PhD Faculty Supervisors

We encourage you to read the biographies and research profiles of the faculty members at the San José State University School of Information and Manchester Metropolitan University who supervise the Gateway PhD post-graduate researchers. 

Professors

Anthony Bernier, Professor—AB (UC–Berkeley), MLIS (UC–Berkeley), MA (UC–Irvine), PhD (UC–Irvine). Doctoral supervision: information use; education for LIS, management & leadership, youth services. Specific focus: public libraries; critical youth studies; history, library design and architecture. See Research Profile.

Bill Fisher, Professor—BA (Arkansas), MA (Arkansas), MLIS (SUNY at Geneseo), PhD (Southern California). Doctoral supervision: management and leadership; education for LIS. Specific focus: information agencies in corporate settings; curricular issues in LIS. See Research Profile.

Sandra Hirsh, Professor and Associate Dean of Academics, College of Information, Data and Society —BS (UCLA), MLIS (University of Michigan), PhD (UCLA). Doctoral supervision: information use; education for library and information science. Specific focus: information seeking behavior; global studies of information use; online learning, future of libraries, LIS skills and professional development. See Research Profile.

Geoffrey Liu, Professor—BA & MA (Wuhan), PhD (Hawaii at Manoa). Doctoral supervision: information retrieval; information systems and collaborative learning. Specific focus: natural language processing; virtual communities; data mining & machine learning (application); group dynamics and decision making. See Research Profile.

Ziming Liu, Professor—MS (Zhongshan), PhD (UC–Berkeley). Doctoral supervision: information use. Specific focus: user behaviors in the digital environment. See Research Profile.

Lili Luo, Professor—BA (Peking), Master (Peking), PhD (UNC–Chapel Hill). Doctoral supervision: information use. Specific focus: Education for reference librarianship; Adoption of new technologies in reference service provision; Information seeking behavior in the digital environment. See Research Profile.

Associate Professors

Michelle Chen, Associate Professor—BS (National Taiwan University), MS Computer Science and Information Engineering (National Taiwan University), PhD (University of Texas at Austin). Doctoral supervision: Big data mining and visualization, online social network analysis. See Research Profile.

Mary Ann Harlan, Associate Professor—BA (University of California, Santa Cruz), MLIS (SJSU), PhD (Queensland University of Technology). Doctoral Supervision: information use, youth services. Specific focus: information use and learning, youth information practices in digital communities. See Research Profile.

Michele Villagran, Associate Professor—BSBA (University of Nevada Las Vegas), MSLS (University of North Texas), MBA (University of North Texas), MDR (Pepperdine University), EdD (Pepperdine University). Doctoral supervision: cultural intelligence; diversity, inclusion, community and equity; information and society / culture; law libraries; multicultural populations; social justice; special libraries. See Research Profile.

Assistant Professors

Darra Hofman, BA & JD (Arizona State University), MLIS (University of Kentucky),  Ph.D. (The University of British Columbia ). Research examining the intersection of archives, technology, and law, privacy, blockchain technologies, and health records. Research Profile

Souvick Ghosh, Bachelor’s & Masters in Computer Science and Engineering (Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India), PhD (Rutgers). Doctoral supervision: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Neural Networks, and Human-Computer Interaction. Research Profile

José Aguiñaga, BA (University of San Diego), MLS (University of Arizona), MPA (California State University, Long Beach), EdD (Northern Arizona University). Doctoral supervision: academic libraries; LIS as a profession; LIS education; Library leadership & management; Social justice in LIS. Research Profile

Lecturers

Mary Bolin, Lecturer—BA (University of Nebraska—Lincoln), MSLS (University of Kentucky), MA (University of Idaho), PhD (University of Nebraska). Doctoral supervision: Academic libraries. Specific focus: Organization, Administration, User Experience, Discovery. See Research Profile.

Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)

 iSchool, Linguistics, History, Politics and Philosophy,  Sociology  and SODA.

Applicants should review the faculty profiles from both SJSU and MMU as listed above to identify possible faculty supervisors.