Draft for a revised Nominations Policy
for the DHST
Please find below a motivated proposal to revise the DHST nominations policy. This is a
first proposed draft and open for feedback and changes. All representatives ofcommissions and national members are kindly asked to give their thoughts and feedbackon the current proposal which will allow us to prepare a more definite proposal for theEGA end of November 2023.

During the DHST GA in 2021 a report of the nominations committee explicitly asked for arevised nominations policy based on the problems they faced in attempting to have a diverseand large enough pool of candidates for the different positions in DHST council (the report isattached as Appendix A to this report). In this report, an overview of the current situation isprovided together with a number of proposals for changing the current policy and theirarguments. The general rationale behind the proposed changes is that we want to have a clear,sound, simple and fair nominations process that guarantees a large, diverse and qualified
set of candidates that are representative of the community at large. If we want DHST to be amore modern institute that is attractive also for the next generations, then having a moretransparent nominations policy seems key.
This report contains the following sections:Sec. 1: Summary of the proposed changes
Sec. 2: Current situation
Sec. 3: Issues with the current state of affairs
Sec. 4: Proposed changes
Annex: Report from the nominations committee (2021)

1. Summary of the proposed changes
The main changes proposed are:- That commissions would not longer be treated as second-class citizens and be allowed
to make direct nominations via the nominations committee- Nominations can only be made through the nominations committee- If, after sufficient time, the nominations received from commissions and sections does
not result in a diverse and large enough pool of candidates, the nominations committee
is given a more active role

2. Current situation
Article 22 of the DHST statutes specifies the following:
Article 22. At least two years before each Ordinary Session of the General Assembly, theCouncil shall appoint a Nominations Committee for the purpose of drawing up a list ofnominations for the next Council. The Chair of the Nominations Committee shall invite all
Ordinary Members to submit nominations for Council in writing at least nine months
before the date of this Ordinary Session of the General Assembly. Other nominations forCouncil may nevertheless be submitted in writing to the Secretary General by any
Ordinary Member at least forty-eight hours before the midnight which commences theday on which the election is to take place. Election is by secret ballot.

This means that we need to appoint a nominations committee. This article also appears to imply
that there are two ways to nominate candidates: either through the nominations committee orthrough the secretary-general -- effectively bypassing the nominations committee.
Under 2.1. of the Rules of Procedure we find further explicit rules for the Nominations
procedure:
A valid nomination for the Council shall consist of a brief written statement of nominationfrom at least one Ordinary Member, a one-page Curriculum Vitae of the nominee, and a
letter from the nominee confirming willingness to serve in the post for which she/he isnominated. The Nominations Committee (Article 21 of the Statutes) shall verify thevalidity of the nominations it receives. It shall use its best endeavors to ensure that it
receives at least two nominations for each elective office, and that the nominations haveregard to the principles of gender balance and cultural diversity enunciated in Article 1.e.
of the Statutes. For this purpose it shall if necessary solicit further nominations fromOrdinary Members, and suggestions from Sections and Commissions, until no later thanfour months before each Ordinary Session of the General Assembly. It shall then havethe list of valid nominations, with the mention of the nominating Ordinary Member orMembers for each nomination, dispatched to Ordinary Members, Sections andCommissions, as well as to the members of the Council through the Secretary General
no later than three months before each Ordinary Session of the General Assembly.
This means amongst others that the nominations committee has the task to assure a large anddiverse set of nominees. However, it cannot play a very active role in that process, for it is notclear how it "shall use its best endeavors to ensure that it receives at least two nominations foreach elective office." It is also unclear what the nominations committee can do with thesuggestions it may solicit from Sections and Commissions. Moreover, it is implied here that
there are de facto two rounds. There is a first round where only members can nominate. This
first round starts at least nine months before the GA and ends at least four months before theGA. If the nominations committee finds that the list of candidates is not satisfactory, a second
round can be started and this is at least four months before the GA to end three months before
the GA. In this second round, commissions and sections can also suggest candidates but anomination is valid only when an ordinary member supports it.

Issues with the current state of affairs
We identify three issues with the current nominations policy that we would like to solve througha revised policy.
A. The current DHST policy has certain unnecessary complexities if not inconsistencies:--In art. 22, it appears that there is only one round for nominations that are to be sent to
the nominations committee. However, 2.1. of Rules and Procedures states that there arein fact two rounds, a first round where only members can nominate and a second roundwhere commissions and sections are also invited to make suggestions.1
It appears that the role of the nominations committee is undermined by the possibility formembers to directly send nominations to the secretary-general until 48 hours before themidnight which commences the day on which the election is to take place.

