSE 2021 program, we ask AABS 2020 participants who wish to transfer their submissions to CBSE 2021 to submit a short online form indicating their preferences. The deadline for submitting the form is June 1, 2020.
Please note:
If your presentation was scheduled for AABS 2020 and you do not submit the online form by June 1, 2020, your presentation, roundtable, or panel will not be carried over to CBSE 2021. You are, however, more than welcome to submit a new proposal for the CBSE 2021 conference once its Call for Papers is published in May 2021.
Questions? Please email us at [email protected]
Sincerely,
Andres Kasekamp, President
Joseph Ellis, VP for Conferences
The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies