DM Board Elections 2023-2027

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Digital Medievalist election — whether by standing as a candidate or by voting (or both!). The results are now in and we are delighted to announce that (rustles envelope…) the winners are: Matthew Evan Davis, Delphine Demelas, Suzette van Haaren and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz. A warm welcome to the Executive Board to Matt, Delphine and Suzette. And we’re very glad that Kıvılcım will be staying on as Director. Well done all!

We are very grateful to Sarah-Nelle, Andrija and Meg for running in the election and providing us with an impressive field of candidates. Thank you for your participation: without you, there wouldn’t have been an election! Our commiserations that you didn’t win this time around.

We are also extremely grateful to Lisa Fagin Davis, Rose Faunce and Gustavo Riva for their years of service on the Executive Board and for their many contributions. Truth be told, that while we’re excited to welcome new Board members, we’re also sad to see your terms come to an end Lisa, Rose and Gus! Many, many thanks for inspiring and encouraging us, and for your hard work.

With our new Board in place, we’ve got a lot planned. But no spoilers. You’ll have to watch this space…

26 June 2023

It’s election time here at Digital Medievalist and the elections team are delighted to reveal that SEVEN candidates are competing for the FOUR places that are up for grabs on the Digital Medievalist Executive Board:

Matthew Evan Davis
Delphine Demelas
Suzette van Haaren
Sarah-Nelle Jackson
Andrija Sagic
Margaret K. Smith
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz 

(See below for information about the candidates.)

We imagine that this will be a hotly-contested election, so please do play your part in the democratic process and get voting!

How to vote

Only pre-existing members of the Digital Medievalist mailing list can vote. Those on the mailing list will receive a voting token to their registered email address (please check your Spam folder if you don’t see the email).

Voting will take place using Helios, from 27/6/2023 (6.00 GMT) — 12/7/2023 (23.59 GMT).

If you have any queries about voting, then please contact one of the elections team: Stewart J. Brookes, Katarzyna Anna Kapitan or Gustavo Riva.

The candidates (in alphabetical order)

Matthew Evan Davis

Biography

Matthew Evan Davis (Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2013) is a Lecturer and Co-Coordinator of the Graduate Theme in Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. Prior to this he served in a number of postdoctoral positions, including as a ZKS-Lendrum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Scientific Study of Manuscripts and Inscriptions at Durham University, a Ruth and Lewis Sherman Center for Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University, a Lindsey Young Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and as the Council of Library and Information Resources/Mellon Fellow in Data Curation for Medieval Studies at North Carolina State University. Additionally, he has served as a consultant on several digital projects in the GLAM sphere and is the editor of two volumes dealing with the use of digital tools and methods for the study of medieval and early modern culture: Meeting the Medieval in a Digital World (with Ece Turantor and Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel) and New Technologies and Renaissance Studies III(with Colin Wilder).

His scholarly work deals with the histories of the book, staging practices of medieval drama, cultural transmission through what he calls “informational palimpsests,” and material and digital curation as a means of preserving both the material object and the connections between the object, the content contained by that object, and its multiple affiliations. He is currently working on a stylometric analysis of the corpus of the works of John Lydgate and continues to transcribe works for The Minor Works of John Lydgate Virtual Archive, with an expectation that Lydgate’s mummings and disguisings in most witnesses will be available this year.

Personal statement

I’m something of a refugee from the tech industry; my work there was primarily with databases and metadata construction, so it’s been a natural fit to apply my skills in programming to my scholarly work. At the same time, however, the issues surrounding the academic job market have made it abundantly clear that digital medieval studies faces three challenges; first, that too many of the tools built for what is popularly considered the most cutting-edge digital work – machine learning, generative AI, and stylometric analysis – is fundamentally presentist because so much of the infrastructure needed to do this kind of work relies on tools designed for and trained on western languages of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This feeds into the second problem: because funding is scarce and positions less permanent projects tend to be built on tool suites that are filled with bloat and not necessarily designed for the work digital medievalists intend to put them to, with a few exceptions. Furthermore, this bloat is often based on shared libraries, which makes digital projects something of a monoculture under the hood. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the digital equivalent of Panama Disease could impact large parts of these projects.  For this reason, I believe it’s important to have the equivalent of heirloom fruits and vegetables: projects that are built idiosyncratically and thus might provide some resistance. This leads me to the last issue I see; due to the aforementioned funding issues and precarious status of their principals too many digital projects are archived rather than allowed to continue as resources become scarce. Most projects have a way to reuse their project data, but beyond that they should also be seen as akin to the print edition in terms of planned longevity on both a personal and institutional level. If I am elected to the board, my goal would be to encourage work that operates on a minimal computing, do-it-yourself ethos to project against the latter two issues, and which maintains transparency in order to make readers and viewers aware of the issues with the first issue. 

