In Memoriam: Professor Twyla Gibson (1954 – 2024) 

Friends and Colleagues remember Twyla Gibson as an interdisciplinary scholar whose information interests ranged from Plato to Marshall McLuhan 

While she came to academia later in life than usual, Twyla Gibson, left a big imprint, including at the Faculty of Information, where she held an assistant professor appointment from 2007 to 2011.  

Gibson was also a senior fellow in U of T’s McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology (2005-2006), where she designed and led seminars, and taught in the Book and Media Studies Program at St. Michael’s College. She was a visiting fellow at Harvard University from 2010 until 2012 when she left Canada to take up an assistant professor position in the School of Information Science at the University of Missouri at Columbia.  

An interdisciplinary scholar and digital innovator whose scholarship spanned ancient philosophy, digital humanities and media theory, Gibson connected literary structure with cognitive and cultural practices, says Professor Seamus Ross, who was also Dean of the Faculty of Information when Gibson taught there.

With an undergraduate degree in religious studies, earned when she was in her thirties, and a PhD in the history and philosophy of education, awarded in 2020, Gibson wrote her doctoral dissertation on Plato’s Code. Her subsequent scholarship explored ancient philosophy, digital humanities, and media theory.  

“Twyla’s engagement with classical literature, and in particular Plato, led her to explore ancient systems of classification and rhetorical organization, with a focus on the ways early oral-derived taxonomies functioned not just as organizational tools, but as deeply embedded communication systems that shaped meaning in early texts,” said Ross.

As a scholar in the history and philosophy of information, media and communication, Gibson had a long-standing interest in Marshall McLuhan, exploring, among other things, how his ideas of “hot” and “cool” media might apply to museums. 

Gibson’s obituary, published in the Globe and Mail, tells how she was born and raised in Calgary, moving to Toronto at age 18. Before returning to school at age 27, she worked at arranging flowers in a grocery store and taught weaving classes.  

 She had an ability to engage students across disciplines and academic levels with rigor, warmth, and imagination, says Ross, who last collaborated with Gibson at the 2016 ALISE conference in Boston. The two co-organized a panel on The Ethics and Values of our Profession, alongside alumna Wendy Newman and David Lankes of the University of Texas at Austin. “Twyla’s extraordinary breadth of knowledge and her instinct for creating engaging learning experiences were key ingredients in the success of this panel just as it was in her university teaching,” said Ross. 

Gibson retired in 2020 and moved to Iowa City, where she died late last year. A memorial is planned for May 31, 2025, at the Oeno Art Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontario, Canada. Interested parties should contact Gibson’s life partner Mark Volkmann for details (volkmannmj@gmail.com).