After more than one and a half years, it seems that, in some parts of the world, universities are slowly returning to normal, or at least, a new normal. Particularly for those of us fortunate enough to live in countries where vaccines are easily available, we have the opportunity again to see our students and our colleagues. Classes, colloquia and thesis defenses are often back to in-person. At the same time, virtual activities clear are not going anywhere. Not only because, for many of us, even a semblance of normal is still pretty far away, but also because we have seen how much more connected we can be online. It may not offer the same sense of togetherness as talking over (mediocre) coffee at a conference venue, but with virtual events, many researchers have been able to participate in the international community for the first time. This newsletter itself has proven to be a great tool for different communities to showcase their work and activities. This hybrid of virtual and in-person seems to offer a promising future.
We are excited to present reports from two different communities in this newsletter. Igor Mascarenhas, Márcio Reis and Roberto Perobelli discuss how Brazil’s central EMCA conference, EnACE, was organised online this year. It showcases some of the great work being conducted in this community. Betül Çimenli and Merve Bozbıyık in turn share the establishment of HUMAN, now called the Micro Analysis Network, which brings together researchers in Turkey, interested in EMCA through reading groups and data sessions. We are also thrilled to announce that the Schegloff Course Data, a corpus of classic CA data, is now available to members on the ISCA website.
As in our last newsletter, we want to put out a call for short announcements. If you want to share something like a call for papers or a conference, the first place to look remains the EMCA Wiki. But we will highlight short announcements in each Newsletter, so do send your tweet-length summary announcements to pubs@conversationanalysis.org if you’d like them to be included. The newsletter goes out four times a year and the next edition will be in January 2022.
Organizing an online EMCA conference in Brazil
Like so many conference, the third EnACE (Encontro de Análise de Conversa Etnometodológica) in Brazil was forced to take place online, because of the pandemic. Igor Mascarenhas, Márcio Reis and Roberto Perobelli discuss the benefits and challenges of organising an online conference and talk us through some of the excellent work that was presented by the plenary speakers. They also discuss the future of the event, addressing difficult questions such as how to reach a broader audience, both in- and outside academia.
Read and comment on the full article here: III EnACE Conference Report
Establishing an EMCA community in Turkey
Turkey has a thriving EMCA community, until recently coordinated by the Hacettepe University Micro Analysis Network (HUMAN). Betül Çimenli and Merve Bozbıyık discuss the foundation of this research centre and the great work it does in offering a platform for researcher from all over the world to share their research through reading groups, talks, and of course data sessions. While the name has recently changed to Micro Analysis Network, the team is still highly interested in contributing to EMCA research and is keen on having new participants.
Read and comment on the full article here: H.U.M.A.N. Data Session Report
Schegloff Course Data now available
For many months now, members of the ISCA publications committee Data Team have been hard at work to make the pseudonymize the data used by Emanual Schegloff in his Conversational Structures I and II courses. The first of these data are now available for all ISCA members to download. You can use them for teaching, research, and even in publications. This is a fantastic resource for all EMCA scholars, as it gives us access to the data that we have seen so many times in Schegloff’s work.
The Schegloff Course Data are now available on the ISCA website, and will be routinely updated with new data by the Data Team.
Short Announcements
The Second call for abstracts for the Atypical interaction conference is now available on the conference website, along with details of conference theme and exciting keynote speakers: https://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/aic2022/. You can follow AIC2022 on Twitter for more updates: https://twitter.com/aic2022
MIUN data sessions is a new (online) forum to bring social interaction researchers together to work on work-in-progress video recorded data sets brought by guest presenters. Contact Alia Amir (https://www.miun.se/en/personnel/aliaamir/) to request a slot & for more info (or see http://emcawiki.net/MIUN_data_sessions)
If you would like to send EMCA-related announcements out with the ISCA newsletter as well as on the EMCA wiki, please send them to announce@emcawiki.net, copying in pubs@conversationanalysis.org, and state that you would like the announcement both on the Wiki and in the Newsletter. Please include a tweet-length (~240 character length) version of your news!