It would be more consistent if only one of the two procedures would be possible. We believe that
nominations should be in the hands of a committee that functions largely independently of thecouncil and we propose that all nominations should in the future be handled only by thecommittee.
B. The current policy treats commissions and sections de facto as second-class "citizens"
since:(1) they can only suggest candidates. Official nominations can only be sent by ordinary
members.
(2) they can only make such suggestions in a second round on the condition that the firstround did not result in a diverse and large enough pool of candidates.
(3) it is by no means clear what is to be made of those suggestions, since they can only
become valid nominations if channeled through an ordinary member.
This process whereby commissions and sections can only nominate candidates with the help of
at least one ordinary member is known to be a cumbersome and difficult process (See theReport of the previous nominations report in Annex). The commissions and sections of DHST
have evolved to become a basic part of the daily life of the division with the organization of amultiplicity of activities and events, including the symposia at the ICHST congress. In recentyears several new commissions have been created, often supported by an international groupof earlier career scholars driven to establish their respective communities within the DHST. If wewant DHST to stand for a community where everyone is considered equal and where also
younger generations feel at home, then we believe that giving the commissions and sections thepossibility to directly nominate candidates would be a logical step. Finally, it would likely
dramatically increase the number and diversity of candidates, to the point of perhaps mooting
the complex process of two-rounds plus last-minute suggestions via the secretary general. Notethat it was also one of two recommendations of the previous nominations committee to revise
the policy in this direction.
C. The nominations committee currently has a very passive role where they can only send out
calls for nominations. They are not allowed to ask for nominations (1) for specific offices inUnder the proviso that the nominations committee concludes that the list resulting from the firstround is not satisfactory.
1which nominations might be lacking (2) to increase the necessary background diversity or (3) toimprove the gender balance. This was pointed out by the previous nominations committee as animportant obstacle for having a diversified and large enough pool of candidates as required bythe statutes. In that regard, we propose that the revised policy would give a slightly more activerole to the nominations policy.

Proposed changes
We propose the following changes to the nominations policy:
1) That commissions and sections be given the possibility to directly nominate candidates,
including in the first round. The first round should be started at the latest nine months
before the GA and ends five months before the GA. This gives members andcommissions/sections four months to send in their nominations, which seems a sufficienttime.
2) The second round would be used to give the nominations committee the possibility tointervene when the initial pool of proposed candidates is found to be too small (it is notguaranteed that there are at least two valid nominations for a given position) or if the listof candidates is not representative of the diversity that the DHST stands for. This second
round should start five months before the GA. The nominations committee would beallowed during this round to explicitly communicate about the kind of candidates that are
missing plus make suggestions to the commissions and/or members of particular
candidates they believe to be suitable.
3) Nominations can only be done via the nominations committee. Nominations end two
weeks before the GA.

Appendix A. Report from the nominations committee 2021

Report of the Nominations Committee

After his nomination as chair of the Nominations Committee by the Council of DHST, Efthymios
Nicolaidis contacted June Barrow-Green (UK), Silvia Figueirôa (Brazil), Donald Opitz (USA),and Shi Yunli (China). in order they participate at the Committee. The Committee wasconstituted on March 4, 2020.
On March 19, the Committee wrote a letter to the ordinary members (National Committees) ofthe DHST asking them for nominations. According to the rules of DHST, this first round ofnominations ended November 25, 2020. Two reminders were sent to the ordinary members,before and after the summer vacations. At the deadline, eight countries (China, Czech Republic,Germany, France, Japan, Portugal, and Russia), had sent in nine 9 nominations. After thisdeadline, the Committee sent on November 26 a second letter to all the members of DHST
asking for additional nominations. Two reminders of this letter were sent, in January and March
2021.
At the deadline of this second round, on March 25, 2021, eleven ordinary members that had notsent nominations during the first round (Austria, Brazil, Greece, USA, Israel, Japan,Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, and UK) and two ordinary members that had sent
nominations during the first round (China and France) have sent nine new nominations and/or
supported nominations of the first round. Czech Republic NC withdrew a nomination from thefirst round due to health reasons.
As far as we know, four commissions (HAPOC, ICHM, INHIGEO and WGS) suggested, during
the second round, nominations to ordinary members.

