Currently, I'm working on my dissertation at the University of Toronto. I'm focusing on relationhsips between media use and a person's social network. In particular, I'm interested in how people manage their networks through the use of media such as cell phones, email and other online technologies. My dissertation work is funded either directly or indirectly by SSHRC (Doctoral fellowship, SSHRC grant#xx), Intel, Bell and Nortel.

Since starting my PhD, I have been a summer research intern at Microsoft's Community Technologies Lab, supervised by Danyel Fisher. I worked on analytics for a software program called SNARF. This program scrapes email inboxes and provides a novel email view that sorts by author's relevance to the user. I measured its effectiveness and did some preliminary analysis on email communication networks.

I am currently working on a number of additional projects, primarly concerning software development and sociological methods. I have designed a number of tools for the capture and/or analysis of social networks. In short, these tools have been personal itches that I have found the time and the resources to scratch. They mainly address the question 'how do you capture and explore multiple social networks in an efficient and straightforward manner'? So far, this has involved the creation of a new software application for entering network data, a script to facilitate the visualization of networks in a pre-existing application (GUESS), and a program for all sorts of neat analysis. These programs were made with the help of my collaborators (Jeffrey Wong and Wojciech Gryc).

In addition to the creation of tools, I have an active interest in how social networks are captured and analyzed. I have recently published on the use of visual name generators (see my papers in Field Methods and Environment & Planning B, with Carrasco and Wellman). I'm currently writing a paper on how to capture networks online (early drafts are available).

Before starting my PhD, I completed a Master of Arts (Sociology) at the University of Toronto. Here I participated in the collaborative program in Knowledge Media Design. I also attended Memorial University of Newfoundland where I received an Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology and garnered the University Medal for top student in sociology.