Fall is here and it’s time to celebrate University Press Week. This year’s theme—#StepUP—is a chance to discover the ways university presses step up to educate, enlighten, and take action and to explore how their publications and platforms help to contextualize current issues and events, offer solutions to global challenges, and amplify diverse voices across an array of disciplines.
Inaugurated by Jimmy Carter in 1978, University Press Week has been hosted by the Association of University Presses (AUPresses)—the organization comprising 161 academic publishers in 14 countries around the world—every November since 2012. It will be held this year from November 11 to 15, offering participants the opportunity to connect with university presses through online reading lists, blogs, virtual presentations, author events at bookstores, and more.
University Press Week is about discovering what makes university presses so vital to the publishing ecosystem and the planet—something Peter Berkery, executive director, AUPresses, is keen to raise awareness about. “As the number of commercial publishers shrinks through mergers and consolidation, it’s important to recognize that university presses keep a diverse network of quality publishing alive,” Berkery says, “one that’s often willing to cultivate new scholars or locally important authors.”
Given our often contentious political climate, this year’s theme of #StepUP matters more than ever. “In an age of increasing misinformation, disinformation, and media illiteracy, university presses are respected sources of information,” Berkery says. “The #StepUP theme stresses the importance of being a well-informed and active member of one’s community and the world.”
Anthony Cond, director, Liverpool University Press, and 2024–2025 AUPresses president, shares that sentiment. “A majority of university presses have a primary focus in the humanities, the disciplines that drive critical thinking, justice, democracy, and our understanding of value,” Cond says. “Yet the humanities and higher education more generally are under unprecedented pressure. Providing a sustainable, high-quality forum to amplify the humanities has never felt more important.”
In its quest to be a changemaker, AUPresses became a signatory in 2021 to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compact, an initiative it describes as a “universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere.” The Publishers Compact is an opportunity for the publishing community to contribute to global UN goals, including gender equality, decent work and economic growth, and climate action. The compact, which has been signed by Liverpool University Press, among many others, spotlights the ways that university presses step up to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
University Press Week 2024 is a chance for readers everywhere to discover the wonderful things university presses do to make the planet a richer, more inclusive place. “Mission-driven and academy-owned, essential but often unsung, University Press Week reminds us that university presses are a vital infrastructure for scholarship and for local, national, and international understanding,” Cond says.
During UP Week, Berkery hopes readers will find new books and publishers to love, he says. “We hope that all readers are inspired by the information and insights offered by university presses and their authors to step up to make a positive difference in their communities and the world.”
Click below for the university presses we highlight.
Boydell & Brewer/ University of Rochester Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama
The University of Oklahoma Press
The University of Vermont Press
