Cosette Bruhns Alonso, Assistant Editor of Book and Style Publications, Modern Language Association, holds a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of Chicago. Since 2022, she has served on the Library Publishing Coalition’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. From 2022–2024 she held a fellowship in digital publishing at University of Pennsylvania Press and Penn Libraries. At Penn, she was also a Mellon Fellow at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities and a research affiliate of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Cosette served as support staff for the 2022 Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing Institute.
Renée Ater, Provost Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Brown and author of Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past (in progress), for which she received an NEH–Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication (2018) and grants from the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian Institution, contributes to sessions on crafting long-form narratives for the digital environment and developing successful grant proposals.
Lisa Bayer is Director of the University of Georgia Press and a past President of the Association of University Presses. She was principal investigator for the Georgia Open History Library, an online open digital resource funded by the NEH Humanities Open Book program. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the first born-digital state encyclopedia. Bayer has over thirty years of publishing experience across six publishers, including the University of Illinois Press and Penn State University Press. She holds a master’s degree in English from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
Walter Biggins is, since 2020, Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pennsylvania Press. He previously served as Executive Editor at the University of Georgia Press. An active member of the academic publishing community, Walter has made many contributions over the years to the Association of University Presses, including service on the Annual Meeting Program Committee and the Standards and Admissions Committee. He has built up remarkable lists in fields that range from American history and culture to media studies and diasporic studies. He holds a B.A. in English from Millsaps College.
Beth Bouloukos is Director of Amherst College Press. She holds a B.A. in comparative literature and Spanish from Hamilton College, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where she researched Latin American literature, film, and culture through a feminist lens. Before beginning at Amherst College Press in 2019, she acquired books in education, Latin American/Latinx studies, and gender and sexuality studies at SUNY Press. She is particularly interested in projects that link theory to praxis and that give a platform to marginalized voices and understudied topics.
Michelle Boyd is a scholar, writer, and audio producer who makes text and audio pieces about race, class, immigration, and cities. When she’s not writing, she’s helping scholars discover who they are as writers. In 2011 she co-founded and began coaching WriteOut! A Dissertation Writing Retreat at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Three years later she founded InkWell Academic Writing Retreats. Michelle holds a B.A. from Hampton University and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
Hannah Brooks-Motl is an acquisitions editor at Amherst College Press, where she acquires broadly in the humanities and humanistic social sciences and runs ACP’s internship program. Hannah is interested in acquiring manuscripts that bring together unexpected archives, objects, institutions, regions, and histories in engaging and accessible ways, and she is committed to helping authors, readers, and students understand the scholarly communications landscape. She earned an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Kimberly Juanita Brown is the inaugural director of the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life at Dartmouth College, where she is also an associate professor of English and creative writing. She is the author of The Repeating Body: Slavery’s Visual Resonance in the Contemporary.
A.D. Carson, Associate Professor of Hip Hop & the Global South, University of Virginia, is an award-winning performance artist and educator from Decatur, Illinois. His work focuses on race, literature, history, rhetorics & performance. He received a Ph.D. in rhetorics, communication, and information design at Clemson University. A 2016 recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Excellence in Service at Clemson, A.D. worked with students, staff, faculty, and community members to raise awareness of historic, entrenched racism at the University. His album, “i used to love to dream,” released with University of Michigan Press, is the first rap album peer-reviewed for publication with an academic press.
Rebecca Louise Carter is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at Brown University, where, in 2016, she received the Deans’ Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Rebecca received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan and holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University with a dual major in psychology and art theory and practice. Her research explores the past, present, and future of human dwelling, focusing on the evolution and impact of vulnerability and violence in historically marginalized communities and the everyday practices and movements of social and spiritual transformation in the making of an inclusive, just, and sustainable urban world.
Lucas Church is Executive Editor at UNC Press. He acquires books in several different academic areas, including Appalachian Studies, literary studies, sociology and social science, and the history of medicine.
Sara Jo Cohen, Editorial Director at University of Michigan Press, is interested in open access publishing, digital publishing, and pushing the boundaries of what “counts” as scholarship. Sara holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota.
Darcy Cullen, Assistant Editorial Director, University of British Columbia Press, acquires manuscripts in Indigenous studies and gender studies. She enjoys learning about new book projects and working with authors to bring unique ideas to publication. Darcy is also the founder and lead of RavenSpace, a new model of publishing that embraces collaboration, respects Indigenous protocols, and uses digital tools in imaginative ways to make knowledge accessible and shareable across communities and generations.
Matthew F. Delmont is Associate Dean of International and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College. An expert on African-American history and the history of Civil Rights, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award to support this research. He also lectures widely and consults on civil rights, diversity and inclusivity, and how to reckon with the history of racism in America. Matthew holds a Ph.D. from Brown University.
