Barbara Crow [1], York University

Dr. Barbara Crow commenced as Associate Dean Research on July 1, 2009, when the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies came into being. Her portfolio as Associate Dean includes supporting and expanding research in the new Faculty and disseminating information about the Faculty’s research activities both within and outside the university.  Dr. Crow also holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Communications. From 2007 to 2009 she served as Director of the Joint York/Ryerson Graduate Program in Communication & Culture [2].

Dr. Crow’s current research interests relate to the social, cultural, political and economic implications of digital technologies. Her most recent project, undertaken in collaboration with Professor Kim Sawchuk of Concordia University and funded with a SSHRC Standard Grant, focuses on senior citizens and mobile technologies. She has also edited collections on mobile technologies, including The Wireless Spectrum:  The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Communication, co-edited with Michael Longford and Kim Sawchuk, University of Toronto Press, in press, “Wireless Technologies, Mobile Practices,” co-edited with Kim Sawchuk and Richard Smith, Canadian Journal of Communication [3], 2008 and  "Digital Feminisms," co-edited with Sheila Petty, Atlantis [4], 2008.

In addition, Dr. Crow has worked on a number of large-scale interdisciplinary grants with engineers, designers, artists and communication scholars to produce technical and cultural content for mobile experiences, the Mobile Digital Commons Network [5] (MDCN), 2004-2007 and the Canadian Wireless Infrastructure Research Project [6] (CWIRP), 2006-2008. Dr. Crow is also one of the co-founders of the Mobile Media Lab [7], co-located at York University in Toronto, and in Hexagram, at Concordia University in Montreal. The lab is made up of an interdisciplinary research team exploring wireless communications, mobile technologies and locative media practices. The lab also houses the journal wi: journal of mobile media [8] for which she is a co-founding editor.

Dr. Crow also has a longstanding commitment to feminist research. In this field, she has edited several book collections, including Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, New York University Press, 2000 and three revised editions of Open Boundaries:  A Canadian Women’s Studies Reader, 2000, 2004 and 2008 with Lise Gotell. In 2005, she and Dr. Leslie Regan Shade were awarded a best paper for their report on "Getting Gender into the ICT Agenda:  Canadian Experiences” and presented at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.  From 2002-2004, she served as president of the Canadian Women's Studies Association [9] (CWSA/ACEF).  In this position, she increased the membership, established undergraduate and graduate essay prizes, a book award, and facilitated its web presence.  She currently serves on the editorial boards of Atlantis and the Canadian Journal of Communication.

Fred Fletcher [10], Professor Emeritus, York University

Dr Fred Fletcher is Professor Emeritus, Communication Studies and Political Science and holds the honorific title of University Professor at York University. He was founding Director of the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture (a partnership of York University and Ryerson University), 1998-2006. He is Past Chair of the Canadian Media Research Consortium, co-investigator on the Canadian Internet Project and co-author of Canada Online! A comparative analysis of Internet users and non-sers in Canada and the World (2005). He has also published several recent studies of the effects of the Internet on the news media. Hi major publications have been on the media and politics and communication and democracy (especially electoral communication). His current work deals with media credibility, the future of news, and an analysis of the second CIP national survey of Internet use in Canada, conducted in 2007. In 2007, he was Visiting Professor at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research in Melbourne.

Michael Geist [11], University of Ottawa

Dr. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School.

Dr. Geist has written numerous academic articles and government reports on the Internet and law and is a columnist on technology law issues that regularly appears in the Toronto Star [12], Ottawa Citizen, and BBC [13]. He is the creator and consulting editor of BNA's Internet Law News, a daily Internet law news service, editor of the monthly newsletters, Internet and E-commerce Law in Canada and the Canadian Privacy Law Review [14] (Butterworths), the founder of the Ontario Research Network for E-commerce, on the advisory boards of several leading Internet law publications including Electronic Commerce & Law Report (BNA), the Journal of Internet Law (Aspen) and Internet Law and Business (Computer Law Reporter). He is the author of the textbook Internet Law in Canada [15] (Captus Press) which is now in its third edition, and the editor of In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law, published in 2005 by Irwin Law.