Delphine Demelas

Biography

Delphine Demelas, specialist in Medieval French Language and Literature, earned her PhD from Aix-Marseille University in 2016. Her doctoral work focused on creating a LaTeX edition of the 15th-century French epic text, La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin. Since 2020, she has served as an Editor at the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AHRC, Aberystwyth University, UK), a valuable digital resource for studying Francophonie during Middle Ages and the influence of Anglo-Norman on modern English. Within the dictionary project, she actively contributes to its digital transformation, specializing in digital lexicography, structured encoding (XML and TEI), and digital research methodologies. She values interdisciplinary collaboration and recognizes its significance in advancing the field. Previously, she taught French Medieval Literature and Digital Humanities in France, Brazil, Paraguay, and the United States, sharing her passion with culturally diverse students. In Paraguay from 2017 to 2019, she led a research project on El Libro de Oro, a significant Paraguayan manuscript, managing its description and digitalization. The project received support from UNESCO Paraguay and the Paraguayan Ministry of Culture. Her academic journey reflects her commitment to advancing Medieval French and Francophone studies, digital lexicography, and the broader field of Digital Humanities. Her international expertise contributes significantly to the ongoing development of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary project and beyond.

Personal statement

The Digital Medievalist community has always been at the forefront of creating digital tools for research and teaching. It is time for us to fully embrace the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models in our work and recognize the importance of these technologies to edit, analyze, interpret, and teach medieval texts and manuscripts, providing new insights and accelerating our research process. Additionally, the development and application of LLMs and AI have considerable promise for bridging the gap between researchers who are inexperienced with Digital Humanities and specialists in the field, and can enable us to broaden our perspectives. If elected as a board member, I pledge to actively engage in discussions to ensure that the Digital Medievalist community remains a pioneer in the utilization of new AI models. I firmly believe that we can lead the way in developing open-source and ethical AI models specifically tailored for the Digital Humanities community and beyond, as a new way to engage with the amazing databases we spend years to build. By putting an emphasis on open access, responsibility, and inclusivity, we may serve as a role model for others to follow and progress Digital Humanities. By embracing these technologies responsibly and ethically, we can shape the future of Digital Medieval Studies and secure the necessary resources and fundings for our community’s growth and success.

Suzette van Haaren

Biography

Suzette van Haaren is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum at the collaborative research centre Virtuelle Lebenswelten (Virtual Worlds), in the sub project B02 Virtuelles Mittelalter (Virtual Middle Ages). Her project focuses on digitisation and digital uses of medieval objects in medievalist research. It investigates the way an increasingly digital and virtual world change how we do perform research, and what that means for how we see and what we know about the Middle Ages. Suzette finished her PhD at the University of St Andrews and the University of Groningen in May 2022, where she looked at the digitisation of medieval manuscripts from a theoretical materialist perspective. The thesis positions the digital medieval manuscript as important cultural and scientific object and explores ‘digital codicology’ as a method for studying the digital object. In November 2022 her thesis won the Victorine van Schaick-penning at the KNVI (Royal Dutch Association for Information Professionals) for the best written work in library- and information science. With a strong focus on the materiality of (digital) heritage, Suzette’s work always seeks to overarch the dividing lines between disciplines. She holds an MA in Medieval Studies and a BA in Art History, both from Utrecht University.
Find her on Twitter: @suzettevhaaren

