BAAS is accepting nominations for the positions of Early Career Representative and a new role, a second Postgraduate Representative. Please see below descriptions of the roles and information for candidates.
Deadline for nominations: Thursday 13 July 2023 (17.00 GMT)
The Early Career Representative promotes the interests of early career scholars (broadly defined). This includes working closely with the Development and Education Sub-Committee to tackle precarity and exploitation in higher education, and ensuring that BAAS opportunities (including awards, conferences, and grants) recognise and promote the diverse talents of early career scholars. Per the Constitution, candidates for Early Career Representative must have an institutional affiliation (including honorary affiliation) and be working on any aspect of American Studies. To be eligible to stand, candidates for Early Career representative must be within three years of successfully completing their PhD and are usually expected to either have the PhD in hand or have a viva date scheduled before the ballot opens. An Early Career representative who has completed one full term in office may not stand for re-election as Early Career representative. Interested parties are invited to contact our most recent representative, Dr Emily Brady (emily.brady@baas.ac.uk) to discuss the role.
The Postgraduate Representatives promote the interests of BAAS’s postgraduate taught and research members. BAAS seeks to add an additional postgraduate representative in recognition of the large number of our members who are postgraduates. Together the Postgraduate Representatives work closely with the BAAS Executive Committee, run the PG Twitter account, assist the yearly postgraduate conference (which includes selecting and guiding the conference organisers) and represent the thoughts and concerns of the wider postgraduate community. The position is for two years and therefore it is preferable that the candidate is not in their final year of postgraduate study. Per the Constitution, the Postgraduate Representative must be a registered postgraduate student not in permanent teaching employment. A Postgraduate representative who has completed one full term in office may not stand for re-election as Postgraduate Representative. Interested parties are invited to contact our current Postgraduate Representative, Emma Hall (emma.hall@baas.ac.uk) to discuss the role.
BAAS will reimburse travel (and, where appropriate, accommodation) expenses for attendance at Executive Committee meetings, along with registration costs for the BAAS annual conference and/or the BAAS PG conference for members of the Executive Committee. As part of BAAS’ commitment to access, inclusion and environmental sustainability, BAAS usually holds one in-person meeting of the full Executive committee at the annual conference in April with all other meetings taking place via video conference.
Please note that these positions will be co-opted roles (rather than Trustee roles) until they can be formally confirmed at the next BAAS Annual General Meeting.
Nominations should reach us by the strict deadline of 17.00 GMT on Thursday 6 July 2023. Candidates should email the following information to our Secretary, Dr Kate Ballantyne (secretary@baas.ac.uk), copying in their proposer and seconder as confirmation of their support:
Name:
Role you are standing for:
Department/Programme/Role:
Institution (or other affiliation):
Proposer:
Proposer’s Institution:
Seconder:
Seconder’s Institution:
Brief supporting statement (max 500 words):
Where possible, the proposer and seconder should not be from the candidate’s own institution.
Your supporting statement should outline your educational background, areas of teaching and/or research interests and your vision for BAAS, and for the role for which you are standing, in the upcoming years. We also ask that those standing for election give consideration to matters of equality and diversity in their statements, and include any suggestions for approaches or initiatives in this area.
If more than one nomination is received for a position, an election will take place online via ElectionBuddy. The online voting will be active for 21 days, beginning on Sunday 16 July 2023 and closing on Sunday 6 August 2023.
As permitted by the 2016 election (amended 2021), BAAS elections will take place via advance electronic voting. There will be no in-person ballot.
Those standing for election are expected to be BAAS members and, where possible, to attend the AGM. We particularly welcome nominations from groups traditionally underrepresented in the Association.
