I am delighted to announce the plenary talks planned for CNI’s upcoming Spring 2023 Membership Meeting on April 3–4 in Denver, CO.

I will moderate the opening plenary, which will feature a panel of four CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows, two from the 2020 cohort to update us since their last panel in Spring 2021 and reflect on their experiences in the program (see: https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2021/plenary-sessions-s21/clir-fellows-panel), and two from the 2022 cohort, who will be participating for the first time. 

CNI has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the program as part of our commitment to supporting emerging leaders in our community, and we are delighted to directly introduce another outstanding cadre of fellows who are exploring new forms of data-intensive scholarship. We’ll hear about their fascinating work that spans collections, educational and information technologies, and research—which also offers insights into emerging scholarly practices—and about their experiences, challenges, and opportunities. The session will include time for some questions and conversation. The panel features:

The Commission was established to develop and present recommendations on improving support, access, and sustainability of digital resources and digital humanities projects related to social and racial justice. It has been convened by the ACLS with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. This work has deep connections to many long-standing CNI concerns involving scholarly work in the digital age, digital preservation, and the complex technical and social infrastructure to support these activities. 

For information about the Commission and its membership, see https://www.acls.org/digital-commission-sustaining-diverse-scholarship/. Many of the Commission members will be well-known to the CNI community.

Soon after the launch of the Commission, CNI invited a presentation from the Commission’s Chair, Marisa Parham, to explore the vision, goals, and plans guiding their work; see https://www.cni.org/topics/digital-humanities/american-council-of-learned-societies-commission-on-fostering-and-sustaining-diverse-digital-scholarship

For our closing plenary at the Spring 2023 CNI meeting, we’ve invited a panel of Commission members (with an emphasis on voices that may be less familiar to the CNI community and whose work bridges scholarship and infrastructure issues) to share their views on the group’s work and broad findings, as the Commission approaches a summer 2023 report release and conclusion of the current phase of its work. The panel includes:

We may add one or more additional Commission members and will announce changes as they occur. 

The panel will be moderated by James Shulman of the ACLS. 

We invite you to learn more about the opening and closing plenary panelists on our website: https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2023/plenary-sessions-s23 

As a reminder, the meeting registration deadline is March 3rd; registration instructions were sent to member representatives in January. A preliminary list of project briefings will be available by early March. 

I look forward to seeing you in Denver!

-Clifford Lynch, CNI Executive Director