Congratulations to Doctoral students Bonnie Tulloch and Michelle Kaczmarek on winning the Anne and George Piternick Student Research Award for supporting doctoral research activities.
Bonnie Tulloch and Michelle Kaczmarek, Piternick Award recipients
Bonnie is a PhD Candidate and Vanier scholar in her fourth year of studies at UBC iSchool. Her doctoral research explores memetic storytelling as a new information literacy practice that is often associated with young people. In an effort to better understand the significance of memetic storytelling to new conceptualizations of digital citizenship, her dissertation project will examine the ways young people employ Internet memes to communicate and account for information online. Bonnie’s other research interests include a focus on children’s and young adult literature. She has worked on several research projects related to children’s island novels and nonsense poetry, resulting in various conference presentations and a published article. She and Michelle are also co-founders and members of the iStories Lab at UBC, which explores the critical significance of interdisciplinary vocabularies to knowledge translation and exchange within the information field.
Michelle is a fourth year PhD student at the School of Information. Her work investigates the ties and tensions between aspirations and information practices, exploring how people imagine and redesign their relationships with information tools and technologies to work towards better futures. Her proposed dissertation research engages community repair initiatives as sites of information practice, exploring the information stories and aspirations that participate when people come together to support the repair of everyday items. Michelle also volunteers with Language Partners BC and MetroVan Repair Cafés, and she works on collaborative and interdisciplinary scholarship as a part of the iStories Lab and the Information Practice Research & Design Collective.
This award has been endowed by family and friends in honour of Professors Anne and George Piternick. They taught at the School for a combined total of 48 years during which they provided, through their teaching and personal research projects, a stimulating scholarly atmosphere for library and information science research.
The School of Information would like to take this opportunity to thank all our donors for their continued support of the PhD program and congratulate Bonnie and Michelle on receiving this prestigious award!
