Research
My research interests focus on the intersection of several interrelated questions, which I approach using qualitative methods:
- What is scientific memory? How does science "remember?
- What is the nature of expertise, scientific and otherwise?
- How do information technologies (digital and other) play a role in creating, establishing, and maintaining memory and expertise?
Exploring these questions in the School of Informatics has led me to a number of projects, both applied and theoretical, "solo work" and collaboration.
Current Projects
Data and Records: Policy, Pedagogy, and Practice
Currently, I'm focusing on how digital technologies and the data they create/store shape science practice, teaching, and ethics. I'm looking at various collaborative technologies (including Web 2.0), gaming platforms, and similar infrastructures and how they are being used in science.
This work has been informed extensively by questions raised by my Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Scientists, Records, and the Practical Politics of Infrastructure", was an ethnographic study of recordkeeping in a basic academic science laboratory. I studied lab notebooks and their creators to learn more about their personal information organization practices, how those practices contributed to their development as professionals, and how the scientists negotiated their personal information needs with the larger mandates of their laboratory and their profession. This research led me to my postdoctoral research at CENS, where I worked on metadata practices for sensor networks, information sharing across disciplinary boundaries, and the mechanisms to make them happen.
Science, Technology and the Nature of Expertise
Pervasive Computing, Health Care, and the Elderly: ETHOS (Ethical Technologies in the Homes of Seniors)
I am working with Professor Lesa Lorenzen-Huber of the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Professor Kay Connelly of the Department of Computer Science and Professor Jean Camp of the School of Informatics to understand how pervasive technologies and home-based computing for the elderly are constructing new configurations of autonomy, surveillance, and privacy. Standard accounts of privacy, informed consent, power relationship, and value-centered design may no longer hold. What does "expert knowledge" mean when technology mediates the relationships between among care recipient, medical professional, and caregiver?
Science, Technology, and "Amateur Expertise"
Although there is a long history of "citizen scientists" and the professionalization of science is a modern phenomenon, network technologies are making it increasingly possible for amateur scientists are to contribute to fundamental knowledge in the basic sciences. Moreover, these technologies are blurring the distinction between amateur and professional in many fields. How is trustworthy data generated when traditional processes of peer review and the replicability of research are circumvented? What can we learn about trust in information technology, and "social computing" (Wikis, blogs, etc)? I am just beginning to plan some long-term ethnographic studies in this arena.