Dear Colleagues:

In March of this year when Covid-19 emerged as a global pandemic few of us probably imagined that it would be as disruptive to all aspects of our lives as it has been. Yet, here we are at the end of 2020 and trying to make plans for 2021.

As we announced earlier this year, ECREA decided to move the ECC from 2020 to 2021 and everyone’s abstracts that were accepted for 2020 will still be accepted for 2021. Additionally, we have confirmed with ECREA that the ECC will go back to its regular schedule for 2022. We will simply have the ECC two years in a row – Covid permitting, of course.

As you all know Crisis7 was scheduled for early October, 2021 and was going to be hosted by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. With the ECC rescheduled, it created a challenge for a successful Crisis7 because of a very busy Sept/Oct conference schedule. We all – the management team and our Gothenburg hosts – discussed the possibility of a late spring conference. Unfortunately, it does not seem possible to host a face-to-face conference by April/May of 2021. For this reason, we have decided there is not a viable way to hold Crisis7 as scheduled for 2021.

There is, however, good news to report. The University of Gothenburg have graciously agreed to remain our Crisis7 host – so none of us will miss out on visiting Sweden – it will just be two years later than we anticipated. So, we are pleased to announce that Crisis7 will take place at the University of Gothenburg in 2023!

Our next challenge was about how to support and maintain our risk and crisis communication community in 2021 – providing opportunities for us to all interact, share and discuss our research and practice, and ensure that our community is contributing to and leading the zeitgeist on crisis communication into the post-Covid era. We considered an intensive online conference structure – with a full complement of panels like NCA, ICA, the WCA, among other associations are doing. However, based on the feedback from people who have already attended these intensive conferences; the ‘zoom fatigue’ and lack of socializing makes them less desirable – and especially in a community like ours where the interactions between colleagues and social aspects are so formative.

Instead, we have decided to offer a combination of monthly live panel sessions as well as pre-recorded full presentations. All live sessions will be free to attend. We will follow this announcement up with our CFP in the Crisis2021 series in the next week or so, but want to preview what is coming from us….

• We are asking colleagues to submit abstracts.
• We will have a submission deadline, but that is to ensure we can schedule the live panel sessions; however, abstracts for pre-recorded presentations will be accepted on a rolling basis until July 2021.
• Live panels will be the first Friday of each month beginning in February and running through July. They will be scheduled for two-hours.
• While free, you will have to register for the live sessions.
• The panels and panel themes will be published ahead of time.
• Pre-recorded presentations will be featured on our website – www.ecreacrisis.com
• We will also be hosting graduate student workshops as well and publishing a separate call for those. The time(s)/date(s) of those will be coordinated later and based on submissions. Those will also be free to attend. 
• Our live sessions will also be posted online afterwards for those who were not able to attend live.

We will be announcing our first panel scheduled for 5 February, 2021 but it will be on COVID-19: Learning and Consequences for International Crisis Communication Research, so hold the date!

We know this isn’t how we had all probably planned to get together in 2021, but we hope that this offers meaningful opportunities to engage with old and new colleagues and promote the work that we are all doing!

Best regards,

Audra, Silvia, Florian, and Janina