I am a terrible keeper of happy, exciting secrets. The recent ASA meeting was particularly tricky given that so many of the people that I adore and who have helped to build HASTAC were there. I wanted to tell everyone how excited I am for the future of HASTAC and it’s new partnership with ASU. I wanted to talk about how we can continue to advance the work people are already doing creating and sustaining communities of inquiry, critique, and care. I wanted to share time imaging and planning our ongoing work to transform higher ed and to highlight the long-standing relationships (good and bad) between sciences and humanities and arts. But I had to wait.
Until today. It’s with great pleasure that I share that HASTAC has chosen ASU as its new institutional partner and that I’ll be working with Cathy Davidson to Co-Direct HASTAC.
In our proposal, we noted that at ASU we measure our success by whom we include and how they succeed. Our new HASTAC-ASU partnership is similarly guided by an absolute commitment to inclusivity and community-defined outcomes, meaning that we plan to listen carefully to the needs and interests of the HASTAC community in developing programming.
We want to guide and support HASTAC with a shared commitment to issues of sustainability and justice as the country and world undergo rapid change in demography, culture, technology, and, of course, education. HASTAC in 2025 will be an even more vibrant social community that brings together scholars, students, and their communities to envision and create their own unlimited possibilities.
I have the extraordinary good fortune to work with people who are both amazing individuals and committed collaborators. This includes the incomparable Michael Simeone who brought the HASTAC annual conference to ASU last year and who has long been a central part of the HASTAC community. Michael has been a pioneer on the ASU campus for digital collaborative research and laid the foundations that made this possible. We continue to have the wonderful support of ASU administration, including CLAS Dean of Humanities, George Justice, former and current Institute for Humanities Directors, Sally Kitch, and Cora Fox, and school directors like Sha Xin Wei (Arts Media and Engineering), Aaron Baker (English), and Matthew Garcia (SHPRS). Last but not least are the amazing women here at ASU who make taking on wicked problems wicked fun: Jessica Rajko (Dance), Marisa Duarte (Social Transformation), Nadya Bliss (Director, Global Security Initiative), and Jamie Winterton (Director of Strategy, GSI).
As the new HASTAC partner, ASU will be drawing on both our amazing local staff (IHR, GSI, English shout out!) and the fantastic people who make HASTAC a space for transformational work.There is a lot of work ahead of us and I am deeply honored to be doing it with both the HASTAC and ASU communities.