Personal statement

The importance and ubiquity of digital methods and tools for medievalist research cannot be overrated. The technological changes of today (think of the growing prominence of AI, of large data set training, or even VR applications for viewing manuscripts) were almost unthinkable only twenty years ago. Within this ever-increasing field, Digital Medievalist is a major player in encouraging and promoting digital medievalist research to an audience of experts, experts-in-the-making, as well as a more general public. I am keen to join the executive board to support these aims, and to participate in the development of new strategies to make DM even more diverse and stimulating. Moreover, with the advancements of digital technologies playing a large role in our daily research practices, I want to advocate for a meta-analytical point-of-view, in which we reflect on the way things are changing and what this means for our understanding of medieval history. As an early career researcher, one of my goals is to play a connecting role between the DM board and the Digital Medievalist Postgraduate Committee. By supporting DM as well as the DMPC, I wish to foster a good connection with the wider digital medievalist early career researcher community. Moreover, I am keen to bring together international research communities as well as to reach out to academic groups outside our discipline. With this, we can broaden the scope of DM and establish intellectual exchange to stimulate new and innovative knowledge production. I have found that the discipline of digital medievalism is an open and inviting space, where many interesting, enthusiastic and curious people have found their home. I would be very happy to be in involved in providing an online ‘home’ where we can share ideas, be part of stimulating discussion and publish our work.

Sarah-Nelle Jackson

Biography

Sarah-Nelle Jackson (they/she) is a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia, a member of the 2020 UBC Public Scholars cohort, a returning co-instructor at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) in Victoria, and a graduate representative on the board of the Oecologies Research Cluster. Their research interests include Arthurian literature, philology, queer and trans studies, critical Indigenous legal studies, ecocriticism, and videogame studies. As a public scholar, Sarah-Nelle engages in public outreach on Twitch, a videogame livestreaming platform, with recently streamed games including Crusader Kings 3 and Terra Nil. To wrap up their doctoral research, they are outlining and developing a 2D videogame demo that texts the player-environment boundary by way of medieval texts, ecocritical and decolonial criticism, and low-combat, choice-driven RPG design. She has participated in online DH and videogame conferences including Coding Medieval Worlds 3 and The Middle Ages in Modern Games. Twitter: @queerdievalist

Personal statement

As a DHSI instructor, Sarah-Nelle has encouraged digital humanists to rethink gamification as a critical method for social knowledge creation and critical engagement; their experience on the Oecologies board has entailed more direct experience engaging members, scholars, and the public via Twitter outreach and online event coordination. Their experience as an editorial assistant at the scholarly journal Canadian Literature spurs her interest in innovative and interdisciplinary venues for scholarly research, while their livestreaming experience drives their broader interest in publicly engaged efforts to imagine new counternarratives around the Middle Ages. She is dedicated to connecting scholars with digital tools suited to diverse technical needs and levels of expertise, and in leveraging online spaces and platforms to foster transparent and sustainable modes of scholarly research, conversation, and pedagogy against a changing academic landscape.

Andrija Sagic

Biography

Andrija Sagic is a co-chair of Europeana Tech Community and co-chair of IIIF A/V Community. His interests focus on medieval music, especially Serbian Medieval Manuscripts. In the digital domain, Andrija works on developing systems for automatic transcription of medieval music manuscripts. In last 20 years, he has been exploring and performing early music in Ensemble Renaissance, the first early music ensemble in Serbia founded 1968). He is a founder of Medieval music Ensemble Ludus Musicus, which explores an authentic interpretation of Medieval Music. His performances of medieval music can be found here: https://youtu.be/NpdpBNUpB7w , https://youtu.be/76mB_zIdZSM , https://youtu.be/mMuFn43nacY . 

Andrija holds an MA in philosophy and is certified Linux System Administrator.  As Head of Digital Development Department in Milutin Bojic Library of Belgrade, Serbia, he was a part of Islandora release team and is interested in the topics of Open Scholarship  and Open Access, especially Open Source software.  Moreover, in recent years he expanded his interests towards digital acoustic of CH and organized a Europeana webinar: ‘Acoustics in cultural heritage’, more about the event here: https://pro.europeana.eu/event/europeanatech-presents-acoustics-in-cultural-heritage .

Personal statement

As a member of the DM Executive Board, I will put increased focus on acoustic and South Slavic music manuscripts, which are frequently overlooked in the current DM conversations. As a medieval music and digitization professional, I want to bring a new digital perspective to medieval sources, including musical interpretation, historical tuning, and theatre performance. In the Middle Ages, joculator was not only an entertainer, but also an actor, musician, poet, and artist. This multidimensional role brings complexity and multidisciplinarity into our research of medieval music and its interpretations. As a modern joculator, I plan to expand the DM community by bringing in my networks of scholars and experts in medieval music and acoustic.

