Lori Dedeyan, Candidate for Nominating Committee Member

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

I am the Archivist at the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, which stewards the archives of artist Mike Kelley and provides grants to arts organizations in the Los Angeles area. My experience prior to this position has been in academic archives, where I've worked as a Processing Archivist at UCLA Library Special Collections and at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. I received a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from UC Berkeley. 

I have served in a number of roles within the Society of American Archivists, currently as a member of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award Subcommittee (2022-2024) and as the Book Reviews Editor for the Visual Materials Section's Views magazine. From 2019 to 2022, I was a member of the Description Section Steering Committee and Lead Editor for its publication, Descriptive Notes. During this time, I was particularly proud to have joined my colleagues at UCLA in their labor advocacy (recognized by SAA Council in 2019).

In addition to my SAA service, I have also served on the ArchivesSpace Users Advisory and Technical Advisory Councils (2019-2021). From 2019-2023, I served within my local archival organization, the Los Angeles Archivists Collective, as Chair of its Publications Subcommittee. As my service history might suggest, I place special emphasis on editorial work and also hold a Certificate in Editing and Publishing from UCLA, writing and editing often on the intersection of art and archives, with a personal focus on Southwest Asian artists and archival culture. I currently serve as the Director of the International Association of Armenian Libraries and Archives.

 DIVERSITY STATEMENT (Each candidate prepared a diversity statement according to SAA guidelines.)

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an active, context-driven set of frameworks through which we work to acknowledge and repair past and ongoing harm. It is a continuous process that requires us to understand our own positionality within the systems we inhabit. As a member of a diasporan community formed through several generations of displacement across administrative, cultural, and geographic borders in Southwest Asia, I am keenly aware of the role that archives play in identity formation, place-making, cultural survival, and the destruction and recovery of cultural heritage. At the same time, the privileges and protections of whiteness, as well as those I receive as a cis-gendered and able-bodied person, mean that I am not equipped to speak to the experiences of communities with histories of marginalization in the US. There is often a wide gulf between understanding something conceptually and feeling it as a lived experience; this space is at the core of the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. When impacted communities are not allowed to articulate and propose solutions to their own experiences with injustice, it risks perpetuating them and furthering traumatization.

I try to bring this awareness to my archival work, and particularly my work for professional organizations, because it informs everything we do, from the systems and standards we use and the projects we focus on to our definitional approach to archives and their users. Within SAA, my primary tools so far have been the platforms on which I have worked. As Lead Editor for the Description Section, for example, I had the privilege of collaborating with my editorial team to transition our last newsletter issue, the Reparative Description Issue, into our first blog series, in which we focused on highlighting writing and case studies about reparative and inclusive descriptive practices. As a predominantly white field, it is time to step back, listen, and learn; this is why the creation of platforms for this exchange of ideas and action is so important. There are long strides that need to be taken to reach a professional reality that goes beyond inclusion to structural transformation.

QUESTION POSED BY NOMINATING COMMITTEE

The Nominating Committee plays a crucial role in shaping the pool of candidates from which the elected leadership of SAA will emerge. What motivates your desire to become a part of the Nominating Committee? What traits and backgrounds do you consider important when selecting potential candidates? Share your strategies for inspiring members to participate, and discuss how you plan to create a candidate slate that enhances diversity and inclusion.

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE 

As the creator of the slate of candidates that is presented to the membership, the Nominating Committee plays a critical role in the election of the Society's leadership. It is the Committee's responsibility to make this process as clear and accessible as possible to the broadest group of candidates, and to address and potential barriers to candidacy.

These barriers could include technical accessibility issues and the way that information is shared. The Committee should assess the venues through which announcements and updates are communicated, make sure all documentation is available and up to date, and confer with previous Committee members and recent leaders to gather feedback about how the nomination process could be improved and streamlined. The Committee should also engage in active and varied outreach to encourage members to suggest nominees, be consistently available to both those seeking to nominate and to potential candidates who have questions about the office for which they are running, and, in general, be as transparent as possible about the process. 

In developing a pool of potential candidates, the Committee should seek a diverse group that reflects the varied experiences and needs of our membership, as well as the communities we serve. It should think creatively about candidacy and about the qualities and accomplishments of an effective candidate. Foremost among these are flexibility, accountability, a commitment to critical inquiry and self-reflection, and demonstrable work toward dismantling structural racism and discrimination within one's personal, organizational, and professional contexts. The Nominating Committee is also responsible for creating prompts and questions for required candidate statements; these, especially, should reflect the Society's stated commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I would be proud and grateful to participate in this work.

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