Evolution 2024 Symposium Proposal Submission
We are pleased to issue this call for symposia proposals for the Third Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology, which will take place in Montreal, Canada, July 26-30, 2024!
The Congress merges the traditions of the participating societies: ESEB, the European Society for Evolutionary Biology; ASN, the American Society of Naturalists; SSB, the Society for Systematic Biology; and SSE, the Society for the Study of Evolution. The sextennial Congress takes the place of the ESEB and Evolution Meetings in 2024, and it builds on the success of the previous Congresses in Ottawa in 2012 and Montpellier in 2018.
The structure of this Congress will be unique. Roughly 40% of talks will be structured into symposia, following the traditional ESEB format. The remaining 60% of talks will be structured into general sessions according to topic, following the traditional Evolution meetings format. The success of the joint meeting therefore depends on the strength and range of the symposia complementing the standard sessions.
We are now asking members of all four participating societies to submit symposium proposals. This is an opportunity to create a session that pushes your field forward and draws new researchers into its orbit. Symposia play a special role in bringing together researchers from disparate disciplines and backgrounds and generating new integrative perspectives. Symposia should transcend the conventional themes of standard meeting sessions. The deadline for proposals is September 1, 2023.
In contrast to the usual ESEB format, no funding will be provided for symposia and consequently they will not feature formally invited speakers (though organizers can solicit submissions). Instead, symposium organizers will select talks and posters from submitted abstracts, and presentations not selected for a symposium will be assigned to the general sessions. Symposium talks will generally be 14 minutes (including questions), as in typical Evolution meetings.
Each symposium should have two organizers with a vision for an exciting and timely scientific session. We welcome proposals from researchers at all career stages, and our goal is to assemble a collection of symposia that encompass a broad diversity of researchers and research topics. The Joint Congress Scientific Committee, with members from all four societies, will select symposia from the proposals, with decisions announced in November 2023. Abstract submissions for the symposia and general sessions will close in the spring of 2024, not long before the meeting. Symposium organizers will then select talks for their sessions from the submitted abstracts. We ask organizers to ensure diversity among their session speakers, with attention to gender, career stage, geography, and other axes. We are particularly interested in symposia that draw themes from the disciplines of multiple participating societies.
To submit a symposium proposal, please provide the following components below:
1. The names, e-mail addresses, and society affiliations of two organizers who are committed to attend the whole meeting in person. If you are not a member of any of the participating societies, please join! Find links below, and note that the societies have membership assistance programs for researchers from many parts of the world.
2. The proposed symposium title.
3. A scientific abstract of up to 1000 characters explaining the theme of the symposium. This is the text that will attract submissions to your session.
4. An account of up to 1000 characters explaining how your symposium is timely and of broad interest, how it will facilitate integration and synthesis across the boundaries of the scientific societies, and how it will benefit from its status as a symposium as opposed to having the same talks distributed into general sessions.
5. Optionally, provide names and affiliations for two speakers that you believe would be a good fit for your symposium. It is not required that these speakers have agreed to submit abstracts for your symposium. Note that we are interested in symposia that will contribute to the diversity of the conference participants, across career stage, gender, nationality, and other dimensions.
Each organizer can submit a maximum of one proposal.
Join the societies:
SSE: http://www.evolutionsociety.org/membership.html
SSB: https://www.systbio.org/membership.html
ASN: https://amnat.org/membership/beamember.html
ESEB: https://eseb.org/society/eseb-membership/
Please send enquiries to [email protected].