Welcome to this ‘conference issue’ of Interpreting Ceramics. We are pleased to publish papers from the ‘Diversity in the Making: Studio Ceramics Today’ conference which was held at Camberwell College of Arts, London, on 15 January 2001. Makers and writers came together at Camberwell to reflect on developments within the field of studio ceramics and to review aspects of the discipline’s theory and practice.

All the papers published here have undergone the minimum amount of editing needed for the purposes of publishing. They have not been peer-reviewed, but are published as a body of work that reflects the proceedings of the conference. The editorial committee of Interpreting Ceramics would be pleased to consider publishing the papers from other conferences in any country.

A further, standard issue of Interpreting Ceramics will appear during 2002 containing peer-reviewed articles. We are keen to encourage a broad range of submissions to the journal and we refer intending authors to the submission guidelines, which you can find listed on the contents page.

Issue no.1 of the journal containing peer-reviewed articles and Issue no.3 containing papers from the ‘The Michael Cardew Centenary Symposium’ can be accessed through the Archive/Links/Resources button on the contents page. All issues of the journal will be archived in due course so that the Interpreting Ceramics website will be cumulative in nature. It is our intention that everything published will remain available and the website will build into a valuable resource for the ceramics community.

Interpreting Ceramics is an initiative of a group of academic staff in the UK who have come together under the title of Interpreting Ceramics: Research Collaboration (ICRC). Our collaboration has come about through shared research interests in recording, interrogating, interpreting and communicating the practice and history of ceramics.

The members of ICRC are committed to exploring ways in which collaborative effort, on both a national and international level, can lead to broader and more interdisciplinary research into all those categories of human activity which are indicated by the term 'ceramics'. ICRC has an interest in any practice or mode of inquiry which brings a social and cultural awareness to bear on the manufacture and consumption of objects made from ceramic materials. The fields covered would therefore include studio, industrial, architectural, traditional, sculptural and figurative ceramics as well as the relevant branches of anthropology, archaeology, material culture studies, museum studies, archiving etc.

Editorial responsibility for Interpreting Ceramics lies with the ICRC committee, which currently consists of the members of the editorial team who are listed above.

The editorial advisory board consists of thirty individuals, drawn from different disciplines, who together provide a wide range of expertise on ceramics in all its guises. A list of members of the board is provided on the web site.

The journal Interpreting Ceramics is the first outcome of the collaborative work of ICRC. It is the first refereed, electronic journal for ceramics and in publishing on the Internet the journal allows contributors to exploit the possibilities of new digital media as well as offering more traditional text based approaches. The journal is freely accessible, without charge. We aim to establish and maintain the highest scholarly standards for the content of the articles published. Three institutions have joint proprietorship of the journal and they are the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the University of the West of England, Bristol.

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