http://www.nyu.edu/acf/humanities/]Lorna Hughes is the manager of the Humanities Computing Group at New York University, which was established in 1997 to promote and support humanities computing projects and to develop faculty initiatives to integrate new technologies in Humanities teaching and research. In addition to the day to day running of this group, Lorna is actively involved in the humanities computing community, giving talks and working on a number of collaborative projects both nationally and internationally. Recently, she became the local organizer of NEACH, (the Northeastern Association for Computers in the Humanities) when that organization came to NYU. She is a member of the policy board of NINCH, and is actively involved in Internet 2. She has a MA in Medieval History and an MPhil in History and Computing from the University of Glasgow, and has worked in humanities computing for the past 7 years. Prior to moving to New York, she worked at Arizona State University and in the Center for Humanities Computing at Oxford University Computing Services. Her areas of interest in Humanities Computing are electronic texts, text analysis, computing applications in Historical research, electronic editions and publishing and the development of Internet 2 applications for the humanities. She is particularly interested in facilitating collaboration between network technologies (and technologists!) and the humanities, and in advancing the cause of institutional support for humanities computing projects.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/]Matthew Kirschenbaum is completing his dissertation Ñ an electronic essay on aesthetics and information -- in the Department of English at the University of Virginia. Currently he works as the Project Manager of the William Blake Archive, a large SGML-based text- and image-encoding project at Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities; prior to that he was on the staff at Virginia's Electronic Text Center. He has a particular interest in standards for electronic theses and dissertations, while additional technical research includes work with SGML/XML, digital imaging (image capture, documentation, annotation, and computer-assisted analysis), and VRML and computer modeling. Kirschenbaum has presented work on these topics and on his dissertation research at national and international conferences and professional meetings, including the 1997 ACH/ALLC and several ACH-sponsored sessions at the MLA (where he has also organized a session for the 1998 convention on behalf of the ACH).
As a member of the ACH Executive Council, Kirschenbaum would seek to expand the influence and visibility of the organization not only within traditional fields of humanities research, but also in interdisciplinary areas such as the new media degree programs now appearing at many institutions. Moreover, he would seek to foster conversation and collaboration with practicing new media artists -- highly creative individuals who are often at the forefront of applying new technologies (or who are inventing new technologies themselves by dint of necessity), and whose efforts constitute a body of research that would repay the attention of the humanities computing community.
http://hyde.park.uga.edu]William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (PhD, English, University of Chicago, 1980) is Professor of English and Linguistics and Director of the Linguistics Program at the University of Georgia. His major publications include Oxford Concise Dictionary of Pronunciation (with C. Upton and R. Konopka. Oxford, forthcoming); Introduction to Quantitative Analysis of Linguistic Survey Data (with E. Schneider. Sage, 1996); Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (with V. McDavid, T. Lerud, and E. Johnson; Chicago, 1993). He also serves as editor of Journal of English Linguistics, as editor-in-chief for two Linguistic Atlas projects (LAMSAS, LANCS) and as a consultant for Oxford Dictionaries. He has been active in humanities computing since the early 1980s, when he began computerization of the American Linguistic Atlas Project, and has published extensively on computer mapping of American English dialect features. Under his direction the major public outlet for the Atlas has become its Web site (http://hyde.park.uga.edu, now being rebuilt as http://us.english.uga.edu), an interactive resource on American English for specialists and the general public alike. He has also been active in IT management at the University of Georgia, having recently served as chair of the central university computing committee and, among other things, led a two-year campuswide IT assessment and planning effort and a movement to develop a comprehensive computer literacy program.
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/R_G_Siemens.htm]
Ray Siemens has been involved with computing in a humanities context since
the mid-1980s, and since then has followed a course that combined
humanities computing interests with those of English literary studies. His
current position is that of postdoctoral fellow in English at the U of
Alberta, where he is chiefly working with Renaissance texts in electronic
form; in addition to grappling with the logistics and pragmatics --
computing and non-computing alike -- associated with preparing an edition
of Shakespeare's Sonnets, he is also exploring the theories of inter- and
hyper-textuality that inform such editions, as well as examining the ways
in which literary criticism and computing techniques increasingly intersect
(see the call for papers for an ACH session at the 1999 MLA [http://www.ualberta.ca/~rgs3/mla99-cfp.htm]).
Other recent work includes founding and editing an electronic journal,
editing several Renaissance texts in electronic form and otherwise,
co-editing several collections on humanities computing, and authoring a
number of articles and papers related both to humanities computing and to
literary studies; more specific details can be found on his CV
[http://www.ualberta.ca/~rgs3/siemens-hcr.htm].
What has informed Siemen's work, in the past as much as now, is an understanding of the benefits offered by computing to the pursuits of those working in the humanities; this, coupled with the extent to which humanities disciplines are becoming 'technologized,' will ensure a strong future for humanities computing. He has brought this belief to his activities with a number of humanities computing groups and organizations, department- and faculty-based as well as national (Canadian); Siemens would be very pleased to have the opportunity to bring it to the Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities as well.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/]
John Unsworth has been Associate Professor in the English Department and
Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the
University of Virginia from 1993- present. Previously, he was on the
English faculty at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. He received
his Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1988. In 1990, with
several colleagues, Unsworth co-founded (and until 1996, co-edited) the
first peer-reviewed electronic journal in the humanities, Postmodern
Culture . [http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/ ].
As Director of IATH [http://www.iath.virginia.edu/],
Unsworth oversees forty scholarly projects that use computers as an
analytical and modeling tool, a medium for editorial collaboration, and
means of publication, as well as a number of Java-based software packages,
including applications for image annotation, Unicode browsing, and
collaborative instruction.
Recent publications include: "The Importance of Failure" (The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 3.2); "Networked Scholarship: The Effects of Advanced Technology on Research in the Humanities" (Gateways to Knowledge, ed. Larry Dowler. MIT Press, 1997); "Electronic Scholarship" (The Literary Text in the Digital Age, ed. Richard Finneran. University of Michigan Press, 1996). Unsworth's teaching interests include postmodern fiction, literary theory, hypertext, and 20th-century American popular fiction. He is a co-host of the 1999 ACH/ALLC annual joint conference, to be held at the University of Virginia.
If elected, John's goal is to broaden the membership of the ACH so that it includes a larger number of people from the library and museum communities, from the social sciences, and from humanities disciplines which are not primarily text-oriented, such as architecture and archaeology.
Perry Willett is the Librarian for English and American Literature, and
Philosophy, and the Head of the Library Electronic Text Resource Service
(LETRS) at the Main Library of Indiana University, Bloomington. He has an
MA in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University, where he concentrated
on medieval and modern drama, and an MLS, also from Rutgers. He is
currently the general editor of the Victorian Women Writers Project [http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp]
and a participant in Indiana University's Digital Library Program [http://www.dlib.indiana.edu].
He served as Chair of the English and American Literature Section of the
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and is a member of
the Big Ten Working Group on Electronic Texts and the Digital Library
Federation's Task Force on Guidelines for Encoding Texts. His primary
interests include encoded text, SGML and the TEI.