School of Information Sciences

iSchool welcomes Amelia Acker to faculty

08/13/2014

The University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences (iSchool) is pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Amelia Acker to the faculty. Dr. Acker joins us from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she received her PhD in Information Studies in 2014. Her dissertation, Born Networked Records: A History of the Short Message Service Format, investigates “archival implications of born networked records created with mobile ICTs, including the creation and collection mobile telephony metadata, the automatic deletion of text message traces by mobile devices, and the possibilities for text messages as records in personal digital archives.” Dr. Acker received the 2014 ASIS&T ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award for this work under supervisor Professor Anne Gilliland, the first time this award has gone to an archival studies dissertation. At the iSchool, Dr. Acker will teach courses on archives, records management, and digital preservation in the Library and Information Science program.

Acker says of her new position, “I am really excited to join the iSchool and begin teaching in the archives and information science specialization. I’m looking forward to working with archives students and continuing my research on digital archives and mobile ICTs with the excellent faculty here at SIS.”

She also holds a MLIS with a specialization in archives from UCLA (’08) and a BA in Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies from University of California, Irvine (’06). Her research interests include archival science, cultural informatics, infrastructure studies, mobile communication and information technologies, personal digital archives, science and technology studies (STS).

Learn more about Dr. Acker on her bio page or homepage.