Overview
Kevin Crowston is a Professor of Information Studies at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. Prior to moving to Syracuse, he taught for five years at University of Michigan Business School. He received his A.B. (1984) in Applied Mathematics (Computer Science) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. (1991) in Information Technologies from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research Interests
New ways of organizing made possible by the use of information technology. He approaches this issue in several ways: empirical studies of coordination-intensive processes in human organizations; theoretical characterizations of coordination problems and alternative methods for managing them; and design and empirical evaluation of new kinds of computer systems to support people working together.
He is currently a PI on two NSF grants, one examining citizen science (i.e., scientific projects that involve volunteer participants) and a second building infrastructure for the study of Free/Libre Open Source Software development projects. Prior to these grants, he was the PI or co-PI for "Investigating the Dynamics of Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Teams", "How can document-genre metadata improve information-access for large digital collections?" (with Barbara Kwasnik), "Tools for Inventing Organizations: Toward a Handbook of Organizational Processes" and "A Multi-Method Study of the Use of Information Technology in the Real-Estate Industry".
Teaching Interests
research methods; databases; systems analysis
Professional Interests
co-Editor in chief for the journal Information, Technology and People and Secretary for International Federation of Information Systems (IFIP) Working Group 8.2 on Information Systems and Organizations.
Personal Interests
reading, travel.