The International Laurence Sterne Foundation was launched in the tercentenary year 2013 in the week of Sterne's birthday on 24 November at the Sterne Conference in Venice.
Its purposes are to encourage study of the life and works of Laurence Sterne, and to facilitate and coordinate ways in which Sterne scholars may meet together. To these ends the Foundation publishes each year The Shandean, maintains a website and a Facebook group, e-mails a newsletter to members, and helps organise a Sterne conference every two years.
Anyone interested in the aims of the Foundation may join by the payment of dues. Membership enables one to keep close touch with current international Sterne scholarship and activities and to subscribe to The Shandean, vol. 25 (2014) at a discounted rate.
The Foundation is registered in The Netherlands as a “stichting”, KvK 59379235. Peter de Voogd, chair; Helen Williams, secretary; Allan Ingram, treasurer. Membership will be required for active participation in an ILSF conference; the 2015 Sterne Conference will be hosted by the University of Northumbria in Newcastle upon Tyne.