Presenting Michael!

Hi there, CHI community. I’m Michael Nelson, and I’m really excited to be a part of this cohort. I’m in my second year of the master’s program in Media and Information at MSU’s Department of Media and Information. After watching movies and eating food, I’m most interested in exploring scholarly communication and knowledge management. I’m currently exploring those latter two topics in research for my master’s thesis and in other projects at my college. I also enjoy project-based work on these topics, as I found this past summer working at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research as part of the University of Michigan iSchool’s Research Experience for Master’s Students program.

In short, I’m enthusiastic about these topics both as a researcher and as a practitioner.

Right now, I’m thinking my project might involve following up on some coursework I’ve done in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development (the field commonly known as ICTD or ICT4D). I’m especially interested in ICTD projects that have been applied in the context of indigenous knowledges.

My interests are informed by the work I did as an undergraduate and by the work I’ve done since then. Studying history at North Park University in Chicago, I became especially interested in knowledge production, specifically knowledge in the human sciences. Then, the ups and downs of working at a startup investment fund and subsequently at a Chicago high school during the years between undergraduate and graduate study spurred my interest in returning to school in the domain of information science.

Looking forward to collaborating with and learning from other Fellows this year, and also to discussing all that right here on this blog with the CHI community!