Candidates: SLSA 2026 Election

Standing for: 2nd Vice President (to serve subsequent terms as 1st Vice President and President)

    • Paula Leverage
    • Name: Paula Leverage
    • Candidate Statement:

      I am an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University and Director of our Center for NeuroHumanities, whose research and teaching explore intersections between science and the humanities. My past service to the society reflects my commitment to furthering its mission to provide an academic home for researchers from all relevant disciplines, including students and professionals, both affiliated and unaffiliated with academic institutions. I have been a member at large on SLSA’s executive committee for the last three years, and in 2022 I chaired the society’s annual conference hosted by Purdue (“Reading Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and the Reading Human”). SLSA has been an important society for my own professional development and I want to do my part to ensure its continuing success as a vehicle for advancing research in the field through conferences, conversations, inspiration, support, and mentoring. To that end, I would like to increase the opportunities for discussion and collaboration between conferences through virtual lectures, workshops, and writing groups.

      , full_html
    • Dawna Schuld
    • Name: Dawna Schuld
    • Candidate Statement:

      I am submitting my name as a candidate for SLSA Second Vice President because I am invested in the future success of this organization, which provides an unusually collegial and supportive space for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research, including my own. This position would formalize a commitment to SLSA that I have made already as one of the co-organizers for the SLSA 2027 conference and as a contributing member of the growing Arts sector of SLSA. In keeping with the shared ethos of this organization, my scholarship examines areas where contemporary art, technology, and biology intersect, with an emphasis on the varied and even contradictory roles played by art and artists within institutions of research and commerce.

      , full_html

Standing for: Member-at-Large (two-year term)

    • Steven Denison
    • Name: Steven Denison
    • Candidate Statement:

      I am a geneticist and microbiologist with interests in connections between science and the arts. I have been a member of the SLSA since 2024 and a member of the BSLS since 2017 and have presented at meetings of both on poetry and science. I also teach courses on the history of science in England, France and Italy. I am currently a member of the SLSA Executive Committee and of the Outreach and Belonging Committee. I am interested in serving as Member at Large to be of more service to the SLSA, which I think serves an important function. The Ecologist E. O. Wilson said, “the ideal scientist thinks like a poet.” I think this suggests the importance of finding and studying connections between science, literature and the arts, which the SLSA promotes. 

      , full_html
    • Hannah Robbins Hopkins
    • Name: Hannah Robbins Hopkins
    • Candidate Statement:

      SLSA is unique in its commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration. As a Member-at-Large, I hope to contribute to efforts to grow those ties; both among existing members as well as between SLSA and potential newcomers. My home discipline service commitments are all organized around connection: building digital and event strategy to connect membership with mentorship, to highlight emerging work of organization members, and to keep members linked across and beyond annual meetings. In service as an SLSA Member-at-Large, I’m eager to develop more strategies for fostering belonging for SLSA members, with special attention to how we might welcome even more members from underrepresented fields. As a graduate student and now faculty member, SLSA has helped me envision my place in expansive, interdisciplinary collaboration. As this organization has increasingly become my professional home, I hope to support the same sense of belonging to even more of our members through service to SLSA.

       

      , full_html