News & notes from around FIMS

News from Fellow Alumni

Scott RussellCongratulations to CBC Olympic broadcaster and sports journalist Scott Russell, MA’85 (Journalism). Scott received a Mustangs Award of Excellence award on May 5. FIMS Dean Tom Carmichael and retired broadcast staff members David Mills and Wendie Crouch were at the inaugural Extraordinary Mustangs Gala sponsored by Western Athletics to celebrate with Scott and his family. Three-time Olympic rowing champion and Western grad Marnie McBean was also honoured at the event. Scott and Marnie are the first recipients of the award that celebrates Western's athletic programs and recognizes the highest level of achievement in sports. The event was MC'd by journalism grad Heather Hiscox, (MA'87).

Katrina ClarkeKatrina Clarke, MA’13 (Journalism), currently a reporter at the Toronto Star, is one of 12 journalism students and young journalists chosen by Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) to participate in a two-week program in Europe this summer, which uses the conduct of reporters and other media professionals in Nazi Germany as a launching point for an intensive course of study on contemporary journalism ethics.
 
Alumni Jingzhen Xie (MLIS’09) and Lili Sun's (MLIS’09) paper “Macaudata.com: A Shared Virtual Library and Digitization Project” (2013), published in Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, won a Prémios de Excelência award at the Fourth Outstanding Achievement Awards for Macao Research in Humanities and Social Sciences. This year 56 paper were awarded out of more than 293 submissions from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (94 monographs, 199 papers).

Journalism alumnus Brodie Fenlon (MA’99), has been appointed as Senior Director of CBC News Digital. Fenlon joined CBCNews.ca as Managing Editor in 2013. He worked as a reporter for newspapers in London, Ontario and Toronto before moving to digital at The Globe and Mail. In 2011, he helped launch The Huffington Post Canada, where he served as Managing Editor of News.

News & Announcements

Brandi BormanWelcome to Brandi Borman, new Manager, Graduate Student Services
With the retirement of Rosanne Greene, Brandi Borman, MLIS’02, joined FIMS on May 30th as the Manager, Graduate Student Services. Brandi has worked in various roles in the Registrar's office for eight years and served as Assistant Registrar at Huron University College for 5 years. The FIMS community is happy to welcome Brandi aboard.


Faculty of Information & Media Studies issues letter to Government of Newfoundland/Labrador regarding library closures
After FIMS Faculty Council voted to support the initiative on May 18, Dean Thomas Carmichael forwarded a letter to government officials in Newfoundland and Labrador expressing concern over the decision to close 54 public libraries in the province due to budget constraints. Read the letter.

Visit from Alison Macrina, Library Freedom Project
On February 3, FIMS welcomed Alison Macrina, Founder and Director of the Library Freedom Project, for an afternoon of events focused on information and data privacy and library practice. A video recording of a panel discussion featuring FIMS Asper Fellow datejie cheko green and Associate Professor Jacquelyn Burkell is available online.

In Memoriam: Geoffrey Pendrill
The FIMS community was saddened to hear that Geoffrey Pendrill, Professor Emeritus at the School of Library and Information Science at Western University, passed away on December 19, 2015. Prior to moving to Canada in 1968, Pendrill lectured for several years in Medical History and Library Science at the University of Sheffield. He also served as Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Awards & Accomplishments

Nick Dyer-WithefordProfessor Nick Dyer-Witheford has been awarded the Gertrude J. Robinson book prize for his monograph titled, Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. Professor Dyer-Witheford accepted the award at the Canadian Communication Association's (CCA) Annual Meeting on May 30, which took place in Calgary. In accepting the award, Dyer-Witheford noted the important contribution made by several present and past members of the FIMS Media Studies doctoral program, who influenced his thinking on the book's topic.

Edward ComorProfessor Edward Comor was awarded the title of Faculty Scholar for 2016 - 2018. The award recognizes the achievements of faculty members in teaching and/or research. Some general information about the Faculty Scholar award is available in the news item, "Edward Comor named 2016 Faculty Scholar."



