To the AWRANA Executive Board,
With the present letter I would like to present my candidature to the post of Secretary of the AWRANA Association. My objectives for the next term are to:
- Keep fostering the use and the high-potential of use-wear and residues analysis among the international scientific community.
- Sustain young analysts and attract students to use-wear and residues analysis.
- Keep fostering the use of open data in use-wear and residues analysis.
- Keep fostering the creation of open-repository for experimental tools and use-wear collections.
- Fostering the integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques in use-wear analysis.
My scientific track-record demonstrates that my concern for the above-mentioned topics is real.
With all the best,
Niccolò Mazzucco
Dear AWRANA Members,
I am submitting my candidacy for the position of AWRANA Secretary being fully aware that the chances of my election are very small. I think this way not only because my role in the traceological community is far from what the people who previously performed this function represented themselves, but also due to a minimal representation of Eastern and Central Europe in our Association. It is, in my opinion, one of the main shortcomings of AWRANA as an international organization and, at the same time, the main reason I decided to apply for this position. I believe that the development of AWRANA in the coming years should assume a much greater opening of the Association to researchers from Eastern and Central Europe. The reason for such an opinion lies not only in the fact that many well-established traceology specialists come from here, who should be encouraged to join AWRANA. It is mainly because of the Eastern/Central European young researchers and students specializing in the use-wear analysis and residues studies for whose sustainable development should be taken care of in a much better way than today (e.g., by the possibility of education in reputable traceology centers located outside their countries). At the moment, they do not have their representative in AWRANA, who could provide support and a kind of intermediary between them and foreign centers, where they would like to continue their education.
On the other hand, I also believe that it would be highly beneficial for the further development of leading traceological laboratories to enable wider contacts of their representatives with researchers from research centers in the Central and Eastern Europe. It could result in international cooperation stimulating integration between centers from different parts of the world within AWRANA.
To sum up, my main goal in the case of my election as the AWRANA Secretary is a broader opening of the Association to Central and Eastern Europe. I will try to achieve this goal through the following activities:
- I will organize the next AWRANA conference in Poland if my proposition to do it will be accepted by its members;
- I will initialize a program of short-term (one or two weeks) internships for students from Eastern and Central Europe in the leading traceological laboratories (financed from the students’ home centers and, if possible, co-financed by AWRANA);
- I would like to organize (under the auspices of AWRANA) a series of one or two-week, international workshops in experimental archeology, traceology, and residues studies. They will take place in Poland, but also (if it will be possible for financial reasons) in other countries. I already organized this kind of camp last year (http://exarchcamp.umk.pl/).
- I will try to organize a series of lectures by specialists in traceology and residues studies at selected Universities of Central and Eastern Europe (funded from host centers).
Thank you in advance for considering my candidacy,
Grzegorz Osipowicz
