ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term (2024-2028) and a (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect. Nominations are due February 1, 2024 via the brief nomination form.
What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?
As an organization, ACH regularly runs a conference, a series of mentoring events, and distributes bursaries and other awards to the community. ACH has also been involved in advocacy work on behalf of the digital humanities community in the United States. This work is supported by infrastructure run and maintained by the ACH exec, and is informed by a series of liaison relationships with other organizations. Executive Council representatives shape and execute these threads of work on behalf of the organization.
What do ACH (co)Vice Presidents/President(s) Elect do?
The (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect serves as an officer for two years then as President for two years. In the first two years they work with the current (co)President(s) to facilitate the business of ACH, helping lead collaborative labor priority and financial priority setting for the organization and participating in the tasks set by the officers and the Executive Council.
What are “co-Vice Presidents/co-Presidents Elect”?
Current presidents Roopika Risam and Quinn Dombrowski piloted the idea of sharing the Vice President/President Elect roles and Lauren Tilton and Andy Janco continued the tradition. The rationale is that digital humanities includes lots of disciplines, methods, and professional roles, so a pair, rather than a single individual, would be well-suited to running ACH. Plus, people with the experience to be successful in the role are often very busy, and sharing the labor makes life easier! As a result, we welcome nominations/self-nominations for co-Vice Presidents/co-Presidents Elect.
What is the time commitment for an ACH Executive Council Representative?
The council meets once a month for an hour. Typically the beginnings of these meetings are spent on any business requiring council input. The remaining time is used for a working meeting to tackle ACH tasks.
The work of ACH is organized into tasks. These could be as small as “organize a professional development event” or as large as “chair the conference program committee.” Over the course of a year, we ask each council member to commit to 4-5 small tasks or 1 large (conference-related) task to ensure that the organization’s work is fairly distributed among council members.
What is the time commitment for an ACH (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect?
In addition to the time requirement of an Executive Council Member (see above), the (co)Vice President/President Elect will attend a monthly officers meeting.
Who is eligible to be an ACH Executive Council Representative?
Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected) and is willing to perform the work of the organization and advocate for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible.
Who is eligible to be an ACH (co)Vice President/President Elect?
Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected) and is willing to perform the work of the organization and advocate for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible. Prior participation in an ACH leadership role, such as member of the Executive Council, conference lead, or officer, is highly desirable to be able to hit the ground running.
Who are we looking for?
We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.
Demonstrated commitment to digital humanities is more important to our work than professional affiliation, academic/professional status, or job title. We welcome participants from a wide range of communities including universities and colleges, galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with the digital humanities, as well as independent scholars. We seek individuals with and without academic or professional degrees, including current students.
How does nomination work?
You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form. Nominations are due by February 1, 2024.
The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees to request brief candidate materials – a short candidate bio and summary of their interest in serving ACH.
Sample candidate bios and statements from last year are available at https://ach.org/blog/2023/02/16/ach-2023-elections-slate/. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members and Vice Presidents/Presidents Elect, please see http://www.ach.org/constitution#Bylaws.
For questions about nominations please contact ACH presidents, Roopika Risam (roopika [doc] risam [at] dartmouth [doc] edu) and Quinn Dombrowski (qad [at] stanford [doc] edu)
About ACH
ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.