After three years with the honor of serving as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, I am delighted to announce that-following the recent AARHMS elections-I will be succeeded by Prof. Maya Soifer Irish (Rice University) for the three-year term 2018-2021.

As AARHMS members will know, Prof. Irish is a highly accomplished scholar whose pivotal book Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile , which examines the rich fabric of a multiethnic society along the Camino de Santiago and beyond, mines a wide range of local archival sources in order to trace the waxing and waning fortunes of the Jewish community over a three-hundred-year period, to the brink of catastrophic violence. Her article "Beyond convivencia," published in the very first issue of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, has become an essential point of reference for all of us working on interfaith relations in medieval Spain. The first female president of AARHMS, Prof. Irish will bring new perspectives to the field at a time when exciting changes are afoot in the framing of medieval studies as a whole, while continuing our efforts to expand outreach to new communities of scholars in all parts of the world.

My warmest congratulations both to Prof. Irish and to Prof. Miguel Gómez (University of Dayton), who has been re-elected as Secretary-Treasurer of AARHMS. Prof. Gómez has helped to ensure that the organization remains on an excellent financial footing, allowing us to offer a number of junior scholar travel grants in 2017, for the first time in the organization's history. Finally, thanks to Kyle Lincoln (Kalamazoo College), who-inter alia-has been responsible for the smooth running of our elections and our website. As we move into a new phase of AARHMS history, we welcome your ideas and initiatives, your blog entries and your book reviews; don't forget to renew your membership, and consider offering one as a gift to a junior colleague in the field!