Why are you interested in the topic you are presenting?

Before commencing her doctoral work in Library and Information Science at Western University’s Faculty of Information and Media Studies in Ontario Canada in 1999, Dr. Stevenson had spent more than twenty years working in public libraries. The first ten years as a clerk and paraprofessional, and after completing her MLIS in 1990, she worked in a number of senior management positions with an agency of the Ontario Provincial government responsible for public library services. It was this combination of experiences (paraprofessional and professional) that stimulated her keen interest in questions concerning labour relations and the future of professional work in the public library sector. This, particularly, against the backdrop of perpetually innovating technologies on the one hand, and a culture of austerity funding on the other. Since 2005, she has been a faculty member at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. Most recently she completed a research project funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada that allowed her to conduct a cross-country study entitled: New labour, new libraries: the changing nature of work in Canada’s large urban libraries.

What does “fearless” mean to you? 

To be fearless is not to be without fear. To be fearless is to acknowledge the fear and then proceed through a series of calculated risks to plunge the depths and the heights.

What have you read/seen/listened to lately that you would recommend to your audience (something that would help them to learn more about your topic)?

Rubin Ostlund’s movie, “The Square” described as follow: Disaster strikes when a curator hires a public relations team to build some buzz for his renowned Swedish museum.