Elizabeth Sherburn Demers is the Director at Michigan State University Press. She has previously acquired at University of Michigan Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Quarto Publishing Group, Potomac Books, Praeger-Greenwood, and University of Nebraska Press. A lifelong Spartan, she received B.A. and M.A. degrees in the humanities from Michigan State University as well as a Ph.D. in U.S. History.
Susan Doerr is Associate Director, University of Minnesota Press. With a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Susan is leading the team at Minnesota in collaboration with the GC Digital Scholarship Lab at CUNY and the digital development agency, Cast Iron Coding, to build Manifold Scholarship, a free, open-source publishing platform designed for scholarly content. Susan holds a B.A. in art history from the University of Minnesota.
Emily Lynell Edwards, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Educational Technologist at St. Francis College and 2022 cohort member, currently serves as co-director of the grant Digital Humanities Across the Curriculum (DHAC), funded by the NEH. She is also a General Editor at Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ). Her research focuses on the intersection of digital media, technologies and platforms, and race, gender, and politics in global contexts.
Beth Fuget, Grant and Digital Projects, University of Washington Press, also serves as RavenSpace liaison with the University of British Columbia Press. Beth currently serves on the Association of University Press’s open access committee and previously served on the digital publishing committee.
Warren Harding, Assistant Professor of English, SUNY Binghamton, holds a Ph.D. in Africana studies from Brown. His scholarship focuses on Black women writers in the African diaspora, and he is currently building a database of Black Caribbean feminist creative writing and cultural production between 1990 and 2000. Warren served as support staff for the 2022 Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing institute.
Christie Henry, Director, Princeton University Press, has nearly 30 years experience in university press publishing. Since her arrival at PUP, the Press has launched an Audio Imprint, an Equity and Inclusion Strategic Initiative, and a Community Building Committee, among other endeavors. She currently serves on the boards of the Association of American Publishers and the Association of University Presses, for whom she led the Gender Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force and the Activating Directors in EJI work. Christie holds an undergraduate degree in geography and environmental science from Dartmouth College.
Victoria Hindley, Acquisitions Editor for visual culture and design, MIT Press, has worked in publishing for two decades in the U.S. and Europe. Acquiring in visual culture and design, she is interested in transformative scholarship, particularly in politically engaged global discourses. Victoria co-founded and leads the MIT Press Grant Program for Diverse Voices, which provides direct financial support to MIT Press authors who have been chronically underrepresented in their fields.
Annie Johnson, Associate University Librarian for Publishing, Preservation, Research, and Digital Access, University of Delaware, was previously Assistant Director for Open Publishing Initiatives and Scholarly Communications and Library Publishing and Scholarly Communications Specialist at Temple University Press. Annie holds an M.A. in public humanities from Brown and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern California.
Mahinder Kingra is Editorial Director at Cornell University Press. He has acquired books in Medieval History & Literature and Literary Studies, including Classical, Medieval & Renaissance, Early Modern, Victorian, Modernist, and Contemporary. Mahinder holds an M.A. in history from Duke University. He serves as a mentor for Paths in Publishing (PIP), a free mentorship program to help prepare early career professionals navigate the scholarly publishing ecosystem.
Casey Kittrell, Editor-in-Chief, University of Texas Press, acquires in anthropology, archaeology, food studies, music, and sports. Casey is a dedicated mentor and an advocate for diversity within the Press and the publishing community more broadly. He is a founding member of Foodways Texas, a member-driven organization that preserves, promotes, and celebrates the diverse food cultures of Texas.
Kent Kleinman is Faculty Director of the Brown Arts Institute and Professor of the Practice of History of Art and Architecture. Prior to joining Brown in 2022, Kent was the Provost at Rhode Island School of Design. He received his professional degree in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a co-PI on a grant from the Mellon Foundation focused on integrating architecture and the humanities in the study of urbanism.
Allison Levy, Project Director, is Director of Brown University Digital Publications. In this role, she brings together key organizational, academic, and technological resources across the University to support new forms of faculty-driven scholarship. She spearheads efforts at the industry level to advance the conversation around the development, evaluation, and publication of born-digital scholarship in the humanities. Allison, who holds a Ph.D. in history of art from Bryn Mawr College, served as Project Director of the 2022 Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing institute.
Sarah McKee is Project Manager, Higher Education Initiatives: Publishing Initiatives at the American Council of Learned Societies. She was previously Senior Associate Director for Publishing at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, where she oversaw Emory’s Mellon-supported digital publishing initiative. She previously worked for 15 years at the University of Georgia Press, where she served as a managing editor.
