As the Corona pandemic is dragging on, the EACS has decided that conditions do not allow holding the EACS 2020 conference in the final week of August 2020. Germany has been fortunate to avoid the worst, and now that the pandemic is receding, society is gradually opening up again. However, with travel restrictions still in place and a second wave feared by epidemiologists, holding the biennial conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS 2020) this August appears too risky. The board of the EACS discussed at length alternative options, including an online-only conference at the original date or even complete cancellation. In the end, we decided that the conference will be postponed by one year to August 24–28, 2021.
We hope to keep as many of the accepted panels and individual papers on the programme as possible. Panel organisers and individual presenters who have already registered and paid for the conference do not need to do anything. All other accepted presenters are kindly asked to register formally (and pay the conference fees) by July 31, 2020. We will do our best to accommodate changes within panels if individual participants find it difficult to commit for 2021. After July 31, 2020, we will take stock of the number of confirmed participants and decide whether a second (limited) call for papers needs to be issued in the fall of 2020.
The 2020 Young Scholar Award will be presented in a virtual event format on September 19, 2020, at 10:00 am CET. Please see the EACS homepage for further information.
Please follow this link to the mein conference website https://conference.uni-leipzig.de/eacs2020/
Visit this link to find the registration directly https://conference.uni-leipzig.de/eacs2020/shop/?orderby=price-desc
Requests for reimbursement of EACS 2020 conference fees can be submitted to the organisers at eacs@uni-leipzig.de until July 31, 2020. Please be aware that reimbursement of conference fees results in withdrawal from the conference. Should there be a second call for papers, withdrawn panel and paper proposals can be resubmitted, but will then have to undergo peer review again. In case of acceptance, participants will then have to register for the conference at the (likely higher) 2021 rates.
We apologise for these complications, which are caused by forces beyond our control. We hope that all who had committed themselves to EACS 2020 will also do so for EACS 2021 and help make this the largest and most diverse EACS conference in many years.
All panel organisers, presenters, and exhibitors will soon be contacted individually by e-mail. Please wait for this e-mail message which will contain further information and instructions specific to your situation. If you need urgent assistance prior to that, feel free to contact us at eacs@uni-leipzig.de.
On behalf of EACS and the Leipzig organising committee, I wish everyone a healthy summer 2020!
Philip Clart
Professor of Chinese Culture & History, Leipzig University
Vice-President, EACS
eacs@uni-leipzig.de