Alison Powell (Female, Canadian)

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E-Mail:
alisonbpowell@gmail.com
Website:
 
Interests:
Media and Communications Policy, Independent and Alternative Media, Community media, Politics / Political Communication, Democratization, Software, Free / Open Source, Peer Production / P2P, Community/municipal broadband, Internet Service Providers, Network neutrality, Networks, Community Informatics, Social Movements and Sectors, Grassroots organizing, Media Reform Movement, Comparative research (international), Theory, Ethnography
Discipline(s)
Cultural Studies, Communications, Science and Technology
Role(s):
Researcher
Location(s) of Work:
USA, Canada, United Kingdom

Current Institutional Affiliation(s)

Biography

Alison Powell is a Canadian SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.  Her work focuses on the social and political significance of alternative, non-commercial development of Internet technologies.  Her previous work has studied the outcomes of the community WiFi phenomenon in the United States and Canada, focusing on the democratic impact of these community-based innovations.  While at Oxford she will be investigating the institutional forms that emerge around forms of internet-related peer production, including community WiFi, open source software development, and open hardware production.  These new institutions, which may include small local networks or hybrid community-commercial institutions, have the potential to shift communications policy and the landscape of internet use.

Alison has been a member of the Canadian Research Alliance on Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP) and the Ethos Group, a consultancy that advises communities and municipalities on network development.  She is committed to undertaking empirical social research that helps to develop communication and information policy in the public good. In addition to several book chapters, recent articles are published in Government Information Quarterly and forthcoming in Information, Communication, and Society.

Projects

Publications and Resources

Journal Articles

Linked from lists:
SSRC Small Grants Winners - 4th Round, Winter 2007