Rachel Gibson [16], University of Manchester

Dr. Rachel Gibson is a Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Social Change (ISC), University of Manchester [17]. She Joined the ISC in December 2007 having held previous appointments as Professor of New Media Studies at the University of Leicester, Senior Research Fello in the ACSPRI Center for Social Research (ACSR) in the Research Scool of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and Lecturer in politics at the University of Salford. She completed her PhD thesis on the rise of anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe in the late 20th century at Texas A&M University, USA. She has held visiting research and teaching positions at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), the Department of Politics at the UNiversity of Durham and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She has been a Principal Investigator on the Australian Electiopn Study (AES) and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) and a series of Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) funded projects dealing with impact of the new media on politics. She sits on the editorial boards of a number of international political science and new media journals including the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, the Journal of Information Technology and Politics, Information Polity and Australian Journal of Political Science and regular peer reviews for funding bodies including the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. Her current research interests cover a range of new media and elections-related topics including political parties and citizen participation, the professionalisation of political campaigning, Web linakage analysis and methodologies to map online political networks.She is currently Principal Investigator on a three year ESRC Professional Fellowship project examining the Internet, Electoral Politics and Citizen Participation in Global Perspective. This is a four nation study (U.S., UK, Australia and France) that examines the changes to parties and candidates use of new media in election campaigns, looking particularly at the extent to which they are offering new opportunities for citizens to participate in the campaigns process.

Philip N. Howard [18], University of Washington

Philip N. Howard (BA Toronto, MSc London School of Economics, PhD Northwestern) is an assistant professor in the Communication Department at the University of Washington. His book New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) is about the role of information technology in campaign strategy and political culture. He has published a co-edited collection entitled Society Online: The Internet In Context (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003) as well as articles in New Media & Society, the American Behavioral Scientist, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Howard has been a Fellow at the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D.C., and the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London.

Steve Jones [19], University of Illinois Chicago

Steve Jones has been Internetworking since 1979 when he was using and co-authoring educational materials on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (His first computer experience was with a PDP 8/e.) He received his Ph.D. in Communication from the Institute of Communications Research there in 1987, and is author of numerous books, including Society Online, Doing Internet Research, CyberSociety, Virtual Culture, and Pop Music and the Press. He is editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of New Media and co-founder and co-editor of New Media & Society. A social historian of communication technology, his books have earned him critical acclaim and interviews for stories in Time, the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek and numerous other newspapers and magazines. He has also been interviewed on radio and TV, and has been a guest on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and "Sounds Like Science." Jones serves as Senior Research Fellow for the Pew Internet & American Life Project and is co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers, serving as its president from 1999 to 2003.

Kady O'Malley [20] covers federal politics for CBC.ca [21]. She has appeared on CBC Newsworld, as well as The National, and is a frequent guest on CBC Radio's weekly "Ottawa Report". An unabashed infophile, she spends a frightening large portion of her day monitoring the political blogosphere, both in Canada and the United States, and is facinated by the complex and fractious relationship between old and new media.

Leslie Shade [22], Concordia University

Leslie Regan Shade is an Associate Professor at Concordia University in the Department of Communication Studies in Montreal. Her research focus
since the mid-1990s has been on the social, policy, and ethical aspects of information and communication technologies (ICTs), with particular
concerns towards issues of gender, globalization, and political economy. The research contributions straddle the line between academic and
non-academic audiences, including policymakers and non-profit groups. She is the author of Gender and Community in the Social Construction of the
Internet (Peter Lang, 2002), and co-editor of Feminist Interventions in International Communication (with Katharine Sarikakis, Rowman &
Littlefield, 2008), two volumes in Communications in the Public Interest (edited with Marita Moll, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) and
with Moll, For Sale to the Highest Bidder: Telecom Policy in Canada (CCPA, 2008), and editor of the third edition of Mediascapes: New Patterns in
Canadian Communication (2009). Articles have also appeared in Continuum, The Gazette, Feminist Media Studies, Global Media Journal (Canadian
Edition), Canadian Journal of Communication, and Government Information Quarterly. Funded research projects with Canadian collaborators have
included the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking, the Citizens Telecommunications Policy Forum, and
Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada: The State of the Art.

Rob Shields [23], University of Alberta

Rob Shields is Henry Marshall Tory Chair and a Professor in the Departments of Sociology and of Art and Design, University of Alberta [24].