European Congress on Visual Impairment

I am looking forward to the European meeting on vision impairment to be held in Valladolid, Spain, this October.

Apart from Spain being a nice place to visit, there are many good speakers at the conference, from a variety of backgrounds. They include vision scientists (Aries Arditi from New York; Bob Massof from Baltimore); rehabilitation professionals (Krister Inde from Sweden, Duane Geruschat from Johns Hopkins); clinicians (Bruce Rosenthal from New York); and people who mix clinical work and practice (Eli Peli from Boston, Mary-Lou Jackson from Boston).

One thing which slightly concerns me as a European is that for a European conference only a small proportion of the invited speakers (5 of 14) are European: two working in Sweden and three in England. Whilst there is good low vision research going on in Europe (and Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and elsewhere), most of the ‘big names’ in this field still work in the USA. Is this because research funding is more generous in the States, or because they are better known from speaking at more conferences, or because American research centres are better than those in the ‘Old World’?

I think that the meeting should be interesting and will be a good showcase for the research being performed in this area in Europe. And I’m sure the Rioja and Tapas will beat the food and drink at most American conferences too!

[Disclaimer: I am on the scientific board of this meeting. However I will not profit from people going to the conference and have no financial interest in whether you attend or not.]

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