AYHD Board Meeting 18thdecember 2017

AYHD Board Meeting Report

The AYHD strongly believes in transparency. Therefore, the minutes from the three-monthly board meetings will be made available to all members. If you have any questions or comments regarding these notes, feel free to contact our president:

Attendance

Board Meeting 18thDecember 2017 (online)

Present: Tim Riswick (president), Benjamin Matuzak (vice-president), Jeanne Cilliers (PR-officer), Christa Matthys (secretary)

By email: Edward Morgan (PR-officer)

Excused: Stephanie Klages (PR-officer)

Content

  1. Progress in the website
  • Benjamin explains that the figures of the website show that there are actually many people visiting our website. Especially the conference page seems useful for many. We should therefore focus on keeping the website up-to-date with this kind of information.
  • Nearly all ‘old’ pages are now up-to-date, including conferences, board and ambassadors. Also the page regarding the Committee of Recommendation is updated and included everyone who agreed. We are still awaiting some responses of potential members, but by the next board meeting, the page should be complete. Furthermore, Edward is looking to integrate social media and more visuals in the website.
  • An new item on the website is ‘Networks and Organizations’, listing all known places where historical demographic research and education takes place. Everyone agreed that this item is a good addition and that it should be expanded. A possible new item for our website could also be ‘journals’.However, it is difficult to asses what journals are suitable for historical demographic research in general.A solution could be to just ask the community for their top-5 journals and see which ones come up most. Every board member should let Tim and Edward know any organization, networks, institutes that are missing together with the top-5 journals they use for there research or to publish in (action all).
  • We want to follow-up on Edwards blogpost ‘from the archives’ with additional (monthly) blogs. For the coming months, the board can add some content, but the idea for future contributions is to send out a monthly call to our members as well. In addition, there will be an open call on the Facebook-page (action SK). Edward will make a provisional list for the blogs ‘from the archives/desk/database’ (action EM).
  1. Progress on the newsletter
  • The newsletter looks great again, only there is a problem getting enough ‘publications of the week’.
  • Tim will write an update from the board again and send Jeanne a article of his colleague for the paper of the week (action TR).
  • Jeanne also asked if anything should be changed about the structure or lay-out of the newsletter for 2018, but everyone agrees that no changes are needed.
  • The final newsletter of this year will be send the Friday before Christmas (action JC).
  • From next year onwards we will also include our key figures, such as website visits, Facebook visits, newsletter sign-up and so on (action BM).
  1. Progress of the Facebook Group and Page
  • Every week there are some posts, which is great. We should try to stay this active.
  • The weekly ‘paper of the week’ is a great success, but it seems that there are not enough papers going around to publish something every week. We should consider to lower the frequency to bi-weekly.
  • Monthly reports: Benjamin has created a form to collect and present the most important statistics from our Facebook-page: members, views, clicks, etc. Also here it shows that our reach is still growing every month.

4. Progress on the Twitter Account

  • No account yet.

5. Vacancies for regional ambassadors + other topics regarding the ambassadors

  • For South-America we have contacted two professors, who might get us into contact with young researchers in the area. There has been no further contact, so we should look for new ways of finding young historical demographers for America.
  • For Africa Chanda Chiseni agreed, working from the Department of Economic History at Lund University on historical demography in Zambia (as a doctoral student with Prof. Jutta Bolt).
  • For Western Europe Yuliya Hilevych agreed, working form January onwards on a project at Cambridge University (together with Simon Szreter).
  • From now on, we will send the program for every board meeting, along with preparatory materials, not only to the board members, but also to the ambassadors before every meeting. Afterwards, we will email them (and the Committee of Recommendation) the minutes. This way, people could add to certain topics if they want to (action TR).

6. Committee of Recommendation

  • See point 1.

7. Progress on getting the materials from Summer Schools

  • Christa already gathered some materials from some summer schools (Cluj). She will search further for other summer schools and workshops (action CM).
  • Tim already got approval from Cameron Campbell to use and link to their materials.
  • Tim suggests not to forget the LONGPOP network, which is organizing many workshops that could be interesting for us.
  • Jeanne will ask for the summer school materials in Lund (action JC).

8. Other topics: upcoming events

  • The informal event (drinks and/or dinner) at the International Population Conference in Stellenbosch (29 October – 4 November 2017, South Africa) was nice, with about 13 people attending.
  • Other events will be organized by Edward at the European Population Conference in Brussels (6-9 June 2018) and by the board at the European Social Science History Conference in Belfast (4-7 April 2018).

9. Resignation secretary Christa Matthys

  • Christa explains that she left academia, and therefore will also officially leave the board. However, she will still help where possible.
  • To find a new secretary a few names are mentioned, but it is decided to first post an open call on Facebook to see if anyone would like to volunteer (action SK).

10. Next Board Meeting

The next meeting will take place on a Wednesday at the end of February, an email will be send for exact dates (action TR).

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