The inauguration of the Transatlantic Studies Association took place on 11 July 2002 with the first of its annual conferences. Lord Robertson, Secretary General of NATO, welcomed the delegates with a video message commending the new initiative. The conferences attract a diverse range of delegates each year, drawn mainly from North America, the UK, and the rest of from Europe. In 2008 the Association was granted charitable status and formally adopted its constitution.
TSA Chair Chris Jespersen, University College Cork 2017
The Association communicates via a mailing list and an annual newsletter. The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, the official journal of the TSA, is currently published by Palgrave-Macmillan with four issues a year.
Links have been cultivated with various other associations and organizations including the British Association for American Studies, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and Transatlantic Women. The Association has been supported financially over the years by the US Embassy London, NATO, the Bruce Center Keele University, Baylor University, the Dundee and Angus Convention Bureau, University College Cork, Failte Ireland, the British Academy, the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen (FWO), and the Halle Foundation.
The Association offers a variety of funding schemes to promote the study of transatlantic relations, including the DC Watt Prize for the best paper presented at its annual conference by an early career scholar, the TSA-CUP book prize, the TSA-Palgrave-Macmillan Research Award, and a number of travel grants to support early career scholars’ attendance at the annual conference.
The overall aims of the TSA are as follows:
to provide focus for transatlantic area studies and bring together scholars from different disciplines in order to further research and understanding of transatlantic relations;
to nurture research networks and disseminate research outputs in an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary environment;
to support the Journal of Transatlantic Studies;
to provide a forum that will bring together academics with officials and specialists from other professions;
Chairs of TSA:
2002-2013: Prof. Alan Dobson (founder)
2013-2016: Prof. Giles Scott-Smith
2016-2017: Prof. David Ryan
2017-2021: Prof. Christopher Jespersen
2021-Present: Dr Thomas Mills