AIESEP April Newsletter

Hello AIESEP Friends,

We are officially one month from our 2024 conference in Jyväskylä! The AIESEP Board of Directors looks forward to welcoming you to Finland and to experience a great conference!

1. As an avid reader of this newsletter you probably already know that the 2024 AIESEP Conferencewill be held in Jyväskylä, Finland from May 13-17^th with pre-conference sessions being held on the 13^th. Please use aiesep2024@jyu.fi for all correspondence, a past email address aiesep2024@event.jyu.edu  has some issues where emails are not going through. You can find more information, the registration link (open up to May 1^st for late registration), and hotel discount codes on the conference website https://www.jyu.fi/en/events/aiesep-2024

2. Official Program: The program will be launched this week (April 15-19^th) You will find it by going to the conference website. If you need an official letter of invitation or receipt you can email aiesep2024@jyu.fi

3. Posters: Please note that there are guidelines for posters on the conference website under “presentations”. The posters should be in Portrait (not landscape) format. Here is a sample poster. If you don’t want to travel with your poster, there is an option to email your poster to the University ahead of time and pick it up when you get there. If you do this, the poster is due by May 6^th and the cost is 46Eur. There is a link on the conference website for more information.

4. Oral Presentations: As you prepare for oral presentations. Remember that they are limited to 10 minutes followed by 2-3minutes for questions.

5. Our Early Career Scholars have been announced! The award winners will present their research Thursday May 16^th at 2:30pm. Please join me in congratulating: Jamie Brunsdon, Donna Niemistö, Harry Liu, Ping Fan, and Dan Jones. You can read about them more here.

6. Trains! The easiest and least expensive way to get from the airport to Jyväskylä or Helsinki Central Station is by train. The train leaves from below the airport arrivals hall. You can either take it to Tikkurila and transfer to a Jyväskylä train or take the train straight from the airport to Helsinki Central Railway Station. You can book your train tickets here. vr.fi Fun facts about train travel in Finland: If you have a kid in a stroller in Helsinki, you don’t pay for trams, busses or local trains. And there is a kids train car on all VR regional trains. This car should be avoided at all costs if you dislike rambunctious kids or selected with glee if you’re traveling with kids who need some built-in entertainment on a 3hr train ride to Jyväskylä!

7. The fourth and final blog by Risto Marttinen is out, in it he gives some tips on what to do if you have a few days in Helsinki. You can read it here. If you’re in town on Saturday night May 11^th, you might want to get tickets to see a really fun Finnish band! (link to tickets in the blog). *note this is not an AIESEP sanctioned event just an amazing lvie show!  There are other blogs also, the first blog is about “Booking travel to AIESEP 2024”. You can listen to an audio version of the blog here. The second  blog dives deeper into the “ins and outs” of Finland in general and provides some background on hotel recommendations. A summary of the second  blog is also available in audio format in this podcast. The third blog gives you some insider notes from locals on things to do, coffee shops to stop in, and restaurants to try in Jyväskylä

8. The April #AIESEPConnect (our monthly session that disseminates research) is Friday April 26^th at 12 noon CEST. You can find the zoom link to join here https://aiesep.org/25350-2/ The session is titled “Everyone is Treated Equally”: Polish PE Teachers’ Perception and Meanings of Gender in PE. The featured panelists are: Natalia Organista, Zuzanna Mazur, and Michal Lenartowicz.

9. AIESEP is now accepting donations to support future developing country scholars as well as PhD students who have been selected to attend the PhD Summer School in Finland this May. We have created a page on the website that shares information about how to donate and how your donation makes a difference https://aiesep.org/donation/

10. The AIESEP PhD Summer Schoolwill feature students from: South Africa, Ghana, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, UK, Canada, Portugal, Turkey, Zimbabwe, USA, Finland, France, and Spain! We are searching for a sponsor to help support a 2025 PhD Summer School in Florida!

11. It is not too early to start planning your travel to the 2025 AIESEP Conference which will be held in St. Petersburg, Florida May 18^th to the 22^nd, 2025. Some preliminary information is up on this website https://www.aiesepstpete2025.com/home Maybe you’d like to tag on a trip to Disneyworld, visit the Florida Everglades, drive on route 1 “the highway that goes to the sea, visit Little Havana in Miami, or relax on the endless beaches after a good conference!

12. AIESEP has received three bids for the 2026 conference. The board of directors is now in the process of meeting with the three groups and we look forward to making an announcement of the winning bid later in the summer.

Finally, as we build out our new website, emails and newsletters will come from info@aiesep.org so please add this to your “safe sender list” and check your filters for past messages. And, finally, if you’re still reading and enjoyed this newsletter, we’re impressed! That’s over 900 words of AIESEP content. You’re a super star!

Sincerely,

Risto Marttinen

Secretary General AIESEP

Associate Professor

George Mason University

rmarttin@gmu.edu