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Paul T. Jaeger

Co-Director

Paul T. Jaeger, PhD, JD, is Professor, Diversity and Inclusion Officer, and Co-Director of the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program of the College of Information Studies and Co-Director of Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC) at the University of Maryland. He studies the impacts of law and policy on information access and behavior. He is the author of more than 190 journal articles and book chapters, and this is his nineteenth book. His research has been funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the American Library Association, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Science Foundation, among others. He is Co-Editor of Library Quarterly and the Editor of Advances in Librarianship. He is the founder of the annual Conference on Inclusion and Diversity in Library and Information Science (CIDLIS) and co-founder of the Disability Summit. In 2014, he received the Library Journal/ALISE Excellence in Teaching Award. 

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Morgan Adle

Senior Fellow

Morgan has a BA in English Literature and a Master of Library Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. Before coming back to UMD as the MLIS Program Manager, she lived in Korea for 3 years teaching English in public schools and then at Chonnam National University. She also has experience working in records management, special collections, and archives.

Courtney Douglass

Junior Fellow

Courtney earned her MLIS from UMD’s iSchool in 2017, and is currently pursuing her PhD in information studies. Her experience teaching undergraduate composition and literature courses lead to her research around information literacy including teaching and policy initiatives. Courtney is a strong advocate for librarians embracing and being recognized for their role as teachers, and for promoting initiatives that reassess and successfully teach literacy and social justice appropriate for the Information Age. Currently, Courtney teaches undergraduate courses in UMD’s iSchool, and aims to continue course design efforts that promote literacy. 

Natalie Greene Taylor

Senior Fellow

Natalie Greene Taylor, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and the MLIS Program Coordinator at the University of South Florida’s School of Information. She received her Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, where she was also a graduate research assistant at the Information Policy & Access Center. Currently, her research focuses on young people’s access to information. More specifically, she studies youth information behavior, information intermediaries, and information policy as it affects youth information access. She is an Editor of Library Quarterly and has published articles in Library & Information Science Research, Public Library Quarterly, School Library Research, Computers & Education, and the Journal of Documentation, among others. She has also co-authored three books including Foundations of Information Policy; Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion: Information Policy and the Public Library; and Libraries, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Enabling Access and Promoting Inclusion.

Renee F. Hill

Senior Fellow

Dr. Renee F. Hill is Principal Lecturer and Director of the School Library programs at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. In this capacity, she teaches courses and provides guidance that prepare graduate students to become librarians in K-12 school settings. 
Renee earned a Bachelor’s degree in Exceptional Student Education at Florida Atlantic University. Both her Master’s and Ph.D. were earned in Library and Information Studies at Florida State University. Renee is passionate about and committed to researching and teaching about issues that involve examining methods for increasing understanding of diversity issues in Library and Information Studies. Her research focuses on examining information needs and information access as they relate to diverse populations (e.g., members of various racial/ethnic groups, individuals with disabilities). 

Kelly M. Hoffman

Junior Fellow

Gagan Jindal

Junior Fellow

Gagan Jindal conducts qualitative user research to assess the information behavior of people who have chronic illnesses and actionable strategies to optimize their access to information to help them manage their health. Her current research examines how people with chronic illnesses access information on community resources and the low-fidelity design for a crowdsourced health information system that could potentially serve as a repository of information on community resources to help this population manage their chronic illnesses. Prior to joining the iSchool, Gagan worked as a Research Analyst in the health informatics division at NORC at the University of Chicago in Bethesda, MD and as a Program Associate for the mobile health start-up, Vibrent Health, in Fairfax, VA. Gagan also holds a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Global and Community Health from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

Karen Kettnich

Senior Fellow

Karen Kettnich is the managing editor of Library Quarterly and has served as a member of the LQ editorial team for more than ten years.  She has managed for The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, for the Advanced in Librarianship book series, and for the South Atlantic Review.  She has worked for the Folger Shakespeare Library, and taught literature at the University of Maryland, College Park; Loyola University Maryland; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Clemson University, where she currently teaches in the Department of English.  She has masters’ degrees in English from the University of Maryland and in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham (UK).  She also served as a dramaturg for many seasons at the theatre company Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

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Jonathan Lazar

Senior Fellow

Dr. Jonathan Lazar is a professor in the College of Information Studies (iSchool) at the University of Maryland. Dr. Lazar joined the iSchool in 2019, after 19 years as a professor of computer and information sciences at Towson University, where he served as director of the information systems program for 14 years. Dr. Lazar has authored or edited 12 books, including Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction (2nd edition, co-authored with Heidi Feng and Harry Hochheiser), Ensuring Digital Accessibility Through Process and Policy (co-authored with Dan Goldstein and Anne Taylor), Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology (co-edited with Michael Stein), Universal Usability: Designing Computer Interfaces for Diverse User Populations, and Web Usability: A User-Centered Design Approach. He has published over 140 refereed articles in journals, conference proceedings, and edited books, and has been granted two US patents for his work on accessible web-based security features for blind users. He frequently serves as an adviser to government agencies and regularly provides testimony at federal and state levels, and multiple US federal regulations cite his research publications. He has been on the executive Board of the Friends of the Maryland Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped since 2009, co-chair of Cambridge University Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology since 2012, and has been on the program committee of the ACM Conference on Accessible Computing (ASSETS) most years since 2006. Dr. Lazar is the associate director of the Trace Center and core faculty in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

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Yuting Liao

Junior Fellow

Yuting Liao is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She leverages both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore human interactions with social technology. Her studies examine the issue of privacy and how people make information disclosure decisions in various socio-technical contexts, from fitness trackers to conversational AI to online social networks. With the goal of inspiring technology innovation in the healthcare domain, Yuting’s most recent work focuses on the design and evaluation of an anthropomorphized conversational AI for mental health support. Yuting holds a Master’s degree in Communication, Culture & Technology from Georgetown University.

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Kim M. Thompson

Senior Fellow

Dr. Kim M. Thompson is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina, College of Information and Communications. Her research focuses on the relationship between information access and social inclusion, using critical and qualitative methods to examine conceptualizations of digital inclusion, information access, and information poverty. Some of her current projects include analysis of inclusive/exclusive language in library job ads, engaging disability in the workplace, and considerations of how to set diversity and inclusion more deeply into the Library and Information Science curriculum. Kim is on the Editorial Boards of The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion; The Library Quarterly; Human Behaviors and Emerging Technologies; and Collection and Curation.