ASOR 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting Recap
ASOR鈥檚 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting was a great success! Thank you to everyone who participated from around the world. There were 1,085 registrants from 39 countries and 6 continents!
More than 430 presenters shared their work in over 80 sessions and workshops on the 2020 Virtual Program. Paper presentation recordings, poster PDF files, and recordings of sessions and workshops will continue to be available to registered attendees through June of 2021. If you missed the meeting, there is still time to gain access to the digital academic content from ASOR’s Virtual Annual Meeting when you buy access to ASOR’s Online Library.
While we would have liked to see everyone in Boston, it was a privilege to provide a platform for our global membership to connect, share, and engage on subjects from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. ASOR is committed to growing and developing our digital offerings, not only during the pandemic, but as a continuing resource for members. As part of this commitment, and with consent from presenters, we will be sharing some content from ASOR鈥檚 Virtual Annual Meeting on our public-facing site, ASORtv. Currently you can listen to ASOR鈥檚 Executive Director, Andrew Vaughn, give the for our first-ever virtual meeting and watch Monica Hanna’s thought-provoking聽 , 鈥淒oes the Future of the Past Lie in the Hands of the Living?鈥
鈥淓verything was so clear, the website software worked beautifully, and we had all the support we needed–you’ve blown all the other professional societies out of the water. It was so nice to be able to connect with colleagues and carry on with the meeting–honestly, it felt like a little slice of normalcy and was a bright spot for me in this challenging fall.鈥 鈥 Jessie DeGrado
During a time when travel has been restricted and many cultural and social attractions are closed, ASOR attendees were treated to two virtual museum tours, “Treasures of Ancient Egypt: Sunken Cities,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and “The Dura-Europas and Gerasa Collections” at the Yale University Art Gallery.
The virtual format offered enhanced options for an inclusive and more accessible meeting, not only in terms of global attendee participation, but also in terms of the academic program. ASOR鈥檚 Program Committee (PC) had the herculean task of reworking our program, designed for an in-person meeting, into one that would best reach scholars and enthusiasts at their homes, offices, or wherever they were connecting from during the pandemic.
Helen Dixon and Allison Thomason, co-chairs of the Program Committee, would like to thank the dedicated members of the PC for their wise counsel and constructive engagement this year – overcoming the disruption of our usual meeting timeline, the learning curve that comes with new partners and platforms, time zone and other scheduling challenges, as well as worries over our members鈥 workloads and semesters-from-home. We also want to thank all of the 2020 Session and Workshop Chairs for their flexibility and willingness to adapt to the new format. Thanks to the PC and these Chairs, we were able to put together a strong and diverse program, adding several sessions on cultural heritage, including the plenary by Monica Hanna, and new member-organized sessions and workshops, such as . We also welcomed scholars and heritage professionals from Libya to the ASOR Annual Meeting program, including a presentation on the . We are happy to report that the virtual format enabled many people to participate who might not normally have the chance: nearly 40% of presenters were from outside of the USA, and 35% attended from outside of North America. Thanks again to all attendees, presenters, and chairs, as well as the tremendous work of the ASOR staff for making our first all-virtual Annual Meeting a success!
“In this time of pandemic, when I start to feel isolated, this ASOR meeting was a breath of fresh air!” – Laura Battini
As 2020 comes to an end, we are hopeful that the new year will bring an end to the global pandemic and that we will be able to meet in person for ASOR’s next Annual Meeting, November 17-20, 2021, in Chicago. ASOR is also planning to continue with a virtual component to be held online in December. Please watch for the 2021 Call for Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops to post next week. Members will be invited to submit proposals for the in-person meeting and/or the virtual component.
All of us at ASOR wish our friends and colleagues around the world a healthy, safe, and joyful New Year!