Margaret K. Smith 

Biography

Margaret K. Smith is Research Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities in the IRIS Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a historian of medieval Ireland. She contributes to the Center’s projects in a number of capacities, including Digital Humanities teaching and training, project development, grant-writing, and community engagement. Margaret’s Digital Humanities research centers on creating ethical and sustainable digital humanities infrastructures through projects like Realizing Inclusive Student Engagement in the Digital Humanities (RISE-DH) and the Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, as well as publications on topics like data transparency and ethical collaboration. Her historical research centers on the construction of authority in late medieval Ireland, and her current project, Submission Strategies, maps the networks of fourteenth-century Ireland through the Irish lords who submitted to Richard II in 1395. Twitter: @meg_smith0913

Personal statement

As a medievalist, my work interrogates how people negotiated complex hierarchies and constructed their identities in public and in private. Much of my work as a digital humanist sits at that same nexus of authority and identity, weighing how technology mediates (or fails to mediate) our sources, our scholarship, and our selves. That means considering the ways that technology can exclude: through the content it centers, through the resources that are often inequitably distributed, through tech and tech-adjacent communities that are often hostile to marginalized practitioners, and to the injustices that technology inherits and amplifies from academia and from society at large. It also means building ethical and sustainable infrastructures that address and redress those inequities by creating opportunities and spaces for marginalized scholars, tangible resources for pedagogy at institutions with a variety of resources, review systems that generate connections and conversations among print and digital scholarship, and more. Growing attention to these issues of infrastructure has produced some invaluable resources, but it’s clear that the fields of digital humanities and of medieval studies need more: more supports for learning and experimentation for scholars who don’t have adequate (or any) support from institutions; more tangible resources like hosting and other services; more mentorship and project cultivation; and more venues that render digital scholarship both visible and legible to broad audiences.

N. Kıvılcım Yavuz 

Biography

N. Kıvılcım Yavuz is Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Leeds. She works at the intersection of Medieval Studies and Digital Humanities with expertise in two areas: (1) European manuscript culture, specifically the role of manuscripts as material artefacts in textual transmission and book history, and (2) medieval historiography, specifically origin stories of medieval peoples and nations. Her work in the field of digital Medieval Studies has been mostly focused on Manuscript Studies. In this regard, she is especially interested in the creation, collection and interpretation of data and metadata, particularly in the context of digitization of manuscripts and design of digital repositories. She posts about manuscripts on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @manuscriptsetc; website: https://nkyavuz.com/; Twitter: @nkivilcimyavuz

In August 2021, Kıvılcım was elected to the Digital Medievalist Executive Board for a two-year term and in August 2022, she became Director of the Executive Board. She also serves on the MDR (Database of Medieval Digital Resources) Committee of the Medieval Academy of America and the Transcription Challenge Framework Advisory Board. She has taught courses on the history of the late antique, medieval and Renaissance Europe, medieval European literature, Manuscript Studies and Digital Humanities in Leeds and elsewhere. Most recently she was involved in the establishment of the Digital Medieval Studies Institute, a day-long training event in digital humanities geared specifically for medievalists, the first iteration of which was held in February 2023 in Washington, DC. Kıvılcım values the power of social media in increasing the dissemination of scholarship and considers writing blogposts not only as engaging with digital humanities but also essential in order to reach the widest possible audience.

Personal statement

It has been a delight to serve on the Digital Medievalist Executive Board for the past two years, first as a member and currently as the Director. I have also been sitting on the on the Editorial Board of the Digital Medievalist Journal simultaneously. As the Digital Medievalist community celebrates its twentieth anniversary, I am happy to report that during this time, we have worked on broadening our base and increased the visibility of the Digital Medievalist community by having a consistent presence welcoming newcomers to the field at major conferences on medieval topics, including the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, MI and the International Medieval Congress at Leeds. I am an avid supporter of open access initiatives and, for me, becoming an open hub for research and cooperation, particularly through the Journal, is one of the most important achievements of Digital Medievalist. A lot more remains to do and I am keen to continue this work! There is an immense potential in the area of digital manuscript studies ranging from handwritten text recognition to network analysis to editing previously unpublished texts, and I would like to see more training opportunities, more projects concentrating on pre-modern manuscripts in the digital context, and more diversity in the Digital Medievalist community. I am especially invested in supporting early career scholars and medievalists from underrepresented backgrounds, whether through instruction or collaboration, and I look forward to contributing to creating a more inclusive Digital Medievalist community in the coming years!

For further information about the Executive and Digital Medievalist, please see our website: