Nominate new members to the Association's Board

To all ACS members,

The ACS Executive Committee invites all ACS Members to nominate new members to the Association's Board between March 15 and April 15, 2020! Please nominate someone you think would be a good representative of your region for the next four years, and please take into account that it could also be you! More information about the current Board, the regions etc. can be found here: About ACS. Send your nominations to info@cultstud.org (not through this listserv).

The ACS Bylaws (found at http://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/?page_id=90) call for an election of the association's Board every four years, and since the current Board began its term in 2016, the time has come to elect a new Board.

The bylaws state that the Board has one Chair and one Vice Chair, plus regional representatives as follows:

Africa - 3 (one from Southern Africa)
Asia - 4 (one from Northeast Asia, one from Southeast Asia, and one from South Asia)
Australia and New Zealand - 2
Europe - 4 (one from Northern Europe, one from Central and Eastern Europe, and one from Western and Southern Europe)
Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean - 4
North America and the English- and French-speaking Caribbean - 4 

The bylaws that took in effect in 2016 state that the terms of service for Board members shall be staggered across two election cycles, so that each of the global regions described above except for Africa will choose half of its representatives every two years. Africa will choose 1 representative in one election cycle (2020) and 2 representatives in the other (2022). The elections for Chair and Vice Chair shall be held during the same election cycle, but since the current Chair and Vice-Chair's terms end in 2022, they will not be voted in this election.

The bylaws make it necessary to hold the election electronically, so that the results of the election can be announced at the Crossroads conference in July. The first step in the election process is to find good and willing candidates. We therefore ask for nominations now!

A total of 10 Board members’ terms are coming to an end. The following current Board members have chosen not to stand for re-election, and we would like to publicly thank them here for their service to the Association for the past four years: 

Rob Cover
Mark Hayward
Rebeca Padilla
Osée Kamga
Layla Habib Al Bloushi
Sumit Narula
Marta Cabrera


The following current Board members whose terms are ending in 2020 are hereby nominated as candidates to the new Board: 

Sonjah N. Stanley Niaah
Janneke Adema
Ana Mendes


Considering the need to fill all positions, as well as the desire to have access to potential substitutes, it is obviously important that good representatives are nominated from all regions. We would thus like to invite the Association's membership to submit nominations for suitable Board members.

All nominations must be submitted by 15 April 2020 via email to info@cultstud.org. Please include "ACS Board elections" as the subject of your message.

Each nomination (including those for current Board members standing for re-election) must be accompanied by a brief statement (250-500 words) presenting the nominee. Self-nominations are permitted. If nominating someone other than yourself, please provide contact information for the nominee so that we can confirm his or her willingness to be nominated. All nominated candidates must be members of the ACS (it does not matter whether they have been members for years or a couple of weeks, as long as the membership is valid at the time of the nomination and election period).

Please do NOT send any nominations to this listserv. All nominations will be announced on the ACS website in April 2020, with full information on the voting procedure.


-- The ACS Executive Committee