Dear GO::DH Members,

We are writing to let you know that we are conducting a run-off election for the GO::DH Executive Committee elections.

In the course of last week's election, Élika and I identified a run-off situation that required further attention. We brought the matter to Executive Committee members who were not standing for election to the committee. Without disclosing names, we explained the election results and asked for advice. Together, the Executive Committee members and the Returning Officers and Nominations Committee decided how to proceed.

We are requesting that members vote for one of six candidates below in the run-off election:

Barbara Bordalejo

Bio: Barbara Bordalejo is professor of Digital Humanities at KU Leuven, where she teaches digital textuality and electronic literature. She is part of the executive of the European Association for Digital Humanities and has been part of the executive of GO::DH since its foundation, to which she was elected last year.

Statement: GO::DH has become an important forum for the  initiation and promotion of collaboration with others. With the institutional support of KU Leuven and  as the head of the Digital Humanities Task Force in the Faculty of Arts, I am in a good position to continue to contribute to this community. For the next term, I would like to renew efforts to open new lines of communication with places that continue to be underepresented (Africa, South and Central America) and to create more spaces to initiate productive dialogues leading to a richer, polifonic future. In order to achieve this, I will build on KU Leuven’s history of cultural exchange and enrichment and expand this to different areas of DH.

Gimena del Rio

Bio: Gimena del Rio holds a PhD in Romance Philology (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) . Researcher at the Seminario de Edicion y Crítica Textual (SECRIT-IIBIRCIT) of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her main academic interests deal with the scholarly edition and study of the Medieval lyrical poetry and the development, use and methodologies of scholarly digital tools. She has been working since 2013 on the creation of a Digital Humanities community in Argentina and is nowadays the vicepresident of the Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales (AAHD). She organized the I National Conference on DigitalHumanities in Buenos Aires last year.

Statement (from nominator): Part from her academic activities in Digital Humanities, she has been instrumental at grounding the field in Argentina by promoting transdisciplinary community practices. Her involvement with other DH communities around the world would be a definite asset for the Executive Committee as GO::DH increasingly builds a sense of a global DH community. She could offer a interesting point of view on the Latin American development of DH and an enthusiastic member of the DH Community in Spanish.

Martin Grandjean

Bio: Martin Grandjean is a contemporary history researcher at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). He is interested in cultural relations and scientific exchanges during the interwar period. Combining network analysis and data visualization, his research are impregnated by the digital humanities (see his blog). Martin Grandjean is a founding member and the current spokesman of Humanistica, the french-speaking association for digital humanities.

Statement: The GO::DH executive committee interests me for two reasons. I am personally convinced that this is an area of both reflection and action in which our community need to make urgent progress. On the other hand, as the spokesman of the French DH association, I know how much we need this kind of relay. We are also facing similar problems inside the Francophonie, which extends from Canada to many African countries, with several European countries and individuals residing in many other countries.

Nuria Rodríguez Ortega

Bio: Nuria Rodríguez Ortega is the head of the History of Art department at the University of Málaga (UMA). She also directs the research group i-ArtHis_Lab (iarthis.hdplus.es) and leads ReArte.Dix (the international network of Digital Studies on Artistic Culture. Since 2010 she coordinates the MA program in Social Devlopment and Artistic Culture also at UMA.
Her reseach focuses on the intersection between computing languages, dgital media ant art history. She has also worked on the junction of entrepreneurship and culture and is the co-founder of the award-winning spin-off Culturacy

Statement: Given the cultural and geopoligical expansion seen in Digital Humanities practice, I believe it is extremely necessary to further develop initiatives like GO::DH in order to explore the diversity and plurality of these practices in a global context so as to discover that which brings us together but also identifying what the idiosincracies of each context are. GO::DH provides an exceptional context to work towards that. Furthermore, I believe that my training as an art historian, artistic culture, and cultural heritage in general will add a perspective that is not always present in DH disussions.

Mari Sarv

Bio: Mari Sarv works at Estonian Folklore Archives (Estonian Literary Museum) since 1996, as a senior researcher since 2008, since 2012 she is leading the research group of Estonian Folklore Archives. Her main subject of study is older Estonian folksong (regilaul). She has published two monographs on the topic (2000 and 2008), has organized conferences on regilaul and edited proceedings from these conferences. She has been contributing to the developing of the database of Estonian regilaul including almost 100000 songtexts by now and she has been widely using the computational methods in her research (metrical and poetical analysis, cartographic representations, social network analysis). Since the very beginning of her career she has been trying to initiate a digital turn in the archival system of her home archives, and later on has been contributing to several projects related to establishing and developing the digital archival system of Estonian Literary Museum. Together with her colleague Kaisa Kulasalu she organized the first conferences on Estonian digital humanities in 2013 and 2014, established the web page and mailing list for Estonian DH community.

Statement: GO:DH is a great and necessary initiative, the existence of it already brings awareness on the problematics of non-english DH
As there is definitely a linguistic gap between the english speaking world and the rest in the field of DH, the SIG should contribute to the diminishing of it
- explaining the problems of non-english DHers to the wider audience
- helping to spread awareness of the DH tools and projects between English and non-English world
- contributing to the organizing of training events for non-English developing DH communities
- forming a network for people with common problems
- spreading awareness of the need for dh tools and standards to be accustomizable for multilingual use.

David Joseph Wrisely

Bio: I have been living and teaching in Beirut since 2002 where I am an Associate Professor in a department of English.  My research interests include medieval studies, Mediterranean studies, as well as various elements of the spatial humanities:  literary GIS, historical gazetteers, ground-up community mapping.  While on sabbatical this year I launched a set a workshops "Topics in Digital Mapping" at Fordham University co-taught with graduate students, in order to build a community of practice around digital mapping. This year I have also organized two major DH activities at my home university: the Arab World's first That Camp, and the first sustained DH training opportunity in the region, the Digital Humanities Institute – Beirut (dhibeirut.wordpress.com).  The institute is offering 8 courses and will bring together 80+ participants (students, faculty, chairs, library, IT)  from a dozen local and international universities/research centers, as well as members of local NGOs, government and industry.

Statement: I am fascinated in a digital humanities that arises organically from community--in its languages and its world views--that learns from the global community and gives back to it with its own special touch.  I am interested in building local, regional and international partnerships for DH training and research. I can be found on twitter as @DJWrisley.

Voting is open now through Tuesday, March 10, 11:59pm PST. Full results of the election will be announced shortly after. Anyone who was subscribed to the mailing list as of Sunday, February 22, 2015, when voting opened, is eligible to vote in the run-off election. Please vote using this Google Form and select one candidate.

Thank you for your participation in this year's election and for your patience.

All best,
Roopika Risam and Élika Ortega
(Returning Officers and Nominations Committee)

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