Research Updates

Before I go into the topic of course design, I thought I would provide an update on my research projects for this semester:

• The group work trying to assist the RPLS in exploring social media options is proceeding well, with an expected launch date for the first portion, a Facebook fan page entitled "No World without Libraries," to coincide with National Library Week. The goal will be to encourage people to be aware of the danger of budget cuts to the library and to recognize the continued importance of the library's services. An additional component will be to generate testimonials that will provide support to the library when they have to defend their budget and services provided. The second component of this project will be entitled "Richmond Loves Banned Books," and it will highlight the importance of intellectual freedom. By having a 2 pronged approach, it is our hope that we will be able to evaluate two different but related ways of using technology: generating a sense of urgency through a distopian vision of how the world could look without libraries and also doing an issue-based campaign that gives a concrete area (RVA) and topic (banned books).
• I have also begun working with the RPLS in assisting and observing their computer basics classes to get a better understanding of people who do not regularly interact with technology. I'm observing the class to get a sense of the demographics and the technical difficulties encountered by these individuals, and then I'll be engaging them in conversations to determine why they have decided to pursue these technology classes now, where they do or don't have access to technology, and what have been the most difficult things in their opinions when it comes to working with technology.
• I presented at my first conference panel at the end of February applying postmodern and feminist theoretical frameworks to 9/11. I got very good feedback from the audience afterwards saying that I made them look at things in a different way, I explained the theories, including traditional Public Administration theory, in a way that was very accessible to people from outside my discipline, and they could tell that I was really enthusiastic and interested in my topic. If I continue this work in the future, I think I will include more on social network theories in my discussion of non-hierarchical forms of leadership and to counter the Weberian bureaucratic system that is still regarded as so central to traditional PA theory.

Research Interests

While I have studied a variety of topics throughout my academic career, the unifying theme to date has been technology. Some of my recent work has included ways that technology may be changing the debate surrounding the legitimacy of sex work, the aftereffects of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the U.K. in terms of surveillance technology and citizens' rights, and investigating the barriers that continue to perpetuate the technology/digital divide in terms of citizen engagement in political processes and access to services.

While technology may be an ongoing theme in my research, my background in Sociology and feminist theory provide the lenses through which I interpret the world. I see the area of Public Administration/Affairs as being the site for transforming theory into practice and action. A continuing aspect of my work, both inside and outside of academia, is social equity. I look at the ways in which race, class, and gender, in addition to other categories, interact within society, often stratifying it according to the "matrix of domination," which denotes the ways in which these classifications interact to privilege certain groups over others. The term 'matrix' is used here because it indicates that these categories do not simply have an additive effect of discrimination and oppression (or conversely, privilege), but instead, they affect different people differently depending on other circumstances. Without more knowledge of how these interactions occur, we will not be able to better tailor public policy decisions to help more groups in society, nor will we be able to understand the ways that the government and nonprofit sectors may be reaching or not reaching these populations in effective ways.

My current research for this semester centers around three main projects:

1. I am working with a group of classmates to assist the Richmond Public Library System in determining how to continue making the library a relevant source of information in the age of technology. In this, we will be exploring ways to position the library as a leader in the community to better effect social change through increasing access to technology and facilitating improved use of technology.
2. Continuing my research from last spring comparing the reactions of the U.S. government following 9/11 with the U.K. response following the 7/7 London bombings, I will be comparing the approaches that both the U.S. and the Spanish governments took following so-called "fourth wave" terrorist attacks (foreign attacks by non-state actors) of 9/11 and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, both believed to be perpetrated by al-Qaeda .
3. In late February 2010, I will be presenting a paper that applies postmodern and feminist theoretical lenses to the 9/11 Commission Report's analysis and recommendations and illustrates how approaching a global event from a single perspective, in this case the Public Administration field, will only provide limited understanding of events.