Meet the 2021 Executive Board Candidates: Brian Shelburne, Candidate for Vice President for Conference Arrangements
About the Candidate
Brian Shelburne is Head of the Digital Scholarship Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked in the Visual Resources field in a variety of positions and at several institutions for nearly 30 years. He has worked in Visual Resources Departments at Bryn Mawr College, the Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science (now Philadelphia University), Virginia Tech, and UMass Amherst. He holds a graduate degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology form Bryn Mawr College and an MLIS from the University of South Carolina. His academic background is in Classical archaeology, and he has 10 seasons of field experience working with excavations in Greece, Italy, and Cyprus.
Brian has served the VRA in a variety of ways. He was Vice President for Conference Arrangements from 2008-2012, overseeing the transition from a 5 day conference model to a 3 day model as well as serving as the VRA’s conference planner for the second joint VRA ARLIS/NA conference in Minneapolis. He is currently serving in that same position, having been elected in 2019. He has served on a variety of committees and task forces in the organization, most recently on the VRA Identity Task Force. He was New England chapter chair from 2016-2018. He served on the VRA Foundation Board of Directors from 2012-2015. He has presented regularly at the VRA Conference and is currently the organizer of the Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship SIG.
Currently Brian’s role is working with what some might consider the next generation of visual resources technologies. His office works with aspects of digital scholarship such as online exhibitions, digital publishing, and data visualization, though traditional image work is still a large part of his regular work.
Goals
The past couple of years has been an interesting time to be involved in conference planning efforts. The next few years also promise to be quite interesting as the forced introduction of remote and hybrid meetings into our lives have opened up the possibilities for how we approach VRA events. In a potentially highly transformative time for the conference model, I’m happy to be a candidate for Vice President for Conference Arrangements. The ripple effects of the COVID pandemic are likely to continue, and while they do we will likely explore different models for networking and for sharing our work, research, and ideas. I hope to continue the work that has begun during the last two years and help ensure that the events of the organization are on secure footing regardless of format or location.