History

The origins of Tectonic Studies Group can be traced back 38 years to a meeting organized by John Ramsay at Imperial College, London. For this first meeting, held in December 1970, it was decided to focus attention on a specific topic and the theme "Folds and Folding" was chosen. At the same meeting a committee was elected, chaired by John Ramsay, and the decision made to seek some relation with the Geological Society of London. The attendees decided against full specialist group status, preferring instead to retain freedom on matters such as the organisation of future meetings and on membership. Informal arrangements on membership exist still today, with voting rights conferred on all attendees at the Annual General Meetings.

The second meeting, held in Manchester in 1971 also had a theme (Faulting and Fracturing ?), but it was decided by the committee to abandon topics in subsequent years and let any aspect of structural geology and tectonics be available for a talk.

The first few meetings only had talks but later it was decided to have poster sessions.

A landmark was the AGM of January 2003 organised by the University of Liverpool. Previous meetings had always been held in university lecture theatres with accommodation usually in student halls of residence vacated by students during the winter break.This meeting, on the other hand, was the first to be held in a hotel: the famous "Adelphi Hotel". The meeting was generally regarded as a great success from the viewpoint of low costs, excellence of the facilities available and the closeness of accommodation to the actual meeting room as well as being sited in a hotel within easy walking distance from British Rail and in the Liverpool downtown area for easy access to good cheap restaurants. A special attraction were the wall panels of deformed marble conglomerates (from the Apennines?).

At the Jan 2004 meeting (University of Durham) an innovation was to have "keynote speakers"- a change that not everyone welcomed.

The annual meetings have tended to be organized in the UK though memorable exceptions were the meetings hosted in Dublin (1993) and in La Roche, Belgium (2008).

Previous meetings (Click for more info)

Previous Committees (Click for more info)

Previous TSG Annual Reports (Click for more info)