Report on the 43rd european conference on information retrieval (ECIR 2021)

The 43rd European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2021), organized under the auspices of the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the British Computer Society (BCS IRSG), took place between March 28 and April 1, 2021. As sadly customary in these dark times, the conference was held entirely online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the original plans, it should have instead taken place in Lucca, a small Italian town in Tuscany, Italy, which enjoys a beautiful, extremely well-preserved historic centre.