Faculty spotlight

Prof. Andrew Clement
Professor

Professor Clement continues to explore the social and public policy implications of the emerging information/communication infrastructure, and is working on identity, privacy and surveillance research as well as related public education initiatives.

Prof. Aviv Shachak
Assistant Professor

Professor Shachak’s research and teaching is mainly in the area of health informatics. His work seeks to improve usage and help realizing the potential benefits of information systems, especially in health care and biomedicine. This includes the study, design, and evaluation of educational interventions, tutorials and user manuals, user interfaces, and end-user support.

Prof. Brian Cantwell Smith
Professor

Professor Cantwell Smith initiated a seven-volume series publication of his major life work entitled Age of Significance, which provides a sustained, systematic philosophical analysis of the foundation of computation and intentionality.

Prof. Cara Krmpotich
Assistant Professor

I am interested in the complex and dynamic relationships between museums and source communities, the interconnections between memory and material culture, theoretical aspects of repatriation, and generating new modes for understanding post-colonialism in the museum context.

Christine Marton Convocation Photo
Adjunct Instructor

Christine Marton is interested in the online health information behaviour of specific population demographics, primarily women and cancer patients. As well, she has recently investigated the online presence of medical libraries and librarians on the public websites of the top-ranked hospitals in the U.S.

Prof. Chun Wei Choo
Professor

Professor Choo conducts research in the areas of knowledge and information management, information seeking behaviour, and organizational learning. A current project looks at organizations as epistemic communities; another examines information seeking and use in early warning systems.

Prof. David Phillips
Associate Professor

I am currently working on two projects. One looks at the Quantified Self movement, to see how its participants engage with structures and practices of surveillance to fashion senses of self and community. The other studies how iOS and the Android operating system each structure cloud computing in ways that support the corporate interests of their developers - Apple and Google.

Prof. Eric Yu
Professor

Professor Yu’s research focuses on the analysis and design of information systems and services in social contexts, and knowledge management. His projects include designing for security and privacy, agile software development, and business modeling for business intelligence.

Prof. Fiorella Foscarini
Assistant Professor

Professor Foscarini is interested in exploring the relationship between information management and organizational cultures. Her teaching and research also involve studying the form and function of contemporary records through diplomatics and genre theory.

Prof. Heather MacNeil
Associate Professor

Professor MacNeil is currently working on a SSHRC-funded research project examining archival description as rhetorical genre in traditional and web-based environments. Her research interests include theory and methodology of archival arrangement and description, and issues of authenticity in traditional and digital environments.

Prof. Jenna Hartel
Assistant Professor

Dr. Hartel's research is organized around the question: What is the nature of information in the pleasures of life? She is investigating this matter through the concatenated study of information phenomena in serious leisure, that is, cherished, information-rich pursuits such as hobbies. Her empirical research explores the content, structure, and use of leisure information on personal and social levels, and her theoretical work aims to characterize the nature of information in leisure realms.

Prof. Jens-Eril Mai
Associate Professor

Professor Mai’s scholarship questions the conceptual foundation of classification research and practice and his most recent papers draw attention to the challenge of designing and maintaining systems that are transparent and trustworthy.

Prof. Joan Cherry
Professor

Professor Cherry conducted a web-based survey of students in master’s degree programs in six information schools across Canada to investigate satisfaction rates for students in their respective programs. Her interests include human-computer interaction, usability, and research methodology and research ethics.

Prof. Lynne Teather
Associate Professor

Professor Teather’s research includes the history of Canadian museums, contemporary issues in national and international museum development, and the training of museum professionals. She is working on a project with Professor Roger Simon on difficult history and museums by examining the exhibition, "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photographs in America."

Prof. Lynne C. Howarth
Professor

Professor Howarth is working with the Alzheimer Society of Toronto on an SSHRC-funded project to study how individuals with mild cognitive impairment associated with early-stage Alzheimer/Dementia may utilize multi-modal expressions of information such as music, photographs, etc., as memory cues for finding, organizing, and using information.

Prof. Matt Ratto
Assistant Professor

Professor Ratto is developing critical making methodologies that blend scholarly reflection on critical information issues with hands-on material work. His SHHRC-funded project examines changing notions of labor and expertise in relation to 3D printing and rapid prototyping technologies.

Prof. Nadia Caidi
Associate Professor

Professor Caidi pursues her research on the information practices of vulnerable communities. In one of her projects, she helped with the integration of the On Demand Book Service, permitting easy access to reading materials and providing ODBS-related equipment to people of First Nation communities.

Prof. Sara Grimes
Assistant Professor

Dr. Sara M. Grimes researches and teaches in the areas of children's digital media culture(s), digital game studies, critical theories of technology and play. Her current research tracks the growing phenomenon of child-generated digital content in digital games and online environments, focusing on what this development means for children's cultural rights, existing regulatory frameworks and industry standards of practice.

Prof. Seamus Ross
Dean and Professor

Professor Ross researches preserving cultural heritage and scientific digital objects, humanities informatics, and the application of information technology to libraries, archives and museums.

Prof. Siobhan Stevenson
Associate Professor

Professor Stevenson investigates the working conditions within the information economy, particularly at public libraries. She developed a model that attempts to capture the dialectic between the ascendancy of library consumer-producer identity and the diminishment of the public librarian as a skilled, waged, and unionized public service worker.

Prof. Wendy Duff
Professor

Her current research focuses on archival users, access to archival material, digital curation, along with the convergence of libraries, archives, and museums. One of her collaborative projects investigated the impact of technology on museums for the Canadian Heritage Information Network.

Prof. Yuri Takhteyev
Assistant Professor

My book based on an ethnographic study of software development in Brazil is expected to come out in the fall of 2012. The book looks at software development as a case of a modern high-tech work and at how globalization is experienced and constructed in such a context.

I am currently working on a new project exploring the communities of people enaged with preservation of old software.