Dear All,

As some of you are already aware, I take over as the Newsletter Editor for the Society for Historical Archaeology this next month.  This is the first time that the newsletter's editor will be based outside North America, and I hope to use this to encourage more of us based outside the USA and Canada to submit short summaries of our fieldwork and other relevant research to the newsletter.

As CHAT conferences so amply demonstrate, this is a vibrant time for British and Irish historical / post-medieval / industrial (we really do have to settle on a single snappy title, you know) archaeology, and I hope that many of you will want to use this opportunity to publicise your research in an international forum.

I'll also note that having a UK-based SHA newsletter editor will also hopefully facilitate placing British and Irish conference annoucements into the newsletter in a reasonably timely fashion.

I will stress that by no means am I looking to intrude upon, or in any way replace, the SPMA newsletter or related opportunities to share news here in Britain and Ireland - I'm merely offering you an additional international forum for sharing your research and conference announcements.


On a closely related point, one of my first actions in January will be to split "Great Britain and Ireland" from "Europe" in order to form a new SHA current research region.

Paul Courtney has offered to continue as the current research editor for Europe for the time being in order to faciliate the transition, but I will need a new current research editor for Great Britain and Ireland.

The person who takes the position will be responsible for encouraging colleagues to submit news to the SHA newsletter (though given that I'm also based here, there will be some scope for overlap), and acting as the first point of contact for British & Irish newsletter submissions.  The current research editor should ideally be an SHA member in good standing as the position also confers membership of the Newsletter Editorial Advisory Committee, which usually meets at the annual SHA conference (but don't worry - that doesn't mean you have to go to the conference every year; as Australasia coordinator I certainly wasn't going every year when I was still based in Melbourne).  I will, however, consider non-SHA members for the position where appropriate.  There's no set time span for the position, though I would ideally ask for an initial (but renewable) 3 year commitment.  It's entirely a volunteer position.

Otherwise I have no particular criteria in mind except that the person who becomes the current research editor should be committed to increasing British and Irish submissions to the newsletter (which comes out quarterly).  It would potentially be an excellent opportunity for a student looking for entry-level involvement with the SHA, but everyone's welcome to express interest.

If you are interested, please contact me!

Thanks in advance,


Alasdair Brooks



PS: you can find some past issues of the newsletter, currently going back to 1999, here:
http://www.sha.org/news/newsletter_archive.htm




Dr Alasdair Brooks BA MA DPhil 
Finds and Environmental Officer 

CAM ARC 
Cambridgeshire County Council 
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Cambridgeshire 
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