CCDS is excited to welcome Brian McKernan as a new Research Assistant Professor within the iSchool beginning in June!

Prior to joining the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, Brian was an assistant professor of sociology at The Sage Colleges. Brian has also taught courses at New York University, Mount Holyoke College, and SUNY Albany.

Brian writes: 

“From 2013 to 2015, I worked on the CYCLES project with Professor Stromer-Galley from the School of Information Studies as well as scholars and designers from a variety of different institutions. CYCLES was a federally funded research program to design an educational video game that can teach players about cognitive biases and reduce the likelihood that they will commit these biases in the future. I found the project to be immensely valuable and my work on the project to be very fulfilling. I have been eager to participate in similar projects ever since.

My TRACE work: 

I am looking forward to meaningfully contributing to every facet of the TRACE project. Much of my work so far has focused on helping to design the TRACE application, particularly how we can incorporate insights from literature in communication and information studies as well as research on nudging and crowdsourcing into the design of our TRACE application. I have also helped design the user testing protocol, analyze the results, and propose new design features based on these findings.

Other Info:

I am an active member of the Different Games Collective, which helps organize events and resources to support marginalized voices in gaming spaces. I am also a faculty fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology, which is a research center devoted to studying the cultural dimensions of social life.

I am excited about the opportunity to work with such an amazing team of scientists, scholars, and designers at the School of Information Studies on projects that will generate both new knowledge about major issues and real-world applications to help address these issues.”

We are so excited to have you join us, Brian!