Bravo! Introducing your new Members Council representatives

New Network Members representitives, Europeana Foundation, CC BY-SA

The results are now in, and your new Members Council representatives are: Georgia Angelaki, Erik Buelinckx, Olimpia Curta, Francesca Di Donato, Wim van Dongen, Barbara Fischer, Sanja Halling, Karin Glasemann, Sergiu Gordea, Gill Hamilton, Susan Hazan, George Homs, Lizzy Jongma, Max Kaiser, Julia Katona, Paul Keller, Vera Kriezi, Joke van der Leeuw-Roord, Jef Malliet, Johan Oomen, Lars Rogstad, Cristina Roiu, Merete Sanderhoff, Antje Schmidt, Sorina Stanca, Fred Truyen, Romain Wenz, and Uldis Zarins.

See a full breakdown of the results.

The 2016 elected representatives complement the Councillors elected in 2015 who still have a year term to fulfil: Vladimir Alexiev, Stephan Bartholmei, Emmanuelle Bermes, Laura Carletti, Reyes Carrasco Garrido, Marco De Niet, Ellen Euler, and Marcin Werla.

Congratulations to all 28! We’re delighted that the outcome of these elections represents the breadth of expertise, diversity of sectors and different nationalities that make up our Network Association, and that a good gender balance has been reached.

La danse des ballons en Californie, National Library of France, Public Domain

You’ll be able to get to know each new elected representative better via our Meet the Members Council series, so stay tuned. And in the meantime, feel free to get in touch with them if you have any questions.

Elections and voting — Lessons learnt

The elections ran from 8 to 14 November. Out of 1,523 eligible voters, 444 participated in the elections and voting. We recorded 23 requests to receive a new User ID and password.

The #EuropeanaElects hashtag was used 277 times, reaching a total audience of 304,805 people.

We recorded a 30 percent participation rate, which is lower than in 2015. The Voting/Elections Working Group will look into the participation level closely and offer its recommendations at a later stage.

Next steps

The new Members Council is composed of 36 elected representatives and will start working together from 1 January 2017; however, they will be asked to participate in the Management Board election that kicks off in December 2016. The Members Council will elect a new Management Board between 10 and 17 January 2017; the results of the Management Board elections will be announced on 20 January 2017.

The next Members Council meeting will take place early 2017. As with our three meetings in 2016, we’ll be putting our heads together to draw up priorities for Europeana, and look at sustainability for the future. If you’d like to learn more about how the Members Council feeds into the work of Europeana, then please refer to our Network page.

Thank you

We want to thank all of you who ran for this election, and we hope to see you campaigning for a seat again next year.

Also, we would like to thank those Councilors who completed their two-year term: René Capovin, Jiří Frank, Kerstin Herlt, Jana Hoffmann, Rolf Kallman, Breandán Knowlton, Aranzazu Lafuente Urién, Olivier Schulbaum, and Sašo Zagoranski.

The Council Conclusions recognise the value of the Network Association, and that this represents an asset of the Europeana ecosystem.

As the Association is still young, we’re always looking to improve. I’m grateful to my colleagues in the Voting Working Group — Joke van der Leeuw-Roord (MB), Rolf Kallman (MB), Emmanuelle Bermès (MC), Laura Carletti (MC), Jef Malliet (MC) — for their work to make this year’s elections transparent, smooth and successful.

And a final thank you to all the voters who along with choosing their new representatives also approved the eight papers that were submitted. We’re very grateful for your valuable time and feedback.

Read the full and final results.