Catherine Middleton

IFIPWG8.2 provides a welcoming and supportive environment for emerging and established scholars with broad interests in organizations and information technologies. The working group’s events provide a vital forum for critical engagement with theory and practice, offering a collegial (and fun) space for debate and dialogue. I have a strong affinity for the work done by the members and friends of the working group, and have learned a great deal from this community through participation in many events over the past 15 years.

IFIP8.2 is my home within the IS discipline and I would like to contribute to its future success as Secretary of the working group. My approach would be to continue and extend the excellent work done by previous leaders. Building on expertise developed in the past 8 years as a Canada Research Chair, I would focus my efforts on enhancing opportunities for mentoring within the working group, promoting our community’s research across disciplines, and creating opportunities to find audiences for our research beyond the usual academic venues (including industry and government policy makers).

I had the privilege of acting as Organizing Chair for the 2008 working conference in Toronto, and also organized the 2007 OASIS meeting at ICIS in Montreal. I served as Secretary of the Association for Internet Researchers from 2009-2013, providing me with valuable experience in governing an academic association. I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of CANARIE, Canada’s advanced research and education network (2015-2017), and a member of the Board of Compute Ontario (an organization that works to provide high performance computing infrastructure for research). Participation in both these boards provides me with interesting opportunities to observe changes in the research environment, and informs my own research on the evolution of digital society. Please see www.ryerson.ca/~cmiddlet for an overview of my research agenda, publications, research funding and collaborations.