Letter from the President
By Dilyana Ivanova Zieske
Dear Readers,
The new BSA leadership was elected by the members almost a year ago. It has been an exciting year for Daria, Traci and me and we are happy to report that along with the restart of our newsletter, the BSA website was modernized, we have adopted a logo, and we now have a Facebook page.
Very soon, our reviewers will announce the 2023 John Bell Book Prize winner and we have already awarded one travel grant to a Bulgarian scholar, Desislava Tiholova, to attend the 55th ASEEES Annual Conference in Philadelphia.
Again, I would like to express our gratitude to Andoni Andreev, for working with me to put together the new BSA website, and Liam Zieske, for drafting legal terms and policies and for becoming the Website Editor.
Special thanks to Sanja Ivanov for accepting the role of the BSA Newsletter Editor and for her wonderful work on this 2023 newsletter issue!
Please consider sending us news and materials on topics related to Bulgarian studies for our website, Facebook page and newsletter. We will be happy to share them and make your work and the field of Bulgarian studies more visible and successful.
The 12th Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North American Scholars will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria in June of 2024. Our partner on the ground, the Council for the Bulgarian Studies Abroad, has been working on the conference arrangements. Negotiations are currently underway for the conference venue; we will update members as soon as we have further information on the conference venue and format.
If you will be at the ASEEES Conference in Philadelphia (Nov. 29 – Dec. 3), do plan to attend the BSA Annual Meeting. You can find more information about this our business meeting in Philadelphia on page 9 of this Newsletter.
In 2023, we also received the very sad news of the passing of our colleague and friend Martha Forsyth, who was an inspiration to all of us at the Bulgarian Studies Association. Sincere condolences again to her family and friends. The memorial text for Martha is included on our website, as well in this issue of the newsletter.
I would like to suggest that we establish a Martha Forsyth BSA Travel grant to commemorate and honor Martha and her contributions to our organization. This suggestion will be discussed at the BSA Annual meeting. The full content of our agenda for this meeting is also included on pg. 9 of this newsletter.
Finally, I would like to remind you to stay current with your membership fees. Your membership helps us to support BSA’s activities. Here is the link to our PayPal for membership payments. The link and information are also available on our website: https://www.bgstudies.org/
If you have any questions regarding the method of the payment, please contact Traci Speed at bulgarianstudiesassociation@gmail.com.
With warm regards, Dilyana
To access the full PDF of the newsletter click on the link.