News & Notes from FIMS

News & Announcements

MakerThinker creative space launched
MakeThinker.org is a public website intended to showcase all the interesting and creative work coming out of the FIMS community. Whether it’s an event poster, a podcast, a video or a publication, we wanted a place to display all the making and thinking that happens in FIMS every day.

In Memoriam: Ian Kerr
The FIMS community is mourning the loss of University of Ottawa Professor Ian Kerr, a founding FIMS faculty member and early architect of the Media, Information & Technoculture (MIT) program. Professor Kerr passed away on August 26 after a battle with cancer. View his obituary or the FIMS announcement of his passing online.

Awards & Accomplishments

Melissa Adler, Assistant Professor, was awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant for her project titled, "Desire in sight: Aesthetics of knowledge organization."

Juan Bello, FIMS instructor and research collaborator, was recently awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Concept to Realization grant for his collaborative commemorative project documenting wartime massacres in El Salvador. This grant follows on the heels of an earlier Canada Council of the Arts Research and Creation grant that allowed him to do the initial groundwork for the longer documentary project. Bello also received a London Arts Council grant for this project last month. He is both a contributor to Professor Amanda Grzyb's SSHRC funded research project on El Salvador and teaches production courses in the MIT program at FIMS.

Hannah Buckley, Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture student, completed her creative project titled, "To: Virginia," during the summer 2019 term. The work represents Hannah's "most recent collection of songs, which marries her interests in traditional popular song form, field recording, and ambient composition," and it is available to listen to on Spotify.

Jacquie Burkell, Associate Professor, was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project titled, "The Matter of Consent: Participants' Perspectives on the Research Use of Social Media Posts."

Davin Helkenberg, LIS PhD candidate, received the Best Student Paper (the Student-to-CAIS Award) at Congress 2019 in Vancouver, BC, June 3-5. The paper was titled, "Young women encountering information on sexuality in young adult literature."

Marnie James and Alec Mullender, current MLIS students, were winners of the Graduate Student category of CARL's Research in Librarianship Grant competition. Announced on May 7, the grant will support the students’ research project titled, "Invisible Structures: How Classification Defines and Divides US." The project is a guided research project under the supervision of Assistant Professor Melissa Adler.

Kate Johnson, Professor Emerita, was awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant for her project titled, "Canadian libraries' role in the scholarly communication ecosystem: A study of journal cancellation decision-making at six academic libraries."

Max Martin, MMJC student, was the recipient of the 2019 HaakSaan Responsible Journalism Scholarship, presented annually to a full-time student in the MMJC program based on academic achievement. As the recipient, Max published an op-ed in Western News on May 22 titled, "Realities must be shared - thanks or no thanks." The op-ed was also published in the Hamilton Spectator.

Mark Nonkes, MLIS student, was awarded the Spirit of Librarianship Award for the Summer 2019 term, while Kendall Sturgeon, FIMS Grad Library staff member, won the Fantastic FIMS Award. Both awards are distributed by the MLIS Students' Council. Past winners can be viewed under FIMS Awards.

Romayne Smith Fullerton, Associate Professor, received the Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition Award from the International Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication for her paper "Naming names or no? How Germany fits in an international comparison of crime coverage." This work stemmed from Professor Smith Fullerton's SSHRC-supported comparative study of crime coverage in 10 countries.

Matt Stahl, Associate Professor, has been designated the FIMS Rogers Chair appointee for the academic years 2019-21. Professor Stahl's project is titled "Debt, Austerity, and the Media," and it will include several public events on and off-campus over the coming two years.

Publications & Presentations

Nick Dyer-Witheford, Associate Professor, Atle Mikkola Kjosen, Assistant Professor, and James Steinhoff, PhD in Media Studies candidate, published the book Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism in June through Pluto Press. Read a preview.

Kane Faucher, Assistant Professor, published an article titled, "Is Instagram's removal of its 'like' counter a turning point in social media?" in The Conversation on July 21, 2019.

Instructor Mark Rayner took a turn participating in the Western News column Read. Watch. Listen. in a column titled, "Who knew ‘Nothing’ could be so fun?" published on August 19, 2019.

Paulette Rothbauer, Associate Professor, published an article titled, "Libraries can have 3-D printers but they are still about books" in The Conversation on August 1, 2019.

Sam Trosow, Associate Professor, published the article, "Fighting Doug Ford's budget cuts to Ontario libraries," in The Conversation on May 13.

Professor Nadine Wathen took a turn participating in the Western News column Read. Watch. Listen. in a column titled, "'Silence' playing on a loop," published on June 25, 2019.

Professor Wathen also published an article titled, "True or false? Men and women face violence in their relationships equally," in The Conversation on August 29, 2019.

In the Media

Jeremy Copeland, FIMS instructor and MMJC Program Chair, appeared in the first episode of the new Who Do You Think You Are? podcast, hosted by Nino Ricci, the Alice Munro Chair in Creativity at Western University. The podcast focuses on researchers on campus who build bridges across disciplines and look for new and creative ways of approaching problems.

Robyn Edge, MLIS student, was profiled in the Librarianship.ca column, Freshly Minted on June 2, 2019.

Professor Anabel Quan-Haase was featured in an episode of the Who Do You Think You Are? podcast, hosted by Nino Ricci. The episode was titled, "Is this the Good Place?" and explores "the social network as a safe haven for people to seek solace and understanding but also a bad place where negativity can fester." It was published on June 25, 2019.

Professor Quan-Haase also joined Western student Kristen Longdo on CBC London Morning on August 14, 2019, in a segment titled, "Re-writing the textbook."

Tiara Sukhan, recent PhD in Media Studies graduate (PhD MS'19), was interviewed on CBC Radio London Morning on May 14. In the interview, Sukhan discusses why reality TV such as The Bachelorette holds appeal.

Sam Trosow, Associate Professor, was featured in an article titled, "Project eyes sector's freedom of expression policies," published in Western News on September 5, 2019.

Professor Nadine Wathen was quoted in an article published on the Global News website on April 19, 2019, titled "Elana Fric was killed after filing for divorce. How do we make leaving less dangerous?"

Additional Activities of Note

The Radio Western Mix Masters three-part series, produced by students in the MMJC program, was aired in April 2019. The three episodes covered a wide variety of topics of interest on campus including FOCO, eating disorders, overcoming barriers on campus, imposter syndrome and more.

Latest episode of the "So What? The Podcast About LIS Research" podcast
In advance of the publication of the second issue of ELIP, the podcasters from "So What?" spoke to MLIS students and faculty about their experiences working on the journal. Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP) - the open access, peer-reviewed journal managed by the students in the MLIS program at Western University and published by the FIMS Graduate Library - illustrates the importance of engaging LIS students as active participants in the scholarly communications ecosystem. It also highlights the voices of emerging scholars with important new perspectives. Listen to the episode.