Beth Driscoll

Candidate statement

Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, University of Melbourne. My research interests include middlebrow book culture (The New Literary Middlebrow, Palgrave Macmillan 2014); contemporary reading practices, especially online; and the contemporary publishing industry (including The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business, co-authored with Claire Squires, Cambridge University Press 2020). I am interested in arts-informed, creative methods for book history research, and with Claire Squires have developed a new methodology for playful, engaged research called Ullapoolism. I first joined SHARP-L as a PhD student in 2006, attended my first conference at Antwerp in 2014, and have attended four others since then in addition to local SHARP-affiliated events. I envision contributing to the Board’s role advising SHARP on key principles and values, and especially working towards equity, inclusion and fairness. I have observed this work by the Board, especially during and immediately after the SHARP Sydney conference, and see it as crucial to the health of the organisation and the field. Doing such work, I believe, requires paying close attention to the different forums through which SHARP members express concerns, from Twitter to SHARP-L to conferences. Moreover, from my base in the Asia-Pacific region, I will work to support SHARP’s aspiration to be a global network. The active inclusion and valuing of regions beyond the UK, Europe and US is part of the decolonizing work that SHARP, like many organisations, must continue to engage in.