On June 20, 2009, John Hopkins University Press Director Kathleen Keane assumed leadership of AAUP. Keane will serve a one-year term, and succeeds Alex Holzman, director of Temple University Press.
Keane began her career in university press publishing in 2002, when she joined the Johns Hopkins University Press as director of finance and operations. She was appointed director of the press in 2004, assuming oversight of an extensive publishing program which includes 200 books and 70 scholarly periodicals per year, in addition to the online collection Project MUSE and customer services operation and fulfillment for 16 client presses.
Keane has been a member of the AAUP Board of Directors since 2007, serving for the past year as president-elect, and was a member of the Task Force on Committees from 2008-2009.
Before moving to the world of university press publishing, Keane worked in commercial medical publishing, holding positions at Harcourt Health Services and J.B. Lippincott & Company. Keane earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Connecticut College and a master’s degree in English from Catholic University of America. She received her M.B.A. from the Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.
In her inaugural address at the AAUP Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Keane discussed the various challenges facing university presses today, and some of the innovative ways in which presses have approached them: