Siobhan Stevenson

Siobhan Stevenson holds a PhD in Library and Information Science from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University.  She began her academic career at York University, completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre in 1982. She continued developing her craft at the L’Ecole Jacques LeCoq in Paris France, where she also took French classes geared towards “les etranger” at l’Université Sorbonne-Paris. Unable to make a living as a clown (in the style of Commedia dell’arte) on her return to Canada, she got a job as a public library clerk. She obtained an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario, School of Library and Information Science, and went on to work for an agency of the Ontario government responsible for ensuring an integrated system of public library services among the province’s 200-plus municipal libraries. Over the next decade she moved into increasingly senior management roles and became intimately involved in the crafting of public information policies against the backdrop of Canada’s push to build its information highways. As a result of these experiences, she felt compelled to pursue a PhD in LIS within the area of critical information policy studies. She joined the Faculty of Information at U of T in 2005 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2010.