Sarah Polkinghorne, PhD
Hi! I'm a Research Fellow in Social Change at RMIT University in Melbourne.
This page shares current highlights.
For my full CV, please reach me at: sarah.polkinghorne@rmit.edu.au
Research
A brief introduction
In my research, I focus on:
- People's information practices, including embodied practices. How do people come to be, and to feel, informed? I'm especially interested in practices that are tacit or assumed to be mundane.
- Food-related information practices within the cost of living crisis.
- Scholarly publishing, especially the open access transition.
- The role of technology in miseducating people about their bodies.
- Librarians' discourses and their underlying power relations, norms, and ways of thinking.
Publications
New & recent
- Getting past 'approachability': What cultural humility brings to library and information education. With Lilliana Montoya. Recently published in Hopeful visions, practical actions: Cultural humility in library work, eds. Sarah Kostelecky, Lori Townsend, and David Hurley. ALA Editions (USA) and Facet (UK/Europe).
- Love is a lens: Locating love in library and information studies. With Mary Greenshields. In the Library Trends special issue on the Joy of Information, eds. Jenna Hartel and Hailey Sirackey. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/879128 [pdf of open pre-publication version]
- A devil in the details: Addressing authors' needs in transformative agreements. With Lisa M. Given. Common Place, special issue on The Global Transition to Open. https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.255897ef [open access]
- Holistic approaches to research: From rhetoric to paradigm. With Lisa M. Given. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24450 [check Google Scholar for access]
Presentations
Recent & upcoming
- Information practices, plural: Exploring multiplicity and mutual constitution of practices. (2023, October). Presenting at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
- I have a body, therefore I think, therefore I am. (2023, March). For Nerd Nite, Melbourne, Australia.
- Many paths...and how many mountains? Career moves and social impact. (2023, March). For the Alumni Association of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta.
- What's good to eat? Trial and error and feeling informed in everyday food life. (2023, March). For the Social and Global Studies Centre Seminar Series, RMIT University.
Teaching
I'm currently in a research role, but relish teaching opportunities.
- Human Information Interaction, 2021, for the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies. An exploration of how people experience information. [link to syllabus]
- Information Resource Discovery, 2020, for the University of Ottawa's School of Information Studies. An introduction to information services, information practices and experiences, and search.
Practice
I'm currently on leave from my library role at the University of Alberta.
The core of my librarian work is leading monograph (book) collections at the University of Alberta, including approval plans, demand-driven acquisition, publisher-direct frontlist negotiations, open access transitions, and qualitative and quantitative assessment.
Service
Recent & ongoing commitments
- Past President (2021-2022), Canadian Association for Information Science/L'association canadienne des sciences de l'information (CAIS/ACSI)
- Co-chair, 50th annual CAIS/ACSI conference
- Reviewing for Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Library Trends, Journal of Documentation, and others
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Banner photo: Robert Keane, Unsplash.