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

Andrew Herman aherman at wlu.ca
Thu Jan 12 14:28:42 PST 2012


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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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