Main Speakers

The Speakers

• Paul Callister
  
  

  Professor Paul Callister is Director of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library and an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Professor Callister received his B.A. (majoring in Philosophy) from Brigham Young University, his J.D. (Doctor of Law) from Cornell Law School (serving as Editor-in-Chief of the International Law Journal), and his M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Callister previously served as a law librarian at the University of Illinois College of Law and practiced law for nine years in Southern California. He has served as the Chair of the Copyright Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries, working on regulations concerning the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and legislation to revise Section 108 of the Copyright Act, which grants certain privileges to libraries and archives. He teaches a course in Cyberlaw and Information Policy and regularly publishes and speaks on how the changing information environment affects libraries, jurisprudence, legal education, government institutions, and the rule of law.

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• Rosamund Davies
  
  

  Rosamund Davies is with the Department of Creative, Critical and Communication Studies at the University of Greenwich, London, UK. She has a background of professional practice in the film and television industries. Her current research interests focus on cross art-form practice in the context of media convergence and new media platforms and business models in the creative industries. Her recent visual media work explores the intersection between narrative and archive as cultural forms, including Signals 5 Festival of Visual Arts, Index of Love and art.work.life digital archive/narrative work, in collaboration with the Women's Art Library (MAKE). Rosamund is the 2008 winner of the Common Ground International Award for Excellence in the Development of the Book.

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• Michael A Peters
  
  

  Michael A Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and an honors degree in Geography, before attaining his teaching diploma and teaching in New Zealand high schools for seven years, the last two as head of department. While teaching he completed a major for a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy and returned full time to complete his Master in Philosophy, with first class honors, and PhD in Philosophy of Education with a thesis on the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He has just completed a second book on the subject entitled Wittgenstein as Pedagogical Philosopher (Paradigm Press, 2008) with Nick Burbules and Paul Smeyers. He held a personal chair at the University of Auckland, NZ (2000-03) and Research Professor at the University of Glasgow, UK (2000-05), as well as numerous posts as adjunct and visiting professor throughout the world. He is the executive editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory (Blackwell) and editor of two international ejournals, Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning (both with Symposium) and sits on the editorial board of over fifteen international journals. He has written over thirty-five books and three hundred articles and chapters, including most recently: Global Citizenship Education (Sense, 2008); Global Knowledge Cultures (Sense, 2007); Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of Self (Peter Lang, 2007); Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research (Peter Lang, 2007), Building Knowledge Cultures: Educational and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), and Knowledge Economy, Development and the Future of the University (Sense, 2007). He has a strong research interests in distributed knowledge systems, digital scholarship and elearning systems and has acted as an advisor to government on these and related matters in Scotland, NZ, South Africa and the EU.

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• John Willinsky
  
  

  John Willinsky is currently on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Education. Until 2007 he was the Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

  Born in Toronto, Ontario, Willinsky taught school in Ontario for 10 years and, with Vivian Forssman, developed the Information Technology Management program for high schools in British Columbia and Ontario. He is the author of Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End, which won Outstanding Book Awards from the American Educational Research Association and History of Education Society, as well as the more recent titles, Technologies of Knowing, If Only We Knew: Increasing the Public Value of Social Science Research and The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship -- the latter of which has won the 2006 Blackwell's Scholarship Award and the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award.

  He retains a partial appointment at the University of British Columbia where he directs the Public Knowledge Project, which is researching systems that hold promise for improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research.

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• Cathy J. West
  
  

  Dr. Cathy Jones West is a native French speaker who spent her childhood in France, Belgium and Morocco. She holds a M.A. in French and Philosophy and a Ph.D. in French and Italian from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Pogue Scholar and Harvard Young Fellows Nominee. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled Le Je(u) du narrateur dans la préface de roman, studied the deference of textual authority in prefaces to novels. A professor of French and Italian at Converse since 1989, her research has since focused on autobiographical works by women from mainland France and from the francophone Caribbean. She has several book chapters and articles on authors ranging from Nathalie Sarraute to Simone Schwarz-Bart, and has completed a translation of Christine de Pizan’s Lavision—Christine, which is soon scheduled to be published. Currently she is working on a book entitled Lyme Lessons: Thoughts on Chronic Illness, Disconnectedness and Renewal.

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• Mark West
  
  

  Dr. Mark West, chair of the Mass Communications Department, was born and raised in Western North Carolina. He has worked as a media researcher for major corporations and his research on public opinion and media coverage of war have been recognized by several prestigious national awards, including the Association for Education and Mass Communications Natziger-White Dissertation Award. Recently, he has published two books, "Theory, Method and Practices in Computer Content Analysis" and "Applications of Computer Content Analysis."

  At the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Dr. West teaches newswriting, mass communication theories and survey research. He is currently undertaking the development of the Asheville Center for Social Research, which will provide for the unique needs of Southern Appalachia through survey research.

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