Andrea Tapia
Location: (State College, PA)
Personal Research Web Page: http://andreatapia.net
Keywords: coordination, collaboration, institutions, humanitarian, relief, development, policy, open source, collaboratories, organizations, social-informatics, socio-technical systems, united nations, emergency response, cscw, inter-organizational networks
Posted on: Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
Broad Research Area: HCI / CSCW, Social Computing / Social Informatics, Technology Policy
Research Interests:
Andrea H. Tapia is an Assistant Professor at the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. Dr. Tapia is an academic with expertise in social research methods and social theory, applying those to the study of information and communication technologies (ICT) and their context of development, implementation and use. In a more philosophical sense, the central premise on which Dr. Tapia’s research interests rests is that ICTs are not value-neutral tools. Instead, they are continuously imbued with values from the human context.
Because of Dr. Tapia’s sociological training, this context is groups, particularly institutions. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior. Institutions are not natural. They must be seen as socially constructed, artifacts of a particular time, culture and society, produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention.
Dr. Tapia’s guiding research question is “What is the role that technology plays in institutional patterns of power, hierarchy, governance, domination and resistance?” The institutions on which Dr. Tapia’s research gaze has fallen all have been in the public sector. She is essentially interested in government, education, humanitarian relief, community organizations and non-profits, emergency responders and military, and groups engaged in collective action or social movements.
Dr. Tapia’s Research Goals are (1) to theorize on the relationship between social and public institutions and information and communications technologies, (2) to extend current methodologies measures of the effectiveness of technological and social interventions in public institutional spaces, (3) to test theories and methodologies through the development, implementation and evaluation of intervention programs, and (4) to draw on this scientific understanding to provide recommendations for public policy and community-based initiatives that take into account the issues confronting institutions in the information age.
Dr. Tapia’s work has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense, the United Nations, and Penn States’ Schreyer’s Honors College.
Dr. Tapia is seeking a post doc for two research projects.
COHORT: see http://cohort.ist.psu.edu
COHORT is Coordination of Humanitarian Organizations in Relief using Technology. COHORT is an academic research program that seeks to understand the issues that humanitarian organizations face in their coordination efforts, particularly in the domain of information and communication technologies.
EVOSTA: see http://evosta.ist.psu.edu
EVOSTA is Examining Virtual Organizations through Socio-Technical Analysis
As the options for obtaining and sharing scientific information and problem-solving expand, there is an increasing need to understand and support the sociotechnical requirements of distributed scientific collaboration.
Contact Information:
email email obfuscated - click to reveal.edu
