A Message from President-elect, Professor David Felce,
Programme Committee Chair

fter initial meetings in London, Vienna and Copenhagen, the 1st World Congress of our association was held in Montpellier in the South of France in 1967. We return to Montpellier for the 12th IASSID World Congress in 2004. As before, Montpellier promises to provide a wonderful venue, location and ambience befitting the most important international multi-disciplinary scientific meeting in our field.

Faculty of Medicine	Place de la Comédie -Montpellier

IASSID was founded to promote scientific interchange and to foster the free
flow of up-to-date research evidence concerning intellectual disability, its impact on people's lives, and our understanding of how to support the personal development and welfare of people with intellectual disabilities, and their families and communities across diverse societies and cultures. This aim provides a broad and demanding agenda but the breadth of research in our field has shown over successive Congresses that there is an international, multi-disciplinary academic community in good heart rising to meet the challenge. Montpellier will provide a showcase for their efforts in 2004.

The task of the Scientific Programme Committee is to stimulate and arrange as inclusive a programme of research presentations as possible. Participants of IASSID Congresses have a right to expect clear explanation of rigorously conducted studies which collectively encompass the scope of our interests. We will do our best to develop such a programme and maintain the high standards set by previous Congresses. It is our intention to involve many colleagues in shaping the 2004 programme, particularly those involved in the growing network of Special Interest Research Groups, Member Associations and Individual Subscribing Members.

We anticipate there being 20 parallel sessions, each providing 22 hours of
presentation time across the five days of the Congress - about 1,320 scientific papers in total. Symposia will be organised under at least 40 themes. Ten plenary speakers will give a Tutorial Overview of evidence in a particular area.