Diversity and Inclusion Chairs

Diversity and Inclusion Chairs

This blog post introduces the D&I team, describes the upcoming efforts and D&I survey.

Open call for D&I subcommittee

In the D&I panel and business meeting of NAACL 2021, we received feedback that D&I committees should be more open and accessible. The deeply unbalanced geographical distribution of NAACL 2021 attendees was also highlighted in the same meeting (link). In July 2021, we released an open call for folks to apply for the D&I sub-committee, where we received over 50 responses. After careful consideration, D&I advisors and the general chair constituted this D&I subcommittee based on factors like understanding of D&I issues, outreach ability, experience in D&I volunteering and advocacy, and availability.

Statistics for the geographical distribution of NAACL 2021 attendees. Stats are as follows: North America: 1095, South America: 71, Europe: 447, Africa: 21, Asia: 478, Oceania: 25

NAACL 2022 D&I team

At NAACL 2022, the D&I team consists of 18 volunteers from diverse backgrounds and life experiences, serving on six subcommittees with their own missions. Leading up to the conference, more information from the D&I team will be shared in blog posts which we hope will be useful for both new and returning participants in the NAACL community.

Core chairs and advisors

Diana Galván (she/her): Tohoku University, Japan

Snigdha Chaturvedi (she/her): University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

Yonatan Bisk (he/him): Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Pranav A (he/they): Dayta AI, Hong Kong [advisor]

Luciana Benotti (she/her): National University of Córdoba, Argentina [advisor]

Academic Inclusion Chairs

Mission: Ensure the venue is welcoming to researchers from diverse subdisciplines, and conducive to building academic networks across disciplines and career stages.

Parisa Kordjamshidi (she/her): Michigan State University, USA

Aakanksha Naik (she/her): Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Khyathi Chandu (she/her): Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Accessibility Chairs

Mission: Ensure the venue and conference website are accessible for disabled and neurodivergent researchers, including the provision of requested access services.

Arjun Subramonian (they/them): University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Divyansh Kaushik (he/him): Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Childcare Chairs

Mission: Ensure adequate childcare provisions to help researchers who are caregivers of children to attend the conference.

Yuntian Deng (he/they): Harvard University, USA

Shirley A. Hayati (she/her): Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Financial Access Chairs

Mission: Ensure financial access to researchers from minoritized demographics and geographies to attend the conference.

Sasha Luccioni (she/her): Mila and HuggingFace, Canada

Nedjma Djouhra Ousidhoum (she/her): University of Cambridge, UK

Socio-cultural Inclusion Chairs

Mission: Ensure a welcoming and inclusive environment for researchers from various socio-cultural subgroups, accommodate for diverse needs for food and drinks at the conference, as well as support initiatives for groups to socialize and network.

Fatemehsadat Mireshghallah (she/her): University of California, San Diego, USA

Abhilasha Ravichander (she/her): Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Saadia Gabriel (she/her): University of Washington, USA

Publication Chairs

Mission: Increasing accessibility in publications and providing a better platform for name changes

Jiacheng Xu (he/him): University of Texas, USA

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

For NAACL 2022, our key novel initiatives will be:

  • Research mentorship: We plan to provide mentorship on the works, planned to be submitted at the main conference and workshops. This is mainly to help marginalized folks to strengthen their submissions.
  • Affinity group events and mini-workshops: We plan to organize events to promote and highlight work from members from various affinity groups and provide a platform for communities to grow. These events will be in the form of presentation sessions, socials, D&I sessions and so on.

More information about these initiatives will be announced soon. We will also put major efforts on diversifying representation, participation and outreach, travel and registration grants, accessibility and better childcare services.

Funding for NAACL 2022 D&I

Our D&I initiatives would not be successful without the help from sponsors. The D&I sponsorship would go to providing compute for research mentorship, funding travel grants and registration waivers for underrepresented folks, providing accommodations for researchers with disabilities and more. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring NAACL D&I initiatives, please contact the sponsorship chair.

D&I survey

We are very interested in knowing how the conference can improve in ways that make all attendees feel welcome and included. This survey will help us in making better decisions regarding the D&I initiatives. The survey includes general D&I questions and optional sections on accessibility, childcare, financial and academic inclusion. As part of several efforts to improve inclusivity at NAACL, we ask that you fill out this demographics and inclusion survey. This should take about 15-20 minutes of your time. The form will be open till the end of NAACL 2022, but ideally, please fill the survey by the end of November. This will help us in making better decisions regarding our budget and plans.

Contact

If you have questions or suggestions about Diversity and Inclusion efforts at NAACL 2022, please reach out to us directly via email (naacl-2022-dei-chairs@googlegroups.com).