New Board Members and Officers Begin Terms
Anthony Cond, director of Liverpool University Press, has stepped into the presidency of the Association of University Presses. He succeeds 2023-2024 President Jane Bunker, director of the Cornell University Press.
Cond is the Association’s first non-North American President (see a complete list of past Presidents). “Anthony’s nomination and election reflect the global vitality of the Association, with 22 of our 160 current member presses located outside of North America,” noted AUPresses Executive Director Peter Berkery.
Cond has led Liverpool University Press since 2008, during which time the press has been acknowledged by the Bookseller and the Independent Publishers Guild as the UK’s Academic Publisher of the Year. He has served on the boards of AUPresses, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, and UKSG, and is currently a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Council. An associate editor of the journal Learned Publishing, the founder of the University Press Redux conference, and a co-founder of the EvenUP project to support equity, justice, inclusion, and belonging work among UK and Irish university presses, Cond has written about university presses for the Bookseller, Times Higher Education, and the Scholarly Kitchen.
In his inaugural statement, Cond reflected on the global vitality of the Association as well as its members’ crucial role in the dissemination of high-quality peer-reviewed research, particularly in the humanities. The Association has a “collective superpower in the potential breadth of perspectives open to us—from presses around the world and from UP professionals at all career stages,” he wrote. “And providing a sustainable, high-quality forum to amplify humanities scholarship has never felt more important.”
Other AUPresses leaders, elected at the Association’s virtual Annual Business Meeting on May 22, have also begun their terms:
- Dennis Lloyd, Director, University of Wisconsin Press, has been named President-Elect.
- Alexandria Leonard, senior operations analyst at Princeton University Press, will remain in office as Treasurer.
- Hilary Claggett, senior acquisitions editor at Georgetown University Press, joins the Board as Treasurer-elect.
- Walter Biggins, Editor-in-Chief , University of Pennsylvania Press; Douglas Hildebrand, Director, University of Alberta Press; and Erich van Rijn, Director, University of California Press, began three-year terms as board Directors-at-Large.
In addition, the Association marks the conclusion of several Board members’ terms and thanks the following individuals for their dedicated service:
- Past President Charles Watkinson, director of the University of Michigan Press and associate university librarian for publishing at Michigan;
- Treasurer-elect Teresa Collins, deputy director of the University Press of Kentucky
- Director-at-Large Mike Bieker, director of the University of Arkansas Press, who had previously served the Association as Treasurer from 2013 to 2016 and 2021 to 2023.
- Directors-at-Large Angela Anderson, director of Marine Corps University Press; Saleem Dhamee, director of client services and business operations of the Chicago Distribution Center at the University of Chicago Press; and Colleen Lanick, publicist at Harvard University Press.
Learn more about the work of the Association of University Presses Board of Directors.
Update, July 9, 2024: The AUPresses Board of Directors has appointed Alisa Plant, director of LSU Press, to serve as a Director-at-Large in 2024-2025, filling a mid-term vacancy. Plant has served on several Association committees, including chairing the 2013-2014 Annual Meeting Program Committee and 2012-2013 Professional Development Committee. She will stand for election for the remainder of the standard, three-year-long term at the Association’s Annual Business Meeting next year. Unfortunately, Angela Anderson, director of Marine Corps University Press, had to step away from the Board at the end of the 2023-2024 program year. The Association is grateful for her service.
About the Association of University Presses
AUPresses is an organization of 161 international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, the Association of University Presses advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds intellectual freedom, integrity, stewardship, and equity and inclusion as core values. AUPresses members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.