In a world where the vision and design of technology tell us to aspire for the new and shiny, digital devices are increasingly made to be thrown away. My doctoral dissertation project explores the aspirations of citizens participating in local repair initiatives through a qualitative study with repair organisers and volunteers in Metro Vancouver. Through engaging participants in narrative practices about their efforts to support repair, my research explores how a storytelling lens might broaden conceptions of the information sources, systems, and stewardship engaged in climate adaptation. This project is supervised by Dr Lisa Nathan.

The Withy Design Collective brings together scholars with shared interests around information systems, care, more-than-human relations, and community climate adaptation. Named after the long, flexible willow branches used in basketry and nautical navigation, we foreground relational, "withy" approaches that weave questions of responsibility, reciprocity, difference, and justice. In thinking together across information contexts including migration, permaculture, technology repair, crisis preparedness, and Indigenous sovereignty, we ask: what do/might information systems within planetary limits look like? how do/might more-than-humans meaningfully participate in our research? 

The iStories Lab consists an interdisciplinary group of doctoral students and scholars based at the University of British Columbia. We draw upon arts and humanities based approaches to examine the identity-shaping practices of the information field. Through a series of interactive workshops and a survey with iSchool heads, in 2017-2019 we engaged the iSchool community in a conversation about conversation, unearthing the contested words and narratives that articulate, shape and further our understandings of the information field.