Biographies

Dr Michael Gurstein
Michael is currently Executive Director of the Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (Vancouver BC), a Director of The Information Society Institute, Cape Town South Africa; Research Professor in the School of Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark); and Research Professor in the Faculty of Management at the University of Quebec (Ouatouais). 

A Canadian, he completed a B.A. at the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. From 1995 to 1999 Dr. Gurstein was the NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change at the University College of Cape Breton, where he pioneered in the development of sustainable community-based technology applications.

His edited book "Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communications Technologies: (Idea Group, 2000) provided a focal point for the development of “Community Informatics” as the discipline concerned with enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies. Dr. Gurstein has served on the Board of the Vancouver Community Network, the British Columbia Community Networking Association, and Telecommunities Canada. He is currently on the Steering Committee of the Global Telecentre Alliance, and on the High Level Panel of Advisors of the United Nation’s Global Alliance for ICT for Development. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Community Informatics and Foundation Chair of the Community Informatics Research Network. He currently has a continuing Advisory relationship with the (Canadian) Northern Indigenous Communities Satellite Network in the creation of its Research Consortium.

His most recent book is "What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter)?", Polimetrica, Milan (2007).

Additional information may be found at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gurstein

Michael Gurstein

Prof. Geoff Erwin

Geoff has worked in Australia, UK, USA and South Africa, in government (state and federal), private industry and higher education. He has been an ICT team member, project manager and senior manager/researcher for many years. He has written and co-authored several ICT books and textbooks, published and reviewed for international conferences and research journals and represented organizations in international projects and committees. In Universities he has recently been Dean of a large Business Faculty and is currently Director of an international research centre focusing on Information Society themes at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in Cape Town, South Africa. CPUT has adopted the Information Society as a major theme and is positioning itself to approach e-service delivery and the social appropriation of ICT within the context of newly democratic South Africa. encouraging citizen participation following years of the majority of citizens being denied access to social and business facilities. He is a founding and institutional member of The Information Society Institute (TISI) established in South Africa as a multi-stakeholder partnership with three levels of government, using the Community Informatics discipline and membership of CIRN (Community Informatics Research Network) as platforms.South Africa

Geoff Erwin

Dr Dan Remenyi
Dan is a Visiting Professor in Information Systems Management at the School of Systems and Data Studies at Trinity College Dublin and an associated member of Faculty at Henley Management College in the United Kingdom. His original academic interests are in the field of information systems management and he has researched and been published widely in that area.

In recent years he has taken a strong interest in research methodology and the sociology of research. He now works extensively with research candidates and their supervisors at both doctoral and masters level. He conducts a number of seminars to topics related to improving effective academic research and obtaining better results. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 books and some 50 academically refereed papers. He is published in all 4 of the A rated Journals in the United Kingdom in Information Systems Management. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Acta Commercii ( a general management journal) and the Journal of Information Technology. He is the editor of the Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation and advisor to a number of other electronic journals. 

Dan Remenyi

Dr Shaun Pather
Shaun is currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Informatics & Design and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.  He has over twenty years of experience within the South African education and training environment.  He is currently the Head of Contract Research and Partnerships in the faculty. 

As an Information Systems academic his research interests are in the evaluation of Information Systems (IS) effectiveness, particularly within e-Commerce contexts. Currently he leads a NRF funded project to investigate the development of e-Service Quality instruments. 

Shaun also has a keen research interest in practical community engagement and Information Society issues, centered around societal upliftment facilitated by ICT’s. To this end he has led several projects with partners in both the private and public sector which focus on the impact of ICT on everyday life and its social appropriation for local community benefit.

He has authored a number of research publications in refereed journals and has presented seminars and papers at several international conferences on E-Commerce, E-Business, IS management, Web-based teaching, and management of post-graduate programs. He is also a member of several conference committees and review panels, and journal editorial boards.  Shaun has a rich history of association with civic, NGO bodies and the public sector. He is the company secretary for Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) International, and is a board member of the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA). He is committed to supporting transformation goals within South Africa and the developing world through his research activities.

Shaun Pather

T.J. McDonald 

Nicola Swan

Updated 23 November 2008