We heard a lot of positive responses to our ARTES Day of 1 November. We now have a brand-new ARTES PhD series of events starting this month, with peer-review groups, workshops, and a PhD conference that is scheduled for June. Galiia, Geraldine, Mansur and Guido presented these activities, with a special emphasis on what we can do for external PhD researchers.

We then discussed the new research clustering in ARTES, which will comprise overarching program groups that host the actual teams and projects. Yolanda Rodriguez Perez presented the new European Narratives group, which will be the new home for many existing teams from within European Studies. Julienne gave us an introduction into MemoPop, the new group on memory and popular culture, with among others Maria Urban, Sudha Rajagopalan, Ewa Stanczyk, Guido Snel and Arij Ouweneel. Gerard Wiegers presented the new group “From Kashgar to Cordoba”, which we hope will unite our work on the history and cultures among predominantly Muslim societies in Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, organized together with ASH. IN addition, Robbert Woltering and Maaike Voorhoeve outlined their new PhD group on Urban Egypt and beyond – thereby introducing a novel idea, namely to create a group of highly motivated external PhD students around a common theme. Lastly, from Barbara Hogeboom we got a glimpse into the kitchen of the CEDLA program group, again with an eye to the many external and funded PhDs of CEDLA. We also welcomed Justyne Wubs-Mrozevic and three of her team members; they presented her ongoing project on pre-modern conflict management in the Baltic area. Overall, the afternoon generated many moments of transatlantic and transcontinental synergies. Thank you for your enthusiasm!

The next step is to go online with the new group descriptions, on program and team levels, and to update the ARTES web presence of the other groups that we did not discuss (European Cultures of Governance and EAST, for instance). Whoever has not yet sent us their individual or group texts – please do so at your earliest convenience! Each of us can be assigned to two ARTES groups at the same time, ideally with complimentary parts of your research agenda.

We concluded the ARTES Day with a borrel of relief -- anticipating that new anti-covid measures would probably be just around the corner. Good timing!