Tara Mulder
The Committee on Public Information and Media Relations, housed in the Communications and Outreach Division, met for the first time at the most recent SCS meeting in Toronto to discuss mission and to create substantive goals for 2017. At the meeting, we developed three concrete action plans for the year:
1) establish SCS awards for public-facing scholarship (books and articles);
2) create a database of experts and areas of expertise to tie in with SCS press releases;
3) start forming a database of our members who currently have media contacts.
Other questions that were raised at the meeting, but that did not specifically make it into the actions plans for 2017 included, for example, how can we support the next generation of Classicists who would like to become public intellectuals? How can we highlight our members’ public-facing work on our social media platforms? How can we promote the work of our members on other platforms, e.g. through press-releases, article-length abstracts in public-facing outlets, short promotional articles aimed at a public audience, etc.? How can we direct interested members of the public to the SCS as a portal to learning more about the ancient world?
In this presentation, I will give a brief overview of our activities during our first year, paying attention to the progress that we have made on our goals and any challenges that we have faced in the process. I look forward to the ensuing open mic session, where I hope to hear from SCS members who have ideas about how we can continue to implement our goals in 2018.