Plenary Speakers Announced!

We acknowledge that there has been a delay in announcing the Plenary Speakers for ICHF 2011 but these have now been decided and are: 

• Arturo de Hoyos
• Andreas Onnerfors
• Chernoh Sesay, Jr
• Steven Bullock
• Robert Cooper

Further details of each individual will be posted here in due course.

The ICHF Team

Proposals received

Hi everyone,

We hope that you are enjoyiing the summer even if the summer weather is not too great.

More than 110 proposals for papers were received by the closing deadline which is more than any previous conference.

The next step in the process is already underway. The proposals have been sent to the members of the Academic Committee for them to sift and comment upon. Their deliberations will determine which papers are accepted for the 2011 conference. Those who submitted proposals are expected to be notified mid/late September so that they can get cracking on the full paper for May 2011.

How many proposals?

We have been asked how many proposals can be submitted by any one individual.

Generally speaking it is not expected that more than two proposals should be submitted by any one person. This is avoid anyone seeking to unfairly maximize their chances of having a proposal accepted. In addition this would not be fair to others submitting one or, more rarely, two proposals. It also avoids overburdening one person attempting to produce a number of high quality papers in a short space of time.

Is there is thought to be a good reason for submitting more than two please contact the conference organisers for advice by emailing: ICHF@northernnetworking.co.uk

The ICHF Team

Savings Clubs

Unless you live locally the cost of attending ICHF can be quite high. This was one of the reasons behind the decision to make ICHF 'mobile' so that people in different parts of the world will have an opportunity to attend one of the conferences without having to travel to the UK.

The down side is that for those who wish to attend every conference there will be variable costs to consider as ICHF moves from place to place. We have heard of one initiative that is worth sharing.

Members of a Lodge in the USA have started a 'savings club' so that members of the club can put away a sum of money on a monthly basis. The monies collected remain the property of each individual member but the intention is that the funds will be used for transport, accommodation etc. in order to attend ICHF 2011. The money so saved might not cover the entire cost but the monthly saving has been planned in such a way that it will certainly take the 'sting' out of the total cost.

An interesting idea.

The ICHF Team

New ICHF web site II

We have had a number of communications suggesting that it would be a good idea to retain this blog as a number of people like to make use of it and we are happy to oblige.

This blog and the new ICHF web site will run in tandem whilst we assess their usage.

The ICHF Team

New ICHF web site

A new web site for ICHF is nearing completion and the work completed so far can be viewed by clicking here or on previous links.

The new web site will run make this blog largely irrelevant so it will be closed down within a few weeks once all the material has been transferred from here to the new site.

The ICHF Team.

ICHF Web Site

The ICHF web site is presently being redesigned. The site remains active alolowing those interested to download a number of .pdf documents.

Please bear with us whilst the newly designed site is being prepared.

The ICHF Team.

Proposals - update

ICHF is recognised as being the only International Conference on the History of Freemasonry in all its aspects.

In 2007 more than 70 proposals were submitted and in 2009 in excess of 100 were received. This number of proposals ensures that ICHF can offer a large and varied program at each conference. Unfortunately, it also means that a number of proposals cannot be accepted. This is due not only to the quality of Proposals but also the limitations of time and space at the various venues.

At this time more than 15 Proposals have been submitted and that is more than double those received by this time in 2009. This augers very well for ICHF 2011.

Peer Review of Proposals

The Peer Review Process is designed to ensure that papers selected for presentation at ICHF are independantly assessed. This is a time honoured proceedure and works in the following maner.

Propsals (or suggestions for Panel Sessions) should consist of approximately 300 words explaining the key points of the paper. At this stage the Proposal is merely an abstract not a full paper and even if you have a full paper already prepared it does not require to be submitted at this time. ICHF is primarily seeking original work not previously delivered or published.

Proposals are sumitted to a special page on the Conference Organiser's web site:

www.northernnetworking.co.uk/ichf2011.php

who will retain them until the closing date has passed (30 June 2010). Before the Propsals are passed to the Chair of the Academic Committee all details that might in any way reveal the identity of the author are removed. The Chair of the committee then distributes the Proposals to members of the committee who comment on their acceptability before returning them to the Chairperson.

In this way the annonymity of the author of the Proposals, and the committee members considering them is assured, the whole process is a fair and independent method of assessing a proposal.

Each Propsal submitted should contain the following:

• Author’s name, institution, postal and email addresses, telephone number
• Co-author’s names if applicable
• Title of paper or panel session
• Name of chair for a panel session
• Three to five suggested key words for indexing papers
• 300 word abstract of each paper (with an additional 200 word justification for a panel session)
• Please state the category to which you are submitting:
• Paper or
• Panel Session

Please submit your proposal to the Conference Organisers at:

www.northernnetworking.co.uk/ichf2011.php

The closing date for submission of Proposals is 30th June 2010. Receipt of your proposal will be acknowledged within 5 working days.

Observations on Panel Sessions and other matters will be posted in another entry in this blog soon.

Proposals for Papers

The First Announcement or Call for Papers has already attracted a large number of proposals. The closing date for the sumission of proposals is 30th June 2010 so get your thinking caps on! To download a PDF of the First Announcement (please note that the file is quite large - about 2mb) click here or on previous links.

The next posting will explain the process once a proposal has been submitted.

Regards.

The ICHF Team