I'm entering the final stretch of the PhD program at the University of Michigan School of Information. After two years of a master's degree, and in my sixth year of the doctoral program, I've learned much, and am excited to go out into the world as a journeyman scholar. As such, I am currently on the academic job market, seeking a tenure track assistant professorship or postdoctoral position.
My dissertation research describes two mechanisms underlying institutional change and the formation of interdisciplinary organizations. For the first mechanism, when disciplines come together and negotiate working relationships (for instance, through a collaborative project), they commonly find that fundamental constructs and vocabulary are the same on the surface but have important differences in meaning. I call this collective negotiation of operating vocabularies and languages, and agreements of what is and is not referenced or invoked, ontic occlusion and exposure. The second mechanism observes a process of institutional transference, whereby unresolved fundamental questions arising at the intersection of disciplines, when confronted with a boundary (a project or event ending, a funding period concluding, etc.) find continuation and new life in other institutional forms and programs. As a case study, I analyze the University of Michigan Digital Library project - one of six large digital library projects funded by NSF, DARPA, and NASA under the Digital Libraries Initiative-Phase One (DLI-1). The description of these mechanisms opens a new way to both describe the history of, as well as approach situations involving institutional change involving multiple disciplines. The dissertation also contributes a historical account of a critical phase in the development of contemporary information infrastructure.
After I complete the dissertaiton in the summer of 2010, I plan to continue with this research by similarly analyzing the remaining five digital library projects under the DLI-1 banner (Carnegie Mellon University, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, and UC-Santa Barbara.) If you have questions about or ideas for this research, please email me.
In the summer of 2008, just after spending a summer as a visiting research fellow at IBM Almaden Research Center, I took part in a workshop at Santa Clara University exploring Values in the Design of Information Systems and Technology (VID). It's an exciting emerging community of fascinating transdisciplinary scholars - a community I feel lucky to be a part of. We are organizing a VID workshop for May 6-7, 2010, hosted by NYU. One of the aims is to collectively write and publish a popular press book introducing the VID approach through the analysis of six "common objects." Stay tuned for more information, but in the meantime, check out the workshop website!
Last updated February 3, 2010