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Lisa Bayer Takes Office as AUPresses President

New Board Members and Officers Begin Terms

New York, NY, and Washington, DC—Lisa Bayer, director of the University of Georgia Press, has assumed the presidency of the Association of University Presses. She was elected during the Association’s virtual Annual Business Meeting in May 2021 and spoke at the conclusion of the Association’s virtual Annual Meeting last week.

“It is my hope that in the coming year, I can lead the Association as it helps guide our membership beyond a time of uncertainty to a restorative and renewed focus on our collective power as a publishing community,” Bayer said. “This can be a year to begin to recover, re-envision, realign our individual and overlapping strengths and commonalities as global members of the growing AUPresses. This can be a year to learn from and to demonstrate to our host institutions and other partners the massive and measurable impact of our publications on teaching and learning, on knowledge and curiosity, on readers everywhere in a recently socially isolated world.” (Read her full remarks here.)

Bayer was preceded as AUPresses President by Niko Pfund, president of Oxford University Press USA. Pfund addressed attendees at the start of the conference, exploring the ways that university presses’ “duties of care”—particularly attentive to the needs of their staffs and colleagues, audiences, and authors—have changed over the past year. (View his full remarks here.)

Other AUPresses leadership changes for 2021-2022 include:

  • Charles Watkinson, associate university librarian for publishing and director of the University of Michigan Press, was named President-Elect.
  • Treasurer Mike W. Bieker, director of the University of Arkansas Press, took office as Alice Ennis, chief financial officer of the University of Illinois Press, wrapped up her 2020-2021 term. This will be Bieker’s second term as treasurer of the Association, having previously served from 2013 to 2016.
  • Amy Schultz, business manager of Northwestern University Press, was named Treasurer-Elect.
  • New board members began three-year terms: Colleen Lanick, publicist at Harvard University Press, and Saleem Dhamee, director of client services and business operations at the Chicago Distribution Center of the University of Chicago Press.
  • Past president Kathryn Conrad, director of the University of Arizona Press; past treasurer Jean Kim, director of finance and operations of Stanford University Press; Anthony Cond, director of Liverpool University Press; and Fred Nachbaur, director of Fordham University Press, concluded service on the board as the Association thanked them for their dedicated service.

Bayer has directed the University of Georgia Press since 2012. Immediately prior to that she was the marketing director and regional trade editor at the University of Illinois Press. Earlier in her career, she held marketing and sales positions at Penn State University Press, Minnesota Historical Society Press, Southern Illinois University Press, and Redleaf Press. She earned a bachelor’s degree in education (English) and a master’s degree in English from Southern Illinois University, and got her start in university press publishing as a graduate assistant intern at SIU Press.

A former member of the AUPresses Board of Directors (2015-2018), during which time she served on the Board’s Nominating Committee, Bayer has also served on the Association’s Library Relations Committee, the 2012 Annual Meeting Program committee, and most recently, on the Board’s Admissions and Standards Committee. She is principal investigator for the Georgia Open History Library funded by the NEH Humanities Open Book program and an executive committee member for the New Georgia Encyclopedia. She is also a member of the University of Georgia (UGA) Arts Council; founding co-chair of the UGA Libraries Committee on Diversity and Inclusion; an affiliate faculty member with the Institute for Women’s Studies; and a 2019-20 UGA Women’s Leadership Fellow.

Bayer is the Association’s 71st President, the 17th woman to serve in that role, and the 1st President from the University of Georgia Press, which has been an Association member since 1940. See complete list of past Presidents.

About the Association of University Presses

AUPresses is an organization of 160 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.

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אנחנו מקדמים את התפקיד החיוני של קהילת המוציאים לאור העולמית, שהשליחות שלה היא לוודא מצויינות אקדמית וטיפוח ידע

— AUPresses Mission Statement in Hebrew