This year, three positions in the Governing Council are up for (re-)election and seek nominations: two candidates to serve as members-at-large on the Governing Council and one student to serve as the student member. Eligible nominees for members-at-large need to have been NANAS members for two consecutive years. The student member must be a current NANAS member.

Electronic voting will begin shortly and will remain open for 30 days. Everyone who has been a member in 2022 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 

Kate de Medeiros, Ph.D.  

As a founding member of NANAS, I have been committed to advancing aging studies within gerontology and beyond. I hosted the first NANAS conference at Miami University in 2014. I am currently the Governing Council chair. Although my PhD is in gerontology, I have a B.A. in English literature from Northwestern University and began my graduate work as a student of Tom Cole’s at the Institute of Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, where I later earned an M.S. in Clinical Gerontology. As a gerontologist with a strong humanities background, I am uniquely positioned to create bridges across various disciplines interested in later life. My publications include Narrative Gerontology in Research and Practice and The Short Guide to Aging and Gerontology; Global Aging: Comparative Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course (with F. Whittington and Suzanne Kunkel), Critical Humanities and Ageing: Forging Interdisciplinary Dialogues (co-edited with M. Goldman and T. Cole). I am also the editor of Narrative Works, an associate editor of Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences for qualitative research, and the series editor for the Bloomsbury Studies in Humanities and Ageing series. 

Corinne Field 

Corinne Field is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Virginia.  Her current book project, “Grand Old Women: How Feminists Transformed Aging in America,” offers a collective biography of radical women who fought for old age empowerment and justice in the nineteenth century.  Her next project, tentatively titled “Looking Old: A U.S. History,” will consider the aesthetics of oldness across hierarchical relations of gender, race, and class. If elected to the NANAS Governing Council, Field’s goals would be to promote decolonial, anti-racist, and queer perspectives on age studies as well as research on earlier time periods and locations beyond North America and Europe. 

Julia Henderson (she/her)  

I am a new (as of Sept. 2022) Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (Unceded  xʷməθkʷəy̓əm /Musqueam Territory). I am a registered occupational therapist, and I hold a PhD in Theatre (UBC). My research explores how theatre and performance practices contribute to cultural constructions of aging and old(er) age, as well as representations of dementia and age-related memory loss. My recent postdoctoral work (Concordia) re-imagines dementia tragedy narratives and the concept of ‘assistance’ by employing a community-engaged, creative arts intervention involving persons with lived experience of dementia and their caregivers. I am an investigator and member of the leadership team for University of British Columbia’s Edwin S. H. Leong Healthy Aging Program, I act as Creative Accessibilities Facilitator with Western Gold Theatre (a Vancouver-based, professional senior theatre company), and for the past 3 years I have been Vice Chair of NANAS. I would welcome the opportunity to serve for another term as a member-at-large on the NANAS governing council and contribute my energy to developing the field. I am keen to further the work of the NANAS Anti-Racism and Anti-discrimination Working Group, foster connections and joint initiatives with our ENAS colleagues, expand ways to attract, involve, and support emerging scholars, plan conferences and other events to advance the field, and broaden the reach of age studies scholarship. 

June Oh 

June Oh is a new Assistant Professor of English and Digital Studies at The University of Texas Tyler. As an interdisciplinary scholar concerned with how the historical past shapes our identity, June’s first research project traces the way age intersects with race, gender, sex, and class in eighteenth-century literature and culture. She is currently working on a new project dealing with digital media and the “granfluencers” around the globe and particularly in East Asia. She has served as a student member of NANAS from 2021 to 2022 and as a member of the NANAS Anti-Racism and Anti-discrimination committee. She is excited about the possible opportunity to continue serving the NANAS community. June can be reached at joh@uttyler.edu. 

Student Candidates 

Amanda Bull 

My name is Amanda Bull and I am honoured to have been nominated for the student position on the NANAS Governing Council. I am currently a 2nd year Master’s student at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario with hopes to pursue a PhD in September 2023. My research primarily focuses on the lived experiences of older adults who face ageism in the workplace. As well, I participate in research that investigates the role of public libraries in the lives of community-dwelling older adults. My interest in age studies is vast and spans a variety of different topics. I believe that I would be an excellent candidate for the NANAS Governing Council as I have a proven history of representing my peers and articulating their needs and ideas both throughout my undergraduate and graduate careers. I look forward to getting the opportunity to serve the students of NANAS. Thank you. 

Heunjung Lee 

My name is Heunjung Lee, and I am a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta, Canada. Bridging Performance Studies, Age Studies, and Disability Studies, my SSRHC-funded research investigates the cultural constructions of ageing and dementia and how performance practices and theories can intervene on the ableist and ageist preconceptions framing older adults with lived experiences of dementia. My research reframes the altered experiences of time, reality, and self through the concept of porosity. I have chaired a session at the NANAS 2021 conference and have presented with Dr. Julia Henderson and Dr. Benjamin Gillespie at the NANAS/ENAS joint conference 2022. I was a previous Board of Director at Edmonton-based dance organization Mile Zero Dance (MZD), Executive Board member of CDSA (Canadian Disability Studies Association), and a PhD Representative at the Chair’s Advisory Committee in the Department of Drama (UofA). I am honoured to be nominated for the student member of the Governing Council of NANAS and I would be happy to lead the student committee and represent the voices of emerging scholars so their needs and ideas can be supported.