INQUA Congress

The International Union for Quaternary Research INQUA was nominally founded in 1928 at the International Geological Congress held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The second congress (“reunion”) convened in 1932 in Leningrad and Moscow, USSR, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Geologic Service of the USSR (Russia). The third congress was held in 1936 in Vienna, Austria, in conjunction with the 16th International Geological Congress. No congresses were held during the next 17 years, an interval encompassing WWII, during which INQUA remained inactive. Congresses that would have met in 1940, 1944, and 1948 were not organized, and it was 1953 before Quaternary scientists again assembled for an INQUA congress.

The first postwar congress (IV) met in Rome and Pisa, Italy, in 1953, followed by congresses in 1957 (Madrid and Barcelona, Spain), 1961 (Warsaw, Poland), 1965 (Denver and Boulder, Colorado (USA)), 1969 (Paris, France), 1973 (Christchurch, New Zealand), 1977 (Birmingham, UK), 1982 (Moscow, Russia), 1987 (Ottawa, Canada), 1991 (Beijing, China), 1995 (Berlin, Germany), 1999 (Durban, South Africa), 2003 (Reno, USA), 2007. The 17th Congress (2007) was held in Australia, at Cairns in Queensland; the 18th was at Bern in Switzerland (2011); the 19th was at Nagoya, Japan, and the 20th Congress was held in Dublin, Ireland (2019).