It’s been a few weeks since the results of our 2026 trustee elections were announced at the AGM at RSECon26 in Sheffield. Now that the new trustees are settling into their roles, we wanted to introduce ourselves and say a huge thank you to our colleagues who stood down.

The Society of RSE is a registered charity, and all of our activities are overseen by the board of trustees. We manage the Society’s finances, coordinate with the organising committee to run the annual RSE Conference and oversee the other Society events and activities. Every year, one-third of the trustees step down to make way for new members to step up and join us. So there are always fresh faces joining us to represent our members and shape the future of the RSE movement in the UK and around the world.

The 2026 AGM & Elections

The Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) takes place each year at the RSE Conference. This year’s took place on Thursday 10th September at The Wave in Sheffield. A recording of the AGM will be available on the Society’s YouTube page soon. The AGM included updates on the Society’s activities over the last twelve months, which we will share in a separate announcement soon, once the recording is available. We also announced which trustees were standing down, continuing to serve, and the results of the elections for new trustees, which were held online over the summer.

An Amendment to the Constitution

We held a special resolution at the AGM to vote on a minor but important change to the Society’s Constitution. Following the vote, we updated our constitution to increase the maximum number of trustees from 14 to 15, allowing us to appoint an additional trustee to the board this year.

Standing Down

The following trustees stood down at this year’s AGM, either because they have served a full three-year term (and may be eligible to stand again) or because they’ve chosen to move on to other things.

• David Beavan
• Mike Simpson
• Stef Piatek
• Lyndsey Ballantyne
• Twin Karmakharm

The Society would like to thank them for their hard work, and we wish those moving on all the best with their future plans.

Newly Elected

We had more applications than vacancies this year, which meant that we had to hold a competitive election. This election was held online, so that all of our members had the opportunity to vote. The results were then announced at the AGM, allowing the new trustees to get to work as soon as possible.

Congratulations to our new and re-elected trustees:

• Mike Simpson (re-elected)
• Christine Stawitz
• Laura Crawford
• Isabel Fenton
• Ryan Pepper

Finally, following the update to the constitution, the trustees voted to also appoint Stephen, who just missed out on the election.

• Stephen Thompson

Continuing

The new trustees (and Mike!) will join our continuing trustees:

• Samantha Ahern
• Iain Barrass
• William Haese-Hill
• Gillian Sinclair
• Elena Breitmoser
• James Tyrrell
• Mark Basham
• Adrian Mircea Nenu
• Martin O’Reilly

We are so grateful to everyone who gives up their time to support the Society and its activities.

More Information

You can always find the full list of current trustees and their roles on our Governance Page. That page also includes the lists of previous years’ trustees and our Trustee Timeline.

If you’re interested in what the trustees do and our decision-making process, we have monthly meetings where we all get together to give updates on our activities and to vote on various issues. The Decision log and Minutes from these meetings are publicly available on our GitHub page.

Get Involved

If you want to get involved with the Society, there are a few different options.

• Join the Conference Committee. The call for the next one will go out shortly after the conference has ended.
• Join one of our Regional Groups or Special Interest Groups.
• We also have a number of Working Groups, where you can work with trustees and other members of the community to further the Society’s goals. The full list can be found on our Governance page.
• Or you can stand as a Trustee yourself. Nominations usually open in May, with elections held over the summer.

Finally, don’t forget to join us on Slack, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on our various social media channels to stay up to date with the latest news and calls that you can get involved with.

• All of our pages and profiles can be found on our LinkTree Page.