ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term beginning summer 2025 (2025-2029). Nominations are due January 31, 2025 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 (in accordance with the constitution and bylaws). Representatives are required to comply with ACH codes of conduct, such as our conference code of conduct.
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. Council members also participate in the yearly ACH conference by serving as session moderators and tech support.
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 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 January 31, 2025.
The nomination form includes the option to add brief candidate materials—a short bio and candidate statement (no more than 300 words each). The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees who choose not to include these materials when filling out the form.
Sample candidate bios and statements from last year are available at https://ach.org/news/2024/02/ach-2024-election-slate/. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see https://ach.org/about/constitution/.
For questions about nominations please contact ACH Co-Vice President Pam Lach (plach AT sdsu DOT edu).
We’ll be holding an informal info session on Wednesday, January 15 to answer questions about the process from 9am-10am Pacific / 10am-11am Mountain / 11am-12pm Central / 12pm-1pm Eastern. Register for the Zoom link.
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.