This is really tragic.

Kathryn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Green" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 2:30 AM
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] CRFF Update


Apologies for cross-posting ...

Sheffield, 26 April 2010

Dear recipients of this newsletter,

Some of you might have observed that the Centre for Research into 
Freemasonry and
Fraternalism at the University of Sheffield not has issued a newsletter 
since February this
year. Newsletter 46 (2010:2) was the last disseminated during my 
directorship.

During 2009 the CRFF failed to capture substantial grants that would have 
allowed the
continuation of our activities. Furthermore a promised donation has not 
materialized. As
a consequence the Faculty or Arts and Humanities at the University of 
Sheffield has
decided to suspend the activities of the CRFF for the time being. The 
website has
switched into hibernation and is not updated anymore. I will leave the 
university at the
end of June 2010 and have currently no other position or engagement beyond 
that date.

For university-based academic research into freemasonry and fraternalism in
Europe there are challenging times ahead. We had hoped to reorganize some of 
our
activities at the Chair for research into freemasonry at Leiden University, 
but the tragic
death of professor Malcolm Davies earlier this year has prevented such a 
move. It is
currently uncertain when and if the chair will be advertised again.

When we finally launched our Journal for Research into Freemasonry and 
Fraternalism
last year we discussed the option to form an Academic Society for Research 
into
Freemasonry and Fraternalism. A constitution was drafted and a circle of pro 
tempore
board members appointed – with Malcolm Davies as chairman. We are now 
discussing
the future of this organization. The Journal is however the first tangible 
outcome of truly
international scholarly cooperation in the field and issue 1 was finally 
published in
January this year. We were surprised that the University of Sheffield didn’t 
want to take
credit of this initiative and have since then been very cautious to make any 
further
connections between activities in the research area and the university. This 
has also
prompted us to draw a clear line between the society, the journal and the 
University of
Sheffield. We are looking into different solutions to diffuse this 
newsletter in the future
and have created a temporary website for the society and everybody 
interested in the
progress of the research area as an academic topic, 
http://asrff.blogspot.com (will be
updated on a regular basis). Please link to this website and remove all 
previous links to
freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk. We are looking into options to retain some of 
the features
of the old website. Lanes and Draffens digital list of lodges will be hosted 
in
coordination with the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London. The 
library of
the CRFF will be relocated to Tapton Masonic Hall in Sheffield thanks to a 
generous
donation from UGLE Prestonian Lecturer and RWM of QC-lodge No. 2076 Dr John
Wade. The remainder of our publication series Sheffield Lectures on the 
History of
Freemasonry and Fraternalism is still for sale. To order Vol. 1 on 
Freemasonry and
Fraternalism in the Middle East (2009); Vol. 2 on Freemasonry and 
Fraternalism in Eighteenth
century Russia (2009) and Vol. 3 Researching British Freemasonry 1717-2017 
(2010) please
contact [log in to unmask] +441142229890, HRI 34 Gell Street, S3 7QY
Sheffield, United Kingdom.

New issues of the JRFF under preparation
Despite of these negative developments we are proud to announce that issue 2 
and 3 of
the journal are under preparation, scheduled for publication autumn 2010 and 
spring
2011. Please consult the journal website
http://www.equinoxjournals.com/index.php/JRFF/index
for further information about our future publication and most of all: please 
support the
research area through subscriptions to the Journal which is published online 
and in hard
cover. If you have a university affiliation we ask you to kindly to submit a 
request to your
library to sign up for a subscription. I assume that public libraries can be 
asked for the
same thing.

