The International Nannoplankton Association was established in 1977 in order to enhance communication between the widely scattered academic and industrial scientists working on calcareous nannofossils and living coccolithophores.
From 2010 the INA has been affiliated with The Micropalaeontological Society. We collaborate on web-hosting and newsletter production and support each others meetings where relevant.
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Membership is open to any interested individuals, or libraries. Currently there are about 250 members worldwide. These include algologists, biostratigraphers, geologists, micropalaeontologists and oceanographers, in both universities and industry. Membership costs $50 per year, and $25 for student and retired members. See separate page for payment details.
The INA organizes conferences approximately every two years. The
next meeting will be held in Llandudno, Wales in 2024 - convenor Simon Cole.
Previous conferences have been held
in Vienna (1985), London (1987), Florence (1989), Prague (1991), Salamanca (1993) Copenhagen (1995), Puerto Rico (1998)
Bremen (2000), Parma (2002), Lisbon (2004), Lincoln, Nebraska (2006), Lyon (2008) and Yamagata (2010), Reston, Virginia (2013), Bohol, the Philippines (2015), Athens (2017), Santos, Brazil (2019) and Avignon, France (2022). See the conference archive page for more about them..
In addition the INA organises occasional workshops and regional meetings, e.g. workshops on Boreal Lower Cretaceous nannofossils (Zurich, 1986), Jurassic nannofossils (London, 1990, Lyon 2016), terminology (London 1992), extant coccolithophores (Crete 2003 and 2014), Reticulofenestrid coccolith taxonomy (Birmingham 2014, with TMS), Discoaster taxonomy (Plymouth 2015), Information retrieval from nannoplankton (Angers 2016). In the past we have also held regional meetings in Woods Hole, USA (1986), Shanghai, China (1989), Yamagata, Japan (1992), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1994) and we would be happy to help anyone interested in organising a local meeting.
Additional European meetings are organised by the nannofossil group of The Micropalaeontological Society (TMS), since virtually all the TMS nanno group members are also INA hacks these have always felt like INA meetings and following our affiliation with TMS they are co-sponsored by the INA. Recently we have had excellent joint meetings with the TMS foram group in Copenhagen (2004), Southampton (2005), Liverpool (2006), Angers (2007), Tubingen (2008), Zurich (2009, a special meeting to mark retirement of Hans Thierstein), London (2010), as part of the International Palaeontological Congress, Krakow (2011), Edinburgh (2012), Prague (2013), Texel (2014), Plymouth (2015), Angers (2016), Birmingham (2017), Edinburgh (2018, in association with Forams 2018) and Fribourg (2019). See the TMS website for details.
In July 2018 INA organised a first INA Summer School on Evolution and Taxonomy, hosted by Emanuela Mattioli in Lyon. This was both well-attended and regarded as a very valuable experience by everyone who did attend, so a Mesozoic Summer school was held in 2019. Due to the covid pandemic the next summerschool was postponed unitl 2022 but it is intended that this will be a biennial event - occurring in years in between INA conferences.
Abstracts from INA Conferences have been published by INA as special issues of the JNR, and its predecessor the International Nannoplankton Association Newsletter. Published proceedings have also been produced from most of the INA Conferences as special issues or volumes of various publications. These are mostly still in print &/or available for download and together form an extremely useful source of literature on nannofossils. For details see the conferences page
