Researchers
Danielle Allard
Danielle Allard is an Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. She received her PhD and Masters of Information Studies (MISt) (with a collaborative designation from The Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies) from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.
Allard’s research falls at the intersection of culture and community, information (its usages, representations, and institutions), and the role that information and information institutions might play in feminist, decolonizing, and anti-violence efforts. Her research interests include: sexual violence and sexual harassment in libraries; Indigenous, community, and activist archiving; critical information studies; and the inclusion of marginalized communities’ representation, cultural heritage, and knowledge domains in digital and real-world information institutions.
In collaboration with Dr. Tami Oliphant and former SLIS student Angela Lieu, Allard’s current research draws from feminist anti-violence and intersectional frameworks to examine and address patron-perpetrated sexual harassment in libraries. Her previous post-doctoral research on the SSHRC funded (2013-2017) Digital Archives and Marginalized Communities project examined how digital information systems and archival platforms can be used to create participatory activist archives that challenge violent, colonizing, and stigmatizing representations of Indigenous peoples – especially women and girls – and of sex work activists. Building on this work, and in partnership with Sex Professionals of Canada’s Executive Director Amy Lebovitch and Dr. Shawna Ferris, Allard is also presently engaged in a SSHRC funded research (2018-2022) project entitled the Sex Work Activist Histories Project (SWAHP), an exploration of sex work activism in Canada and the production of related liberatory histories and representations.
Email: allard@ualberta.ca
Website: https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/allard
Tami Oliphant
Tami Oliphant received her PhD from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and is a proud alumna of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta where she completed her MLIS. Her research draws upon intersectional feminist anti-violence theory and practice, theories of justice (particularly epistemic injustice), and other library and information studies (LIS) theory that centres people and their relationships to information institutions such as libraries, librarianship, and their social information practices. Her previous CIHR-funded Women and Heart Disease project with Dr. Tanya Berry and Dr. Colleen Norris and the Patron-perpetrated Sexual Harassment project with Dr. Danielle Allard and Angela Lieu have used intersectional feminist anti-violence methods, frameworks, and lenses that center women’s expertise and knowledge of their own experiences of heart disease, which continues to be perceived as “a man’s disease,” on the one hand, and in the case of library workers, experiences of sexual violence in the workplace. Our most recent SSHRC funded research (2024-2027) advances our findings from the PPSH in libraries project and focuses on policy and PPSH interventions. Her long-standing interest in public libraries considers the library as the site where unfolding social relations between library workers and patrons are informed by library context and values and narratives about the place of libraries in the public sphere. The overall objective of her research program is to make visible how the field of LIS, including LIS education and institutions such as libraries, can move toward social, epistemic, and informational justice.
Email: toliphan@ualberta.ca
Website: https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/toliphan
Angela Lieu
Angela Lieu is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) MLIS program and the Gender and Social Justice Studies MA program, both at the University of Alberta. She currently works as a youth services librarian. Her academic and professional interests include — among other things — the intersections of library and information work with gender, race, and power, and the role of libraries in advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice.
Graduate Research Assistants
- Jennie McCurdy (2024)
- Kylie Day (2023)
- Karla Mallach (2021)
- Emma Uhl (2019)
- Carley Angelstad (2018)
- Kyla Lee (2018)