Several I School students and faculty are preparing to present their work at the upcoming iConference 2012 in Toronto, Canada.
Adjunct professor Geoff Nunberg will be a keynote speaker at the conference. Nunberg is a linguist whose research includes semantics and pragmatics, text classification, and written-language structure; he also writes on the social and cultural implications of new technologies. His keynote address is “A Word Whose Time has Come: A Brief History of ‘Information.’”
Doctoral student Daniela Rosner is organizing a panel discussion entitled “Is information material? Digital materialities and mediated logics.” Rosner’s research investigates how technologies encode cultural histories, and traces the ways in which materials and technical skills intertwine.. The panel will include I School assistant professor Jenna Burrell.
MIMS student Dave Lester will be participating in the panel discussion “Digital Humanities (in | and | vs.) iSchools?” Lester is the creative lead and former assistant director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the co-founder of THATCamp, the Humanities And Technology Camp unconference. The panel is organized by I School alumnus Ryan Shaw (Ph.D. 2010, MIMS 2005), who is now on the faculty of the University of North Carolina.
Professor John Chuang, the head graduate advisor for the I School's doctoral program, will be participating in a workshop with other Ph.D. program directors, and adjunct professor Bob Glushko is a member of the iConference program committee.
The conference also features a number of I School alumni, in addition to Ryan Shaw. Jerome McDonough (Ph.D. 2000) will be presenting the poster “Significant properties of complex digital artifacts: Open issues from a video game case study.” Yuri Tahhteyev (Ph.D. 2009) is on the conference organizing committee and Alessandro Acquisti (Ph.D. 2003, MIMS 2001) and Vivien Petras (Ph.D. 2006) are both on the program committee.
The annual iConference is sponsored by the iSchools Caucus, a coalition of leading information schools from across the US and Canada. The iConference brings together information researchers and professionals who share a passion for making a difference through the study of people, information, and technology. It attracts faculty, students, and researchers, as well as government and private-sector professionals.
The 2012 iConference will be hosted by the University of Toronto, February 7–10. Future iConferences are scheduled to be held in Denton, Texas and Berlin.
