The 2024 Association of University Presses (AUPresses) Annual Meeting kicks off this week in Montreal and we can’t wait to see what’s in store.
AUPresses is the representative body for our global community of scholarly publishers. Guided by a vision of “a world that values the many ways that scholarship enriches societies, institutions, and individuals,” the association sponsors community engagement and professional development activities, serving as beacon year-round for the #ReadUP community. With 160 member presses and with 16 countries home to at least one AUPresses member, the group represents and embraces a wholly international outlook.
The annual AUPresses meeting – which since 2021 has alternated yearly between in person and online programming – is a fantastic opportunity for representatives from member institutions to connect, swap ideas and expertise, ask questions, and learn from one another. The gathering, and the exchange it engenders, feels even more critical as the wider publishing community navigates new, and rapidly evolving, developments in Artificial Intelligence. As we look ahead to the 2024 meeting, we are thrilled to celebrate the PUP staff participating in meeting programming. This includes:
Cathy Felgar, Director of Publishing Operations and co-chair of PUP’s accessibility working group, moderates a panel about integrating accessibility into publishing workflows.
Ceylan Akturk, Senior Contracts Manager, joins a panel discussion and collaboration lab about AI and publishing, bringing valuable perspective on how publishers can build successful IP protections for their books and authors.
Inés ter Horst, Director of Intellectual Property, joins a discussion about global, multilingual strategic partnerships, sharing information about PUP’s new bilingual publishing partnership with Planeta.
Christie Henry, Director of PUP, Chair of the AUPresses Admissions & Standards Committee, and a member of AUPresses Equity, Justice, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee – participates in a discussion of diversity initiatives, bringing her experience collaboratively growing PUP’s Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging programs, with an eye to fiscal and operational support, as well as program creation.
Anne Savarese, Literature Publisher and a member of the AUPresses Faculty Outreach Committee, joins a discussion of publishing strategies for poetry and fiction, including sharing perspectives from her experience publishing the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation.
Megan Michel Mendonça, Senior Publications Coordinator for PUP Nature and Co-Chair of the AUPresses Professional Development Committee, and Bridget Flannery McCoy, Executive Editor for Politics and American History, join a discussion on building workplace leadership skills. Megan will be one of two moderators, with Bridget sharing her experience working within editorial and with PUP’s Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EIB) initiatives. Megan will also be supporting other Professional Development Committee events during the meeting, such as the speed networking session and a collaboration lab on making the most of attending conferences.
Lyndsey Claro, Chief of Staff, joins a panel discussion on how to foster productivity and equity and sustain a sense of workplace culture, across remote, hybrid, and in-person environments. Lyndsey will bring to the discussion PUP’s experience embracing hybrid staffing after the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
As we celebrate in Montreal and look ahead to many more years of fruitful #ReadUP collaborations, we also extend gratitude to members of the PUP community who serve on the AUPresses Board of Directors and on various AUPresses committees year-round. This includes Board of Director members Alexandria Leonard, a Senior Operations Analyst, and Rachael Levay, Senior Editor for Sociology and Anthropology, cofounder of the Paths in Publishing mentorship network, and co-host of the Paths in Publishing podcast.
Staff who are active on AUPresses committees includes Kate Danser, PUP’s Director of Human Resources and a member of both the Equity, Justice, Inclusion, and Belonging committee and the Investment Committee; Chief Financial Officer Scot Kuehm, a member of the Financial Operations Committee; Colleen Suljic, Chief of Digital Marketing Strategy and a member of the Marketing Committee; Assistant Editor Erik Beranek, a member of the UP Week Task Force.
We’re grateful every day of the year for the PUP team fostering these vital, community-centered conversations and for the entire university press ecosystem, a peer group who never fails to enrich, energize, and inform our publishing.