• Hello. I'm a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Health, Arts, and Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. My supervisors are Professor Lisa Given and Dr. Kim Thompson. I also work as a librarian at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

       

      This page contains highlights. For more complete information, please see my CV.

       

      I study people's experiences with information in everyday life. I'm intrigued by how our bodies play a part in our information experiences. In my thesis research, I work with people to create video and other forms of data capturing everyday food activities and the information practices within them.

       

      Upcoming:

      • January 23: "Learning, believing, feeling, acting: People's everyday experiences of food information." Lecture in the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies Research and Scholarship Speaker Series. Runs noon-1:00 pm, room TBA, all welcome.
      • March 5: "Things that nobody taught me: influences that can shape a researcher." Inaugural lecture in the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians Research and Scholarship Committee Online Lecture Series. It runs 11:00-noon Mountain time, and there's no fee to join: [Link]

      I'd be happy to hear from you: spolkinghorne@swin.edu.au

    • Publications

       

        New publications include:

        • "The 'user turn' in practice: Information behaviour researchers’ constructions of information users," in Information Research. With Heidi Julien, Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie, and Roger Chabot. [Link]

        • "Treading Water: Results from the Longitudinal Study of Information Literacy Instruction in Canadian Academic Libraries, 1995-2017," in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 42 (1/2). With Heidi Julien. [Forthcoming]

      • Presentations

         

          Recent presentations include:

          • Going GoPro: integrating a wearable camera into qualitative information research (2018, November). Visual presentation at the Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting, Vancouver.
          • Fandom, food, and folksonomies: The methodological realities of studying fun life-contexts (2018, November). A panel organized by Melissa Ocepek, moderated by Jenna Hartel, and also featuring Julia Bullard, Ludi Price, and Eric Forcier, at the Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting, Vancouver.
          • Connecting information behaviour with the senses. (2018, November). Guest lecture for the course Information Users and Uses at the University at Buffalo.
          • Bodies of knowledge: what studying embodiment can teach us about teaching (2018, March). Keynote, Ashton Lecture Series, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

        • Practice

           

            The core of my work as a librarian is managing several aspects of monograph collections at the University of Alberta, including ebooks, approval plans, demand-driven acquisition, and assessment.

             

            Before becoming a collections librarian, I worked as a public services librarian for more than a decade. In this time, I helped people find and use information, manage research data, and work through processes such as making their publications openly available.

          • Service

             

              Recent service commitments include:

            • Awards

               

                Recent awards include:

                • New Leader Award, Association for Information Science and Technology (2018)
                • Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award, Association for Information Science and Technology (2018)
                • Best Overall Paper, Canadian Association for Information Science (with Lisa Given and Lauren Carlson) (2017)

              • Curriculum Vitae

                Please feel free to view or download the complete chronicle.

              This work is licensed under a

              Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

               

               

              Banner image by Kelly Tindall.