This year, four positions in the Governing Council are up for (re-)election and seek nominations: three candidates to serve as members-at-large on the Governing Council and one Institutional Representative.
Electronic voting will begin shortly and will remain open for 30 days. Everyone who has been a member in 2023 will be eligible to vote.
Terms of Service (from the NANAS bylaws)
i. Governing Council members will serve for terms of three years.
ii. No individual may serve for more than two consecutive terms on the Governing Council in any capacity.
iii. If an individual steps down before the term is over, the Governing Council may appoint another person from that constituency to fill the role until the next election.
You can find the entire NANAS bylaws here: http://agingstudies.org/NANAS/?page_id=725
NANAS Governing Board Candidate Statements
Members at Large
Nicole Dalmer, Ph.D.
I’m hoping this note finds you all well as we kick of 2024. I am seeking to be re-elected as a candidate for a member-at-large position on the NANAS Governing Council in the upcoming election.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health, Aging & Society at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) and am also an Associate Director with the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging. My work takes up an interdisciplinary, critical gerontological approach as she explores the meanings, expectations, and values of connections (both with people and with technologies) in later life. My current projects examine the impact of social and digital infrastructures on feelings of connectedness in later life while reflecting on questions of social status and social inequality that surround and shape aging and technology debates.
In my previous term with NANAS, I served as Co-Chair on the Governing Council. Prior to that, I served as the student representative on the NANAS Student Committee and am therefore acutely aware of this association’s important and active role in aging/age-related education, research, and collaborations. I look forward to continuing my involvement with NANAS and to play a role in nurturing dialogues and relationships among interdisciplinary age studies scholars, students, and community members.
Benjamin Gillespie
Benjamin Gillespie (PhD) is Doctoral Lecturer in Communication, Gender Studies, and Theatre at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). He completed his PhD in Theatre & Performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2022. Benjamin’s research focuses on the performance of age and aging in modern and contemporary theatre and drama as well as histories of LGBTQ+ performance in the U.S. and Canada. He is currently Editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) and previously edited PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art from 2016-2023. His articles and reviews have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, PAJ, Theatre Research in Canada, and Canadian Theatre Review, along with numerous anthologies. He is currently editing two books: a critical anthology of the later work of Split Britches (based on his dissertation) and co-editing the volume Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging. Previously, Benjamin presented his research at the joint NANAS/ENAS Trent Aging Conference in 2019 and plans to participate in the 2025 conference in Lleida. He has served on the NANAS Governing Council for the past 3 years and would be thrilled to continue supporting such an important organization into the future to help broaden the reach of age studies scholarship, especially in the arts.
Heunjung Lee
Hello, my name is Heunjung Lee, and I recently (as of Sept 2023) earned my Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta, Canada. My SSRHC-funded research, titled “Performing (Ab)Normal: Reframing Ageing, Dementia, and Temporality” (2023), explores the cultural constructions of ageing and dementia. I investigate how performance practices and theories can intervene in the stigma surrounding older adults with lived experiences of dementia. My papers on aging and performance have been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals, including Contemporary Theatre Review (CTR), Theatre Research in Canada (TRiC), and European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP). As a Research Assistant in the Aging and Quality of Life Research Team at the UofA, I have also co-authored and published in journals such as Canadian Journal on Aging (CJA), Dementia, and Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN). Currently, I am the student member on the Governing Council of NANAS, and I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to serve as a member-at-large. I would be honoured to contribute to supporting the NANAS community and advancing the field of Age Studies.
Institutional Representative
Sally Chivers
I’m a Full Professor of Gender & Social Justice and English Literature at Trent University, where I’m also a founding executive member and past director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society. In that capacity, I hosted and co-chaired the 2019 joint ENAS-NANAS conference “Take Back Aging.” I would be honoured to have the opportunity to further serve NANAS by sitting on the governing council as the Institutional Representative.
I’m interested in serving because these aging studies networks offer me a sense of interdisciplinary home that I have not experienced elsewhere. For the past twenty-five years, my humanities research has investigated the yoking of aging with disability in the public imagination, especially through literature and film. Along with dozens of articles and book chapters, this work led to two books on aging intertwined with disability in Canadian Literature (From Old Woman to Older Women) and Cinema (The Silvering Screen) and two co-edited volumes on disability in cinema (Film and the Problem Body) and nursing home narratives (Care Home Stories). As a co-investigator on large interdisciplinary research teams investigating home care, institutional care, disability arts, and aging in data, I’ve learned the value (and joy) of conveying scholarly knowledge in diverse forms. Most recently, my podcast Wrinkle Radio with its tagline “Don’t panic! It’s just aging” features NANAS and ENAS researchers whose insights illustrate that the stories we tell about aging matter. In my role on the NANAS governing council, I would relish the chance to strengthen public-facing venues for age studies scholarship, while I learn from everyone around the table and in the organization.