The Nominations Committee has received all the required documents for the nominations to bevalid: a proposal from an ordinary member, and a short CV and a letter of acceptance from eachcandidate.

The gender balance of the seventeen in total nominations is as follows: ten female candidates
and seven male candidates.

We consider that these nominations are balanced as far as it concerns the scientific fields of thecandidates. Furthermore, if we take into account the geographical repartition of the ordinary
members, the geographical balance is acceptable: we have nine candidates from Europe, twofrom countries that are in Europe as well in Asia (Russian Republic and Turkey), three from
Asia, one from South America and two from North America. Statistics about the nominees canbe found in the annex of the report.

List of candidates

Browne Janet (UK, since 2006 works in USA)
Cohen Claudine (France)
De Mol (Liesbeth France)Haddad Thomás (Brazil)
Hashimoto Takehiko (Japan),Herlea Alexander (Romania)
Luo Xingbo (China)
Malpangotto Michela (France, Italy)
Mülberger Rogele Annette (Netherlands)
Phalkey Jahnavi (USA)Pommerening Tanja (Germany)
Rentetzi Maria (Greece)
Sekyrkova Milada (Czech republic)
Shalimov Sergei (Russia)
Stevanovic Alexandra (Serbia)
Sun Xiaochun (China),
Zorlu Tuncay (Turkey)

We have summarised all the information about the nominations in page 3 and 4 of thisdocument and related statistics in the annex.

Additional remarks.

During the whole process, the Nominations Committee has received enough – and wellbalanced – nominations for assessors but not at all enough nominations for the essential officesof the Council.
It seems that some Commissions have encountered difficulties in finding an ordinary member
willing to introduce their proposal. Therefore the number of nominations during the second
round was below our expectations. Last but not least, very few ordinary members have sent innominations of colleagues that are not citizens of the country of the ordinary member that
proposed them. In the future, the Council should encourage a more international approach fornominations.

Recommendations

The rules of procedure specify that “the Nominations Committee shall use its best endeavors toensure that it receives at least two nominations for each elective office, and that the nominations
have regard to the principles of gender balance and cultural diversity enunciated in Article 1.e.
of the Statutes. For this purpose it shall if necessary solicit further nominations from Ordinary
Members, and suggestions from Sections and Commissions, until no later than four months
before each Ordinary Session of the General Assembly”. The same rules do not allow theNominations Committee to actively interfere in the process.
We have sent six letters to the members in order to ask for more nominations but we were notallowed to ask for nominations for specific offices in which we lacked of candidates. We havenot encountered problems about gender and geographic balance, but a similar remark could beapplied to this in the future.
The requirement that a Commission has to have its nominations delivered through an Ordinary
Member is not only cumbersome but, more importantly, it presents a barrier for candidates tocome forward. This is reflected in the fact that, as far as we know, only 4 out of 21 Commissions
proposed candidates. If a Commission does not have a personal contact with an Ordinary
member, or there is no Ordinary Member aligned with the Commission’s academic field, it
makes it difficult for that Commission to know to whom they should turn to present theirnomination, and in the worst case that Commission could be in the awkward situation of having
a strong nomination which does not go forward. From the potential candidate’s point of view, it
can be off-putting to know that there is the possibility that their nomination might be rejected bysomeone outside their field, and this is particularly true of younger scholars who should beencouraged to come forward. Given that members of a Commission are experts in their field
and respected members of their community, it is therefore reasonable to assume that they areable to come to a reasoned judgment as to whether the candidate is suitable for nomination.
Given the fact that the life of DHST between the Congresses depends on the activity of theCommissions, we think that their role in the electoral process must be upgraded. The above
mentioned facts plead for the changing of the rules of procedure of the elections.

Therefore, we suggest the following:a) That the Nominations Committee be allowed, if needed, to inform the members of DHST
about the profile of additional candidates and the offices that must be fulfilled.
b) To allow the Commissions to present nominations directly to the Nominations Committee.

The Nominations Committee

Efthymios Nicolaidis (Chair)June Barrow-Green, Silvia Figueirôa, Donald Opitz, Shi Yunli (members)

Date: March 30, 2021
only1 Note,however, that the previous nomination committee was appointed
on March 4 2020.