Our Structure

ESPRit is led by a team of scholars who coordinate the society’s activities and initiatives. This section introduces the members of the ESPRit Board, Advisory Board, and Committee.

ESPRit Board

Four elected members sit on the ESPRit Board:

Chair – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Università IULM)

Vice Chair — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Universiteit Gent)

Secretary — Mary Ikoniadou (Leeds School of Arts)

Treasurer — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Universiteit Utrecht)

 Advisory Board

The Advisory Board consists of five elected members:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Birkbeck, University of London)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (University College Dublin)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.(University of Liverpool)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Università degli Studi di Milano)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Università del Piemonte Orientale)

Committee

The ESPRit Committee is a group of appointed members who fulfill specific tasks within the Society:  

Financial Audit Committee — Maaike Koffeman (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

Financial Audit Committee — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

Editor-in-Chief of JEPS – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Conference Liaison — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Ruhr University Bochum)

Postgraduate Workshop — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Kassák Museum, Budapest)

Academic Networking — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Institut Universitaire de France and Université de Versailles (UVSQ))

Postgraduate Member — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (King’s College London and British Library)

Language Officer — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

Online Seminars — Bénédicte Coste (Université de Bourgogne)

Periodicals and the Law Network — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Panteion University, Athens)

Website Coordinator — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Università del Piemonte Orientale)

Honorary Fellow — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Örebro University)

About ESPRit

ESPRit, the European Society for Periodical Research, was founded in 2009 by a group of periodical researchers from Austria, Belgium, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States. The aim of the organization is to unite the resources of individual scholars from various disciplines who work with periodicals.

Researchers throughout Europe find periodicals of their own and other nations indispensable resources for understanding such practices as the reception of literature, the segmentation of markets, shifts from reading of newspapers in public venues to domestic consumption of news, gender issues in reading, and the development of literary nationalisms. Although many of these scholars explore similar issues, they have tended to work in isolation and lacked a combined perspective. ESPRit aims to provide a platform for periodical researchers through its website, listserv, conferences and online journal.

ESPRit takes an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on both English and non-English-language periodicals. It transcends specific thematic interests, although the emphasis will be on European research. ESPRit is affiliated with various European and American research groups, such as the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, the Research Society for American Periodicals, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, the Arts and Humanities Alliance, TIGRE and (Texte et Image, Groupe de Recherche à l’Ecole) to ensure a broadly international and transatlantic collaboration.

ESPRit currently has around 400 members that stay in contact through the network website. The ESPRit committee organises annual international conferences during which members can define common topics in the field of periodical research and explore ways to publish together.

Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)

ESPRit actively collaborates with institutions and research groups worldwide to advance the study of periodicals. These agreements strengthen academic exchange and cooperation. Since 2020, we have formalized partnerships with the following institutions and networks: