News & Notes from FIMS

Awards & Accomplishments

Melissa Adler, Assistant Professor, and Amanda Grzyb, Associate Professor, successfully obtained a FIMS Undergraduate Research Experience Fellowship Program grant for 2020-2021 titled, "Max Eisen Papers."

Toluwase Asubiaro, LIS PhD candidate, won the Medical Library Association's 2020 Eugene Garfield Research Fellowship.

Following the promotion and tenure process, Nick Dyer-Witheford has been promoted to full Professor.

Professor Nick Dyer-Witheford and colleague Svitlana Matvyenko (Simon Fraser University), were awarded the 2020 STAiR prize for their recent book, Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism. The award is offered by the International Studies Association.

Lyndsay Foisey, PhD in HIS candidate, is the Co-PI for a successful 2-year CIHR Operating Grant under the titled, "What is the public health risk communication response to COVID-19 in the context of social media?" (PI: Anita Kothari).

Lyndsay was also named a top-ranked submission in the Canadian Bioethics Society Student Writing Contest for her essay titled, "At the intersection of social media, health information and data privacy: A critical commentary on the use of emerging health technologies in Canadian healthcare."

Professor Alison Hearn and her co-applicants - Professors Alissa Centivany, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Tom Streeter - have been awarded a SSHRC Connection Grant for “Big Data at the Margins: A series of panels and workshops”. Drawing its inspiration from its immediate context of London, Ontario, this series of panels and workshops will examine the various ways digital media, big data and artificial intelligence effect the daily lives of those who are economically, socially or geographically marginalized. Panels will be open to the public, and smaller workshops will be open to graduate students and local community activists and policymakers from Southwestern Ontario.

Heather Hill, Associate Professor, was the Fall 2019 recipient of the Fantastic FIMS Award, while MLIS student Kelli Jerome received the Fall 2019 Spirit of Librarianship Award. Elisabeth Davies, Assistant Professor, was awarded the Winter 2020 Fantastic FIMS Award, while MLIS student Jessica Dinan received the Spirit of Librarianship Award. Both awards are given by the MLISSC on a term-by-term basis.

Professor Pam McKenzie and FIMS Instructor Erin Isings successfully obtained a FIMS Undergraduate Research Experience Fellowship Program grant for 2020-2021 titled, "Representations of the Public Library in Canadian Mass Media."

Karen Nicholson, Assistant Professor, won the Seventh Annual Library Juice Paper Contest, for her paper titled, "On the Space/Time of Information Literacy, Higher Education, and the Global Knowledge Economy," published in the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies.

Associate Professor Matt Stahl received funding through the Western Strategic Support for SSHRC Success competition for his study titled, "Accounting for Injustice: Contracts and Compensation in the Recorded Music Industries."

Melanie Sucha, LIS sessional instructor (Information Management), was named Brandon University's new Chief Information Officer. Read the press release.

Publications & Presentations

Professor Tim Blackmore authored a book titled, Gorgeous War: The Branding War between the Third Reich and the United States, published through Wilfrid Laurier University Press in October.

The revised, second edition of Transforming Young Adult Services, edited by Anthony Bernier, and published by ALA Editions was published. The edited collection features chapters by two FIMS faculty: "Misfits, Loners, Immature Students, and Reluctant Readers: Librarianship in the Construction of Teen Readers of Comics" by Lucia Cedeira Serantes, and "Imagining Today’s Young Adults in LIS: Moving Forward with Critical Youth Studies" by Paulette Rothbauer.

Assistant Professor Lucia Cedeira Serantes, with FIMS alumna Amie Wright and NYPL librarian Emily Drew, has co-authored the chapter "International Comic Books and Graphic Novels" included in the new The Library’s Guide to Graphic Novelss, an ALCTS Monograph.

Associate Professor Victoria Rubin and LIS doctoral student Nicole Delellis contributed a chapter titled, "'Fake News' in the Context of Information Literacy: A Canadian Case Study," in the recently published book, Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth world.

Niel Scobie, PhD in Media Studies candidate, published a chapter titled, "Translocality and the Articulation of a Jamaican-Canadian Identity in the Music of Michie Mee." In The Spaces and Places of Canadian Popular Culture. Edited by Victoria Kannen and Neil Shyminsky. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.

Hannah Sung, 2020 FIMS Asper Fellow, published the column "Read. Watch. Listen. with Hannah Sung," in Western News on February 10, 2020.

In the Media

Three MLIS students, currently on co-op, were featured in short videos from the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. Eric Bews, Cleo Harper, and Erica McKenzie all participated in short, promotional videos introducing themselves as Co-op students.

Hridi Das, MLIS student, was featured in an article titled, "Freshly Minted: Hrdid Das," published on the Librarianship.ca website on November 7, 2019.

Lyndsay Foisey, PhD in HIS candidate, was featured in two news articles in relation to her recently obtained CIHR Operating Grant (see Awards & Accomplishments for more info). The first article was titled, "Western teams recruited in effort to combat COVID-19," published in Western News on March 6. The second article was titled, "Western University receives more than $400,000 for coronavirus research," published on CBC News online on March 6.

Research into the online harassment of female academics, conducted by Chandell Gosse, Media Studies PhD candidate, and with colleague Shandell Houlden, is discussed in the article "The growing problem of online harassment in academe," published on the University Affairs website on October 23, 2019.

Victoria Rubin, Associate Professor, was a guest on the Super Awesome Science Show podcast on October 8, 2019. Professor Rubin discussed the LiTR.L team's work with the News Verification browser and identifying satire, clickbait and falsifications online (choose "Don't Fall For Fake News" from October 8 and advance to 13 minutes to hear Professor Rubin's interview).

Sam Trosow, Associate Professor, is featured in a CTVNews online article titled, "'Everyone in London should be concerned': Legal expert weighs in on facial recognition technology," published on March 9, 2020.

Additional Activities of Note

Juan Bello, FIMS instructor, was the Visual (Footage) Researcher on Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President, and the Spy, a documentary series that is now available on NETFLIX (Premiered on January 1st, 2020). The project was produced by ZDFinfo (Germany), JW Productions (Spain), and Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion (Germany) for Netflix, with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA (a program of the European Union).

Successful Defences

Ramon Diab, PhD in LIS candidate, successfully defended his thesis titled, "The General Artificial Intellect," on Friday, February 7, 2020.

James Steinhoff, Media Studies PhD candidate, successfully defended his thesis titled, "Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: An Analysis of Work in the Artificial Intelligence Industry," on November 25, 2019.