ESTABLISHING THE GLOBAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION

Arising our of a conference held in July 1999, a group of scholars from a number of universities and located in several different countries decided there was a need for a new academic association to be called the Global Studies Association (GSA).

Accordingly, a new association was established at an inaugural meeting on July 6th 2000 which took place during a conference on the theme of ‘Globalization, Culture and Everyday Life’ which ran from July 5-7th 2000 and was organised by the Department of Sociology's Institute for Global Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Inadvertently, and with the support of other academics, the opportunity arose for MMU to become the temporary focus and the locus for organising such events and for providing the early framework for establishing a GSA.

In addition, the Department of Sociology at MMU agreed to provide a small amount of initial funding to enable the association to secure sufficient administrative support so that the first executive committee could launch the new association effectively in the early period.

However, once the membership has expanded and a second batch of elected committee members has been elected (from July 2003) the main location of the GSA will probably move to elsewhere.