Fiorella Foscarini

Associate Professor , Director of Master of Information Program

Phone 416-978-8295

Email: fiorella.foscarini@utoronto.ca

Office: 638

Fiorella Foscarini holds a PhD in archival studies from the University of British Columbia. Before joining the Faculty of Information in January 2010, she worked as Senior Archivist for the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) for a decade. Previously, she was Head of the Records Management Office and Intermediate Archives (Ufficio Protocollo e Archivio Generale) with the Province of Bologna (Italy). From 2014 to 2016, she taught archival studies in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

Research

Professor Foscarini studies the relationship between recordkeeping and information culture. She uses the expression “recordkeeping cultures” to talk about the various ways of understanding records and managing them that exist in different contexts. She draws on archival concepts and ideas derived from rhetorical genre studies to explore how records are created and used in organizations. She is very much interested in language and translation issues, particularly in relation to archival terminology. She is principal investigator in a SSHRC-funded research project entitled “Meeting Technologies and Their Consequences: A Study of Collaborative Practices in Organizations.”
Publications

Selected Publications

Foscarini, Fiorella, Giulia Barrera, Aida Škoro Babić, Pekka Henttonen, and Jóhanna Gunnlaugsdottir. “The Language of the GDPR: Translation Issues and Archival Issues in Four Non-English-Speaking Countries.” Archives and Manuscripts 49 (2021): 62-87.

Oliver, Gillian and Fiorella Foscarini. Recordkeeping Cultures. London: Facet, 2020, 158 pp.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “The Patent Genre: Between Stability and Change.” Archivaria 87 (Spring 2019): 36-67.

Oliver, Gillian, Fiorella Foscarini, Craigie Sinclair, Catherine Nicholls, and Lydia Loriente. “Ethnographic Sensitivity and Current Recordkeeping: Applying Information Culture Analysis in the Workplace.” Records Management Journal 28:2 (2018): 175-186. [Highly Commended Paper Award winner – 2019 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence].

Foscarini, Fiorella and Juan Ilerbaig. “Intertextuality in the Archives.” In Archives in Liquid Times. Ed. Rienk Jonker, Arnoud Gaudemans, and Frans Smit. ’s-Gravenhage (NL): Stichting Archiefpublicaties, 2017, pp. 177-194.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Appraisal in Four Paradigms.” In Currents of Archival Thinking. 2nd Edition. Ed. Heather MacNeil and Terry Eastwood. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 2017, pp. 107-133.

Oliver, Gillian and Fiorella Foscarini. Records Management and Information Culture: Tackling the People Problem. London: Facet, 2014, 178 pp.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “A Genre-Based Investigation of Workplace Communities.” Archivaria 78 (Fall 2014): 1-24. [2015 Archivaria Hugh A. Taylor Prize winner].

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Organizational Records as Genres. An Analysis of the ‘Documentary Reality’ of Organizations from the Perspectives of Diplomatics, Records Management and Rhetorical Genre Studies.” In Genre Theory in Information Studies. Ed. Jack Andersen. London: Emerald, 2015, pp. 115-132.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Record as Social Action: Understanding Organizational Records Through the Lens of Genre Theory.” Information Research 18:3 – paperC08 (2013) http://InformationR.net/ir/18-3/colis/paperC08.html.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Diplomatics and Genre Theory as Complementary Approaches.” Archival Science 12:4 (December 2012): 389-409.

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Understanding Functions: An Organizational Culture Perspective.” Records Management Journal 22:1 (2012): 20-36. [Outstanding Paper Award winner – 2013 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence].

Foscarini, Fiorella. “Understanding the Context of Records Creation and Use. ‘Hard’ versus ‘Soft’ Approaches to Records Management.” Archival Science 10:4 (December 2010): 389-407.
Student Supervisions

PhD

Nathan Moles (completed, 2016). “Inside Open Government Data Curation: Exploring Challenges to the Concept of a ‘Designated Community’ through a Case Study of the City of Toronto.”
Course Titles

INF 2175H Managing Organizational Records I
INF 2103H Recordkeeping Cultures
INF 315H Information Practice in Organizations (BI course)

Fiorella Foscarini

Fiorella Foscarini

Research

Publications

Student Supervisions

Course Titles