Dear EASA members,
I am writing to you about the panel selection and review process for EASA2026, Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World, taking place in Poznań, 21-24 July.
Transparency and care have always been the core values underpinning our selection procedure at EASA and with this statement I want to share with the membership both the (uneasy) choices we have made this year and how they shape our work on future conferences. I want to begin by thanking everyone who invested time and thought in proposing a panel or submitting a paper. The call for panels generated an extraordinary high number of submissions. The enthusiasm this conference has inspired is a genuine reflection of what EASA means to so many of us, and it does not go unnoticed.
As President, I have also chaired the Scientific Committee for this edition, a body of 14 members: leading scholars across our fields, comprising both Executive Committee members and members nominated by the local organising committee in Poznań, with four additional members brought in later to address gaps in regional and disciplinary representation. I want to thank each of them for their careful and generous volunteer labour, and to thank the NomadIT conference team for their indispensable support throughout the process.
EASA2026 received 369 panel proposals, alongside 3,319 paper proposals, 100 film submissions, and 69 lab proposals. The total significantly exceeded the venue’s capacity. The Poznań conference site can accommodate a maximum of 1,600 face-to-face delegates, and factoring in convenors, discussants, film presenters, and paper authors together, that constraint meant we could accept no more than approximately 55% of all paper proposals. We had space for 220 panels in total.
The first round of review was a blind process. Every panel was assigned to three different reviewers who scored it independently on a scale of 1 to 5, according to the criteria outlined in the call for panels. As with an exam board process, once scoring was complete, the Scientific Committee convened to review the results collectively. Network panels were guaranteed a slot, as per EASA’s commitment to one panel per network, and panels with strong average scores across reviewers were accepted directly. The Committee then turned to the remaining panels, paying particular attention to those with scores in the median range, as well as those with notably contrasting scores between reviewers, discussing each case in detail before reaching a final decision. This second stage of deliberation was non-blind and took place over a single extended meeting. In this meeting, the committee considered a broader set of contextual factors alongside the scores: the conference theme, geographic and institutional distribution of convenors across different regions and universities, thematic coverage across subfields, and the overall coherence of the programme as a whole.
I also want to be transparent about a specific decision the Executive made this year. Unlike previous biennials, which enforced fixed session limits of five or ten papers per panel, this year we applied a flat acceptance rate across all panels. The reason was fairness. Previous EASA conferences were constrained mainly by time and space. This year, the binding constraint was the plenary venue capacity and local catering arrangements in Poznań, which placed a hard ceiling on total delegate numbers rather than total sessions. A fixed-session model under these conditions would have disproportionately disadvantaged popular panels, as if penalising scholars precisely because their topics attracted more proposals. We chose instead to spread the constraint more evenly across the programme.
We recognise this approach has created its own shortcomings. Some panels may appear to have unfilled time when there is not, in fact, space for more papers. Some panel convenors, faced with limited slots, accepted their own submitted papers, which has disappointed applicants whose proposals were rejected. And some members found the departure from the familiar fixed-session model confusing. We hear these concerns and we take them seriously.
Rejections are part of any peer review process, and I would invite everyone to approach the outcome as exactly that: a peer review result, not a judgment on the value of one’s work or one’s standing in our community, even if this year the difficulty of that process was compounded by the space limitations of the conference venue. Anyone who has been on the reviewing side of such a process knows that decisions at the margins are genuinely difficult. The blind review process is designed precisely so that argument, not reputation, carries the weight, and that means the quality and care that go into a submission do matter.
What I want to say plainly is that the high rejection rate is not new, and it is not primarily an issue of this Scientific Committee or this Executive. It has been a persistent challenge for EASA since 2012. Our membership has grown, our association attracts increasing numbers of excellent scholars, and this is genuinely good news for the discipline and for our association. Yet it also means the scale of our conferences has to be reconsidered seriously in order to include the growing number of our members.
EASA has traditionally held its conferences on university campuses, a choice shaped by financial realities, questions of scale, and a commitment to keeping our gatherings collegial, accessible, and sustainable. As our membership grows, we are conscious that this preference carries real costs, and that venue capacity will always constrain us in ways that purpose-built conference spaces would not. As many of you know, in the previous conference cycle we had already begun reflecting on alternative formats with the input of members of previous Executive Committees. The current Executive is building on that work and, given the urgency that this year’s numbers have made plain, is treating it as a priority. We are forming a dedicated task group within the Executive to take this question forward, bringing their findings to the AGM in Poznań this July to open a full membership discussion, and planning broader consultation sessions after the conference. Throughout all of this, we remain open to exploring venues that offer greater capacity while staying sustainable and academically grounded.
We know none of this resolves the disappointment of those whose proposals were not accepted this time. If you have concerns, questions, or ideas, please do reach out to us. EASA is its members, and the conversations that happen in the margins of our meetings, in corridors and over coffee and in the AGM hall, are as much a part of what we build together as the panels themselves. I look forward very much to seeing many of you in Poznań.
With warm regards,
Hayal Akarsu
President, EASA (also on behalf of EASA Executive Committee)