Dear RC23 members,

As President of RC23, I welcome you to this Spring Issue of the RC23 Newsletter!

I’d like to draw your attention to a new section of the Newsletter “Remembrances”. This section will be used to help preserve the memories and traditions of RC23 and create a sense of shared culture and tradition among us. Remembrances will take a variety of forms. In this issue you will find several examples. Later in my Introduction you’ll find reflections on the importance of Samuil Kugel and a copy of correspondence between Kugel and Robert Merton. Additional historical documents will be included in future issues of the Newsletter.   This Issue also contains an article by emeritus professor Linda Lucia Lubrano, “In Memory of St. Petersburg’s Anchor for Naukovedenie” which expands on the role Samuil Kugel played in the development of Soviet sociology of science and technology. In addition, the Remembrance section contains a paper by Jaime Jiménez “Some Remembrances and Thoughts from a Former RC23 President”. Hopefully Jaime’s article will be the first in a series of such articles. I kindly invite former Board members to send us reflections on your experiences in RC23.

A few months ago we lost a creative researcher and former RC23 Board member, Samuil Kugel. Kugel was a founder of the International School of Sociology of Science and Technology in Russia and facilitated a fruitful cooperation between Soviet sociologists and RC23 members. The School opened its doors to sociologists from around the world. Thanks to Samuel Kugel, well-known researchers Marja Häyrinen-Alestalo (Finland), Olga Amsterdamska (Netherlands), Stuart Blume (The Netherlands), Aant Elzinga (Sweden), Steve Fuller (USA), Karel Mueller (Czech Republic), Fumihiko Satofuka (Japan), Terry Shinn (France), Pal Tamas (Hungary), John Ziman (UK) and many others came to St. Petersburg to give lectures and seminars. Samuel Kugel supported young sociologists and invited me to participate in RC23 activities many years ago.

Samuil Kugel enjoyed a close professional relationship with Robert Merton, the first President of RC23. That relationship involved regular and long-standing correspondence, as well as the exchange of books, articles and other materials. One example of the correspondence between R. Merton and S. Kugel is published below.

I’m pleased to report that the Third ISA Forum of Sociology (Vienna, Austria, 2016) is shaping up to be a rousing success. I would like to express gratitude to all RC23 members for their active participation. Thanks to all who submitted an abstract and, in particular to the session organizers for your successful work in attracting such a high number of quality submissions.  Indeed, the number of submission created some problems for the Program Committee as RC23 is allocated a fixed number of spaces on the program. Fortunately, with the permission of ISA, we were able to organize two additional sessions (Roundtable and Poster Session) in order to facilitate participation by a larger number of individuals. In total,  RC23 will host 16 sessions, several joint sessions with others RCs and one a Business Meeting. As Co-Coordinator of the Program Committee for the Third ISA Forum of Sociology, I would like to express a special thanks to my Co-Coordinator, Alice Abreu (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), for the tremendous work she did. Both of us will do everything we can to create an open dialogue between our members during the Forum. In particular, we hope to explore opportunities for development of RC23 and the topic how to grow and prosper. We expect that the webpage and the Issues of Newsletter will continue to promote not only information exchanges, but also to facilitate collaboration among colleagues, especially collaboration that crosses national boundaries.

Among the Board, we have discussed the benefits of holding RC23 sponsored events outside the ISA World Congress and Forum. As a first step in this direction, we are planning an  Interim RC23 Workshop ”Using Science Policy to Facilitate Innovation, Excellence and Global Cooperation” to be held August, 2017 in St. Petersburg, Russia. We also look forward to having a strong presence at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology which will be held during July of 2018 in Toronto, Canada. Additional information about both events will be forthcoming. We invite all members to note these events on their calendars and plan on participating in whatever way you can.

Best regards,

Nadia Asheulova