I am currently Director, Social Change Enabling Capability Platform and Professor of Information Sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. My research interests include:
- individuals’ information behaviours
- web usability & users’ experience of technology
- community engagement & societal research impact
- qualitative and mixed method research designs
- higher education
My prior positions include as Dean (Research and Development) for the disciplines of Health, Arts & Design at Swinburne University of Technology and research leadership roles at Charles Sturt University (Australia) and University of Alberta (Canada), including as a former Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. I also served on the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts.
I have received research grants from the Australian Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Australian Library and Information Association, and other agencies.
I conduct research on various topics in information behaviour and technology use. My research interests are interdisciplinary in nature, exploring the social construction of knowledge, community engagement and societal impact, user technology assessment, information literacy, qualitative inquiry and information issues in the context of higher education. I use a range of qualitative and mixed methodologies and methods, including grounded theory, discourse analysis, and heuristic assessment.