The world in which the International Federation for Theatre Research first accepted the invitation from our Russian colleagues to hold its Twelfth World Congress in Moscow was a startlingly different one from that in which the Congress eventually took place: and Moscow itself had borne witness most dramatically to this transformation. Since its Eleventh World Congress, held in Stockholm in 1989, the IFTR has been coming to terms with a world in which much, including the boundaries and contents of its own discipline, has become subject to radical change. In a formal way, the adoption of a revised Constitution for the Federation is a recognition of the new world in which we are living: now the responsibility for furthering the aims of the Federation lies firmly in the democratic hands of subscribing Institutions and individual Members. More substantially, the process initiated in Stockholm of dividing Congress Sessions into Working Groups held together by a common interest, reflects the diversity of approaches which are now embraced under the title of Theatre Research, and the role which the Federation plays in bringing together scholars from a diversity of backgrounds, not only to meet colleagues from other countries working in the same field, but to obtain through keynote speeches and informal contacts in a crowded schedule of theatregoing, receptions and private encounters, a wider view of developments outside their immediate sphere of interest.