Liwen VaughanProfessor Liwen Vaughan has been appointed as Associate Editor of Information Processing & Management, a leading international journal in the field of information science.




Additional Activities of Note

Paulette RothbauerIn January, Associate Professor Paulette Rothbauer travelled to Oslo and Akershus University College in Norway to participate in a small working group on "Literature and Life". The workshop focused on “shared reading” methodologies in reading groups for health and well-being and featured husband and wife team Jane Davis (Director of the Reader Organisation in the U.K.) and Philip Davis (Professor of Literature, University of Liverpool and author of Reading and the Reader, OUP, 2013). This work continues a long-term scholarly exchange between Prof. Emerita Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Prof. Lynne McKechnie, Prof. Paulette Rothbauer, Prof. Lucia Cedeira Serantes (now at Queen’s, CUNY) and members in the Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science at HiOA: Cecilie Naper, Kjell Ivar Skjertingstad, Knut Oterholm, Åse Kristine Tveit and Prof. Emerita Jofrid Smidt. The research group is happy to announce a new collection of essays, “Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/Practice/Politics,” will be published this June.

Rosie BartonThe 2016 Clissold Lecture featuring the CBC's Rosie Barton is now available on Youtube. Titled, "Power & Politics: Covering a Tumultuous Year in Canadian Politics", footage of the event was shot by MMJC students. To see the lecture in its entirety, visit: http://www.fims.uwo.ca/news/2016/power__politics_covering_a_tumultuous_year_in_canadian_politics.html


Professor Nick Dyer-Witheford, current Rogers Chair, organized a lecture series which included several international guests. Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, who authored “The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB” (2010), and “The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries” (2015), were on hand in early March for their book launch, and to present a lecture. Kyiv-based filmmaker and writer Oleksiy Radynski also visited in early March to present screenings of two of his documentaries, Integration (2014) and People Who Came to Power (2015).

Saumava Mitra's (Media Studies PhD student) ongoing research on Afghan photojournalists was showcased by International Media Support -- a non-governmental organization supporting freedom and safety of journalists around the world -- in their presentation entitled "Safeguarding media in Afghanistan: The history of the Afghan Journalist Safety Committee" on May 2 in Helsinki, Finland as part of the events for World Press Freedom Day organized by the Government of Finland and UNESCO, May 2-4.

Meredith LevineMeredith Levine, FIMS Lecturer and co-chair of the CAJ Ethics Committee, co-wrote a discussion paper outlining guidelines for naming sexual complainants. The paper explores the ethical issues surrounding sexual assault complainants who either consent to, or are considering consenting to, being publically identified by a news organization. Read the paper.


Successful Defenses

Niall Conroy, LIS PhD candidate, successfully defended his thesis, "Understanding Collaborative Sense-making for System Design - An Investigation of Musicians' Practice" on Friday, June 24, 2016. (Link not yet available)

Moutasem Zakkar, MHIS candidate, successfully defended his thesis, "Visualizing and Interacting with Social Determinants of Health" on Wednesday, June 15, 2016. (Link not yet available)

Alexandre Fortier, LIS PhD candidate, successfully defended his thesis, “Does one size fit all? The Influence of Need for Cognition and Need for Cognitive Closure on Information Behaviour” on Tuesday, June 14, 2016. (Link not yet available)

Kim Martin, LIS PhD candidate, successfully defended her thesis, “Creating Context from Curiosity: the role of serendipity in the research process of historians,” on Monday, April 25, 2016.

Richard Davila, Media Studies PhD candidate, successfully defended his thesis, "No Hay Sólo Un Idioma, No Hay Sólo Una Voz: A Revisionist History Of Chicana/os and Latina/os in Punk" on Friday, March 11, 2016.

Michael Schmalz, Media Studies PhD candidate, successfully defended his dissertation, “Innovation in the North American Console Video Game Industry 2001-2013: A Critical Analysis,” on December 15, 2015.