Transitions of Leadership: Succession, Stewardship, and Sustainability in the Digital Humanities (online conference, 16 November, 2026)

Many larger digital humanities initiatives now span multiple generations of scholars, infrastructures, and institutions. As these projects, platforms, and partnerships mature and continue over time, questions of leadership and succession have become increasingly central to their future—and, by extension in some cases, to the future of the field. Even so, while many project founders and leaders have devoted considerable time, energy, and intellectual engagement ensuring that their initiatives survive technological shifts and endure as key scholarly infrastructures, often less attention is devoted to facilitating successful transition and succession of their own leadership roles, and those of others who are central to these initiatives, as they retire, change institutions, pursue new research projects, or step back for other reasons. Further, at present there is very little available in our field’s professional literature offering guidance about this; much of what exists is via occasional, and often sad, anecdotes of situations in which succession has gone wrong or occurred unexpectedly.

Through a series of pre-recorded videos and two discussion sessions, this conference considers transitions of leadership in this context, exploring success stories in which those involved in ongoing digital humanities initiatives have navigated leadership transition effectively.  Questions to be explored include:

• What lessons can be learned from the lived experience of digital humanities researchers, librarians, innovators and others who have managed a project transition from their leadership to someone else?
• What are the challenges associated with transition and succession?
• What are some best practices to make these transitions successful?

Panel speakers and their videos can be found at: https://hsscommons.ca/en/groups/dhtransitions/collections/panel-talks. (You will need to be a member of this group to view the videos.)

Schedule:

Online: Monday, 16 November, 2026 (Tuesday, 17 November, 2026 Australia)

• Panel 1: 9:00am–10:00am (Victoria) = 5:00pm Europe = 4:00pm UK = 11:00am EST [=3:00am, 17 November Sydney AUS]
• Panel 2: 3:00pm–4:00pm (Victoria) = 5:00pm EST = 9:00am Tues 17 November Sydney AUS [=11:00pm Europe = 10:00pm UK]

Conference Format:

The talks are pre-recorded and available on HSS Commons (https://hsscommons.ca/en/groups/dhtransitions/collections/panel-talks).  We encourage participants to view the videos in advance.  The discussions will involve questions and answers about the presentations with the panel members.

Registration:

• Registration, before 10 November, 2026 (free, but necessary): https://forms.gle/q17agG4scBTjk6An9
• A link for online discussion will be distributed 1-2 days before the event to those who have registered