Conference and event calendar

Dr Andreas Önnerfors will present an illustrated lecture at the Sheffield 
Cathedral Music
and Arts Festival “Sheffield's Lost Symbols: A Guide to Freemasonry 
symbolism around
the city” on Monday 7 June at 19:30 in Sheffield Cathedral. This is probably 
the last
public lecture presented to a local audience and will be followed 
immediately by a
farewell-reception in downtown Sheffield, place The Graduate, 94 Surrey 
Street t.b.c.
Please register with [log in to unmask]

The conference “Women and freemasonry since the Enlightenment”, to be
organized 17-19 June 2010 at the university of Bordeaux in France will 
gather a number
of the best scholars in the research area. We have posted a link to the most 
impressive
conference program on our blog asrff.blogspot.com. Please note the strong 
Sheffield participation
with papers by Dr Róbert Péter, Dr Robert Collis and Dr Andreas
Önnerfors.

The conference “Jacobites and Anti-Jacobites, culture and diaspora” will 
take
place at the University of Strathclyde, 24-26 June 2010. Dr Andreas 
Önnerfors will
present a paper on “Swedish Freemasonry and its Jacobite connections”.
Another great event that lies ahead of us is the Third International 
Conference
on the History of Freemasonry (ICHF) to be held at the George Washington 
Masonic
Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia, from 27-29 May 2011. The first announcement 
and call
for papers has now been issued and is available at: http://bit.ly/cwlknu
Please note that the deadline for proposals for papers is 30 June 2010 and 
please feel free
to repost this announcement to any other lists or sites that you think may 
find the
conference of interest.

We are also pleased to announce that the program of the next International
Canonbury Masonic Research Centre conference on “Anti-masonry”, to be held 
29-31
October 2010 soon will be finalized and also gathers some of the most 
excellent scholars
in this area. For more information, please consult 
http://www.canonbury.ac.uk/

Other news

On Saturday 17 April the annual Charles A. Sankey Lecture series at Brock 
university in
Ontario, Canada was inaugurated by Dr Andreas Önnerfors who delivered the 
lecture
“Perceptions of Freemasonry from the Eighteenth Century to the Internet” 
with 500
people in the audience. The lecture was also recorded for future 
dissemination and will
eventually be published. The annual lecture series in memory of Dr. Sankey 
is the first
step towards the establishment of an endowed Chair for masonic studies at 
the Canadian
university, promoted by the Grand Master’s initiative of the Grand Lodge of 
Canada in
the Province of Ontario, RWM Raymond S.J. Daniels. For more information, see
http://grandlodge.on.ca/framesBrockProject.htm

On Friday 9 April the first academic symposium organized by the Scottish 
Rite Museum
of National Heritage in Lexington/Massachusetts “New perspectives on 
American
Freemasonry and Fraternalism” took place. Jessica Harland-Jacobs delivered a 
keynote
lecture on new theoretical approaches towards the subject followed by six 
individual
presentations on a variety of topics ranging from antebellum Virginian 
associational life
via the depths of American transcendentalism to the Ku-Klux-Klan in the 
early
Twentieth century. The symposium was well attended, not at least by Grand 
Master and
Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts as well as 
representatives of the
Supreme Council 33°, Scottish Rite Northern Jurisdiction. The fascinating 
collections at
the Van-Gorden-Williams Library and Archives were also well worth a separate 
visit:
http://www.monh.org/Default.aspx?tabid=466

On Saturday 13 March German lodge of research organized a conference on 
masonic
ritual. Among such distinguished speakers as professor Jan Snoek, Dr. 
Andreas
Önnerfors presented a paper titled “Das freimaurerische Ritual im Lichte 
neuer
Ritualtheorien”.

Between Tuesday 9 March and Friday 12 March the research group Esotericism 
and
Enlightenment (headed by prof Monika Neugebauer-Wölk) at the University of 
Halle,
Germany organized its final conference “The Enlightenment in its referential 
context of
modern esotericism”. Dr Andreas Önnerfors presented a paper titled “Esoteric
performance–enlightened philosophy: the case of freemasonry”. The conference 
was
very well attended and the scholarly debate of the topics presented was 
intense. The
program of the research group is presented on
http://www.zeitenblicke.de/2006/1/IZEAProjektbericht

Kind regards,

Andreas Önnerfors




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