[Air-L] Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, Mary L. Gray to Join Microsoft Research

Tama Leaver tamaleaver at gmail.com
Thu Jan 12 16:09:02 PST 2012


Wow, that really is a dream team - congrats to Microsoft on the recruitment
and to Nancy, Kate and Mary.  I can only imagine what impressive panels
you'll be leading at #IR13! :)

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Andrew Herman <aherman at wlu.ca> wrote:

> MSR has hit the trifecta!
>
> Andrew Herman, Ph. D.
> Associate Professor and Chairperson
> Department of Communication Studies
> Graduate Program in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory
> Wilfrid Laurier University
> Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5
> CANADA
> 519 884-1970 x3693
>
> >>> Michael Zimmer <zimmerm at uwm.edu> 01/12/12 4:02 PM >>>
> Congrats to all!
>
> -michael
>
>
> --
> Michael Zimmer, PhD
> Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
> Co-Director, Center for Information Policy Research
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> e: zimmerm at uwm.edu
> w: www.michaelzimmer.org
>
>
> On Jan 12, 2012, at 12:21 PM, danah boyd wrote:
>
> > Many of you have asked me whether or not Microsoft Research was truly
> intending to invest in social media / internet studies.  With this in
> mind, I have fantastically awesome news to share: Nancy Baym, Kate
> Crawford, and Mary L. Gray are all joining Microsoft Research.  MSR will
> continue to invest in postdocs, PhD internships, and visitors with the
> hope of supporting social scientists who are asking critical
> socio-technical questions about the rise of new technologies.
> >
> > In short, I'm sooo soooo sooooooo excited.  <GRIN>  w0000t!!!!
> >
> >
> > My Blog Post:
> >
> > "Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, Mary L. Gray to Join Microsoft Research"
> >
>
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/01/12/nancy-baym-kate-crawford-mary-l-gray-to-join-microsoft-research.html
> >
> > ::bounce:: I am *ecstatic* to announce that Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford,
> and Mary L. Gray are all joining Microsoft Research New England in
> Cambridge, MA. See Jennifer Chayes' announcement:
>
> http://blogs.technet.com/b/inside_microsoft_research/archive/2012/01/12/microsoft-research-raises-the-bar-in-social-media-research.aspx
> >
> > Three years ago (this week), I joined Microsoft Research to help
> integrate social scientists and computer scientists.  I have known about
> and admired MSR since my undergraduate days when I was studying computer
> science.  From the perspective of a researcher, it seemed like
> heaven-on-earth.  As I slowly shifted disciplines, I was saddened to
> think that I had moved myself away from MSR so I was utterly delighted
> when, in 2008, I learned that Jennifer Chayes wanted to start a lab that
> brought computer scientists and social scientists together in new ways.
> I was even more ecstatic when she invited me to help with this endeavor.
>  Over the last three years, I've invited numerous scholars to come to
> MSR as visitors, postdocs, and interns.  In particular, I've focused on
> bringing in social scientists from fields that haven't commonly been in
> conversation with industrial researchers.  This loose network of folks
> have come to be known as the "Social Media Collective." Much to my abs
>  ol
> > ute pleasure, Nancy, Kate, and Mary are going to come to MSR to join
> the Collective.
> >
> > The Social Media Collective focuses on research related to
> socio-technical issues, primarily from a social scientific perspective.
> Most of us use qualitative research methods, but there are also
> quantitative, computational, and experimental folks among us.  We
> primarily look at topics related to the rise of social media, but we do
> so from a variety of different disciplinary lenses.  Our work tends to
> have implications for a wide array of audiences: scholarly, technical,
> policy, business, and public.  Nancy, Kate, and Mary are three of the
> leading scholars in this arena and I'm ecstatic that they'll be coming
> to MSR to advance this line of inquiry.
> >
> > - Nancy Baym is a communication scholar, currently at University of
> Kansas.  She helped define the field of internet studies with her work
> on personal connections, fandom, and online communities.
> >
> > - Kate Crawford is a media studies scholar, currently at the
> University of New South Wales. She weaves together a diverse set of
> interests to examine mobile media, intimacy, and listening, with an eye
> towards public policy implications.
> >
> > - Mary L. Gray is an anthropologist, currently at Indiana University.
> Her work on rural queer youth has helped complicate our understandings
> of marginalized populations' use of technology.
> >
> > Each of these phenomenal scholars has a long history of helping us
> understand the relationship between technology and society and I'm sooo
> soooo soooo excited that they're coming to MSR.  As all of you who know
> me know, I love MSR.  I also love Nancy, Kate, and Mary.  So the
> combination makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
> >
> > MSR is a truly special place: an interdisciplinary home base for folks
> who are interested in studying issues related to technology.  I still
> remember the day that Nancy, Kate, and Mary came back from talking to a
> group of computer scientists and mathematicians about the very meaning
> of "communication."  Needless to say, social scientists don't use that
> term in the same way as mathematicians.  But instead of being horrified,
> these three were glowing because they ended up diving deep into the kind
> of intense conversations that only scholars relish.  That's when I knew
> that MSR was the place for them.
> >
> > Microsoft Research is so lucky that Nancy, Kate, and Mary are coming
> to MSR.  And I'm super lucky that I'm going to have three more awesome
> colleagues. ::bounce::
> >
> >
> > ------
> >
> > "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
> > http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
> > http://www.danah.org/
> > @zephoria
>
-- 
Dr Tama Leaver
Lecturer in Internet Studies
Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University of Technology
GPO Box U1987 Perth WA Australia 6845
Phone: (+61 8) 9266 1258
Fax: (+61 8) 9266 3166
Email: t.leaver at curtin.edu.au
Web: www.tamaleaver.net

CRICOS Provider Code: 00301J (WA) 02637B (NSW)



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