Allegra Martschenko, Editorial Coordinator for Princeton University Press, is a PIP co-founder. They started in publishing as a sales intern at Princeton University Press, did a brief stint in children’s trade publishing, and spent a year at Cornell University Press as a 2020-2021 Mellon Diversity Fellow. As a fiction writer they’ve mentored several marginalized authors through the trade publishing industry and now turn their attention to helping foster equity and inclusion in scholarly publishing.
Krystyna Michael is an Assistant Professor of English at CUNY Hostos Community College, and is on the faculty in the Masters in Digital Humanities program at the Graduate Center. She is currently co-Principal Investigator on the National Endowment for the Humanities Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Open Education Publishing Institute. She is also on the development team for Manifold and a member of the editorial collective of the Journal of Instructional Technology and Pedagogy. Michael’s teaching and scholarship revolves around 19th-century American literature and writing, the digital humanities, and architecture and city space.
Fredric Nachbauer, Director, Fordham University Press, has over 30 years of experience in book publishing, ranging from marketing to sales to editorial. Previously he worked at Wiley, Routledge, and New York University Press. Since becoming director of the Press in 2009, he has launched two imprints, each with a unique focus on the history and literature of New York. He has a B.A. in English from William Paterson University and an M.A. in urban studies from Fordham. Fred has served as a board member of the Association of University Presses and currently sits on the board of New Village Press and Paulist Press.
Tara Nummedal (PhD, Stanford, 2001; MA, University of California, Davis, 1996; BA, Pomona College, 1992) is the author of Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), winner of the 2022 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society. With Janice Neri and John V. Calhoun, she published John Abbot and William Swainson: Art, Science, and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century Natural History (University of Alabama Press, 2019), and most recently, with Donna Bilak, she co-edited Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens with Scholarly Commentary (University of Virginia Press, 2020), a digital publication on a musical alchemical emblem book, Atalanta fugiens (1618), and the winner of the 2022 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History from the American Historical Association.
Niko Pfund is President of Oxford University Press USA and the global academic publisher for the Press. He joined OUP in 2000 after a decade at New York University Press, during which he served as Editor-in-Chief and Director. A graduate of Amherst College, he speaks widely on issues related to publishing and scholarly publication. Niko is a past President of the Association of University Presses (2021–2022).
Laura Portwood-Stacer, publishing consultant, developmental editor, and founder of Manuscript Works, is the author of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton UP, 2021). Laura holds a Ph.D. in communication, with a certificate in gender studies, from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. At New York University, she taught courses on social media, consumption and identity, and queer identities in popular culture.
Elizabeth Scarpelli is the founding director of the University of Cincinnati Press, an award-winning university press which focuses on innovative and interactive scholarly publishing. In her role she acquires projects that further her vision to stretch the boundaries of traditional monograph and trade non-fiction publishing using open access to enrich the author’s narrative and the readers’ experience. These projects are available on the press open access site. Prior to creating the University of Cincinnati Press, Liz worked at Rutgers University Press as marketing and sales director, Cambridge University Press where she started the textbook sales division and Prentice Hall and district sales manager. In addition, Liz worked at Baker & Taylor to expand their publisher services division for academic and scholarly publishers worldwide.
Dean Smith is Director of Duke University Press. He has a wealth of experience in leading digital publishing initiatives and open access publishing. He was most recently Director of Cornell University Press, and prior to that Director of Project MUSE. Dean holds an M.F.A in creative writing from Columbia University, and is a published author, poet, and freelance journalist.
Erich van Rijn is Executive Director, University of California Press. His career in publishing spans 25 years, and has included roles in marketing, operations, and technology, including responsibility for the Press’s open access monograph publishing program, Luminos, which was launched in 2015. From 2014 to 2018 he served co-PI on a joint project with the California Digital Library to develop the open source Editoria book production platform. He developed a strong program to support FirstGen scholars at the University of California Press through a flexible grantmaking program.
Charles Watkinson, Director of the University of Michigan Press, is a past President of the Association of University Presses. He has also served on the board of directors of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and as an initiator of the Library Publishing Coalition. Charles served as Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens before becoming Director of Purdue University Press in 2009. He holds a master’s degree in archaeology and anthropology from the University of Cambridge and an M.B.A. from Oxford Brookes University. At Michigan since 2014, he co-leads Fulcrum, an initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation to create an open-source platform for media-rich monographs.
Nadine Zimmerli, Editor, University of Virginia Press, acquires books in history and politics, with a special focus on American history and politics across five centuries. She also oversees series on early modern German and on Southern African history and books on the history and culture of Virginia. As a transnational historian by training, with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nadine is excited about manuscripts that put historical developments in broad temporal and geographic contexts and particularly welcome examinations of Americans’ experiences and legacies abroad.