Dear IATS members and participants in the IATS Prague seminar,

We hope this post finds you well after a not totally Covid-free 16th IATS, held in the wonderful city of Prague, and masterfully organised by Daniel, Jarmila, Geshe Nyima Woser and Martin Hanker, as well as their team of voluntaries.

We are pleased to share with you the composition of the newly elected board of advisors of the IATS. The IATS board members starting a 2-conference mandate from 2022 onwards are:

1. Daniel Berounský (Czech Republic)
2. Geshe Nyima Woser Choekhortshang Rinpoche (Nepal)
3. Hildegard Diemberger (Austria)
4. Dorji Wangchuk (Bhutan)
5. Iwao Kazushi (Japan)
6. Lama Jabb (UK)
7. Pema Choedon (Norway)
8. Karma Phuntsho (Bhutan)
9. Françoise Pommaret (France)
10. Jarmila Ptáčková (Czech Republic)
11. Françoise Robin (France)
12. Ulrike Roesler (UK)
13. Yudru Tsomu (China)

The president remains Hanna Havnevik, elected in Paris in 2019 for a mandate of 2 conferences. Françoise Robin remains the General Secretary. You can find a detailed overview of the board here.

We also want to inform you that the new Advisory board, which met on Friday 8th July, decided that the next IATS would take place in 2026, not in 2025. This is to accommodate the request of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS). Like IATS seminars, IABS conferences take place on a three-year basis, the last one being in 2017. Not having been able to meet in 2020, nor in 2021, they could only convene in 2022. Having had already a 5-year gap between 2017 and 2022, and realizing that coinciding with IATS could be detrimental to both conferences, they asked the IATS board to consider not holding the next IATS seminar in 2025, as the IABS wants to maintain theirs that year. As per item 7 of our statutes, an IATS seminar can be held every three or four years. Thus, the board decided that the 17th IATS seminar would be held in 2026.

The location of the next IATS seminar has not been decided yet. We will write to you in the autumn on that topic.

Last, regarding the “Ethics Statement” and the “Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault” documents, we have heard and received your views and suggestions, and we thank those among you who made constructive contributions. As requested by several members of IATS, find the attached the bilingual and final draft of the Ethics Statement for your reference. The minutes of the plenary session of July 5th in Prague, kindly taken by Lauran Hartley and Charlene Makley, are not publicly available (yet). We will return in the autumn with information about how we intend to proceed with both documents.

Best regards,

Hanna and Françoise

2nd September 2022