A tribute for Henk van Riemsdijk

Henk van Riemsdijk served as an advisory member for the GLOW board for over 30 years and stepped back from this role last year. We are immensly grateful for his help and advice over the years! Thank you so much, Henk!

The current GLOW president, Susi Wurmbrand, has put together a tribute for Henk to show the world how many linguists and linguistic careers he has influenced over the last decades.

The tribute can be found HERE.

No GLOW colloquium in 2024 & reduced membership fee

The result of the latest vote showed that the majority of the GLOW members approved the proposal to hold a gap year and use the time to reorganize GLOW.

As GLOW will not be held in 2024, a general meeting will be organized by the GLOW board to discuss the restructuring of GLOW. Details will follow later. Since we would like the GLOW membership to be as large as possible during this gap year (to make sure that anyone in the generative community interested in contributing to the further development of GLOW will be heard and have the opportunity to contribute), we are offering a regular yearly membership for €8 and a reduced yearly membership (students, unemployed) for €5. 

04/2023 – 03/2024, covering GLOW Vienna (2023):  €8 / €5

04/2024 – 03/2025, restructuring of GLOW:    €8 / €5

04/2025 – 03/2026, covering GLOW 47 (2025): €25 / €11.50

Members who already paid the full one-year membership for 2023-2024 (e.g., to participate in GLOW in Vienna) will have their membership automatically extended until 03/2026 (i.e., including the 2025 meeting and up to but not including the meeting in 2026). All existing 4-, 5-, and 10-year memberships will be extended by one year.

Being a member allows people to participate in all votes and thereby shape the future of GLOW. GLOW will, if financially possible, continue to support summer schools and possibly other important functions serving the generative community (such as open access publishing).

Online participation at the main colloquium in Vienna will be free for GLOW members. The Zoom link will be sent to the membership on April 11. Please sign up as a GLOW member by April 8 to receive the link. You can sign up via the GLOW46 online form HERE or via the general GLOW form HERE.

New board members!

There are two votes coming up which we would like to alert you to. The voting times for both votes will be: Apr 7 – 14. You must be signed up as a member by Apr 6 to be eligible to vote.

  • Sergio Baauw is stepping down as the treasurer of GLOW after having served for several terms. Thank you, Sergio, for your many years of handling the finances and being the liason to the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce!
  • The board nominates Marco Bril as the new treasurer. The members will be asked via an e-mail vote as well as during the business meeting at GLOW 46 whether they approve this nomination.
  • The Member C position is currently open. We have received two nominations: András Bárány and Hedde Zeijlstra. The board would consider both of these researchers to be excellent additions to the board. The members will be asked via an e-mail vote as well as during the business meeting at GLOW 46 to vote for their preferred candidate.

Vote: skipping GLOW 47 colloquium (2024)?

The GLOW board is considering to skip the annual GLOW colloquium in 2024.

This is partly motivated by the turning down of Israel as a venue for 2024, but mainly as a way of providing the GLOW board and the broader GLOW community with enough time to restructure GLOW as an organization that serves its community as best as it can.

An email announcing the vote has been sent to all current GLOW members.

Over the next year we will be in touch with the community and solicit feedback, ideas and constructive solutions to the issues that have been mentioned. Currently, we are envisaging to do this in the form of a multi-day meeting (online or hybrid), or a series of meetings, where anyone will be welcome (member or not) and where we want to give everyone an opportunity to be heard and to express their wishes and concerns.

We realize that skipping a year also has disadvantages (e.g, taking away the opportunity to present one’s current research at a prominent venue such as GLOW), which is why we want to see how the majority of the GLOW members feels about the proposal.

An email announcing the vote including the voting options has been sent to all current GLOW members.

New advisory member

Henk van Riemsdijk and Martin Everaert served as advisory members for many years (in addition to the regular GLOW board members), but decided to resign last year. A heartfelt thank you to both of them for their invaluable feedback and many contributions to GLOW over the years.

Moving forward, we are happy to announce that David Pesetsky has agreed to serve as a new advisory member for GLOW and help us in the process of restructuring GLOW. Welcome, David!

Dear GLOW community

GLOW has gone through some difficult times. Our goal is and always has been to represent the community in the best way. For that reason, we are committed to listening to criticism and find the fairest way to address it. As a reaction to urges by the LODGI group, we attended to their concerns by asking the community about whether a new vote on the venue for GLOW47 should be conducted or not. We realize that this step was considered inappropriate by some people, but this was the only way for us to see whether the broad community sees a need to readdress the issue. 

In the course of this process, we took the long overdue opportunity to revisit the inadequacy of the archaic GLOW voting system of GLOW, and move to a fully democratic system. After another administrative vote, the actual vote on the venue yielded a small majority against holding GLOW in Israel. The entire process was difficult and more than unfortunate for the organizers in Israel, for which we apologized to them, but we hope that our transparent way to deal with what felt like an impossible situation at least shows that we only had the best intentions.

In reaction to this outcome, again various criticism was received, which we are taking very seriously. For one, we are generally moving to a democratic online voting system to allow the entire GLOW membership to participate (not just whoever happens to be present at the business meeting) and enable each member to voice their opinion freely and secretly. We are also considering a better way of choosing and approving conference venues in the future so that such an unfortunate situation won’t arise again. Lastly, and most importantly, we are planning a broader discussion with the entire generative community about some fundamental issues regarding the GLOW organization: the purpose of GLOW, the way GLOW can serve the generative community, the name of the society, the geographical range, and others. Our goal is to strengthen generative linguistics and support its members in the best way possible, and we will be reaching out to the community with various options soon and throughout the year.

We hope that you support us in doing so.

Result of vote: GLOW 47 will not take place in Israel

The vote about GLOW 47 in Israel has finished.

  • 113 of the total of 170 members (66%) cast a valid vote.
  • 52 members (46% of the valid votes cast) were in favor of GLOW 47 in Israel.
  • 61 members (54% of the valid votes cast) were against GLOW 47 in Israel.

The General Assembly has thus decided that GLOW 47 will not take place in Israel.

Herewith the search for a new venue for GLOW 47 (2024) is initiated. If you have a proposal, please don’t hesitate to share it with the board. Our hope is that a new venue can be confirmed at GLOW 46 in Vienna.

New vote about GLOW 47 (2024)

Following the advisory vote which took place in January, the GLOW board has decided to organize a new vote about GLOW 47 in Israel. This vote is planned to start on Thursday 16 February, at 17:00 CET.

After the vote is opened, no members can be added to the voting pool anymore. Only active GLOW members are eligible to vote.

If you took part in GLOW in person last year, it is likely that you are still a member. If you are unsure whether you are currently a member, feel free to contact us on glow.gw@uu.nl.

If you are not a member yet and wish to cast a vote, please register for the GLOW membership by Tuesday 14 February. Note that the GLOW membership only counts as active after payment has been received.