Welcome to the SLIS Doctoral Students Association Homepage
Welcome everyone! This is the homepage for the PhD students at the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison. We PhD students take some of our required courses together, and we socialize at potluck dinners, lunches after class, occasional movies and occasional road trips.
Ah,we love Madison! It's a classic university town, with lots of ethnic restaurants, coffee houses, lectures, plays, art theaters, bookstores, bars, great music scene, bicycles, plus beautiful lakes, outdoor and team sports. The people are progressive and inclusive. The SLIS community is friendly, supportive, and congenial.
SLIS PhD students
Melissa Adler
- Hometown: Green Bay, WI
- Areas of interest: Access to information - particularly Library of Congress Subject Headings, classification, international librarianship, the digital divide, and the history of all of these things
- Hobbies and activities: Playing Spiderman v. Green Goblin, going to parks, swimming, and painting with Stella(5) and Gabriel(3); reading; bicycling
- Favorite Madison restaurant:Rising Sons Deli (I think their Paad Kaphao is the best meal I've ever tasted)
- Favorite book/movie/music: Books: Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters; Foe, by J.M. Coetzee; The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. Movies: Little Miss Sunshine. Music: Decemberists, Jenny Lewis, Bob Dylan, Beirut, Tom Waits
- Weird or fun fact about you: When I was a baby I repeatedly whacked my head against my crib for months - apparently it was soothing. I did it so much that I moved my crib across my room and had a big bump on the back of my head. My mom took me to the doctor to have my head examined. It might explain something about my current mental state.
Michelle Caswell
- Hometown: Chicago, IL
- Areas of interest: archives, archives in South and Southeast Asia, human rights, immigrant archives in the U.S.
- Hobbies and activities: riding my bike, cooking, travel
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Lao Laan-Xang
- Favorite book/movie/music: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- Weird or fun fact about you: I am obsessed with American Idol.
Jacob Gapko
- Hometown: Eau Claire, WI
- Areas of interest: Electronic medical records, science and technology studies
- Hobbies and activities: Listening to music (especially The Rose Ensemble), watching movies, and reading
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Lao Laan Xang
- Favorite book/movie/music: The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
- Weird or fun fact about you: I have seen the Todd River (Australia) in flood
Irene Hansen
- Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
- Areas of interest: Genealogy and Print Culture
- Hobbies and activities: Travel, Movies, History
- Favorite Madison restauarant: Chautara, 334 State Street, Himalayan Food
- Favorite book/movie/music: Melissa Etheridge and Bob Seger
- Weird or fun fact about you: I am an Abraham Lincoln buff!
Nathan Johnson
- Hometown: Fargo, North Dakota
- Areas of interest: rhetorics of information infrastructure, identity in information institutions, rhetorics of the "Information Society," politics of LIS, critical and rhetorical research methods
- Hobbies and activities: playing in the tropological space, drinking coffee, playing guitars, skateboarding, reading comics, playing with toys, scripting the DOM, drawing and painting, random acts of kindness and anarchy
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Michelangelo's Coffee House
- Favorite books/movies/music: How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson, The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll, Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey, The Big Lebowski, Snatch, I Heart Huckabees, Thelonious Monk, Mars Volta, Rage Against the Machine, Bob Dylan
- Weird or fun fact about you: I used to play guitars for a metal band.
Crystle Martin
- Hometown: I grew up in Linden, MI, my family live between Flint and Lansing now. I consider Madison my current hometown
- Areas of interest: Information Literacy, Situated Learning, Serious Video Games, Apprenticeship in MMOs
- Hobbies and activities: Foodie (eating and cooking, although Arnold is a better cook than I am), Playing Video Games, Bowling, Biking
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Sunroom, Husnu's
- Favorite book/movie/music: Jane Austen's novel (and many movie versions as well), Harry Potter series/ Monsoon Wedding, Spaced (British TV series), Jeeves and Wooster (British TV series), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/ Hum, Jethro Tull, Office (Fantastic Band originally for Kalamazoo, MI now in Chicago), Wood Brothers, Classical music (pretty much anything), Primus, Various Types of Metal (Slayer, Entombed, Mastodon, Motorhead)
- Weird or fun fact about you: I can read Ancient Greek and Latin (although not as well as I once could), I love Haggis, and I have helped pour Aluminum at a foundry
Tammy Mays
- Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Areas of interest: : Consumer health, health literacy, and health disparities
- Hobbies and activities: Reading, running, and window shopping
- Favorite Madison restaurant: : I don't have one (yet)
- Favorite book/movie/music: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a classic / Love Jones / Vick Yohe
- Weird or fun fact about you: I ran my first marathon (yes, that's 26.2 miles) in 2006. I loved the feeling of finishing the race, and I am currently training for my second Chicago marathon.
Sharon McQueen
- Hometown: Grafton, Wisconsin
- Areas of interest: Youth Literature; Youth Literature: Historical/Cultural Studies; Youth Literature: History of Publication; Teen/Young Adult Picture Books; History of Youth Services; Public Library Youth Services; Librarytime; Emergent Literacy; Home Schoolers and the Public Library
- Hobbies and activities: Gardening; Music: My voice type is lyric soprano and I also play the flute, piccolo, recorder, krumhorn, bassoon, and washboard.
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Willy Street Co-op buffet, Ella's Deli, or Hilldale Sentry for the sushi
- Favorite book/movie/music: Too many to choose, but you can't go wrong with "Winnie the Pooh," "The Full Monty," and "Mary Chapin Carpenter"
- Weird or fun fact about you:I was a professional theater performer for 15 years prior to pursuing a career in librarianship. I took 3rd place in the 2003 Wisconsin State Fair Hog Calling Contest!
Soojin Park
- Hometown: Gwangju, Korea (ROK)
- Areas of interest: Documentation, Metadada, XML, Online learning, LIS education
- Hobbies and activities: Jogging, Yoga, and Window shopping
- Favorite Madison restauarant: Ian's Pizza(!), Imperial Garden(!!!)
- Favorite book/movie/music: I love all Josh Groban's songs
- Weird or fun fact about you: I'm very scared by insects because of their many legs, except spiders.
Jomkwan Polparsi (Jom)
- Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand
- Areas of interest: Professional development & adult education, reflective practice, and copyrights in library
- Hobbies and activities: Food (cooking and eating) and exploring the USA physically and electronically.
- Favorite Madison restaurant:Hubbard Avenue Diner, Maharaja, Himal Chuli, Saigon Noodles, Wah-Kee, and more.
- Favorite book/movie/music: "The Prophet" By Kahlil Gibran and "The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action" by Donald A. Schon.
- Weird or fun fact about you: I like fried cheese curds! But this is not weird when you live in Wisconsin!
J. Brenton Stewart
- Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina (USA, North America)
- Areas of interest: various information users and their production of various types of information, cartography, & human geography
- Hobbies and activities: I'm an International Film Buff, and a foodie among other things
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Bluephies Restaurant and Vodkatorium, Taste of India
- Favorite book/movie/music: The Namesake / I love Pedro Almodovar Films and other Spanish flicks / MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira)
- Weird or fun fact about you: I have the names of my two dogs already picked out ( I don't have dogs); I collect Brazilian license plates
Kate Vo Thi-Beard
- Hometown: northwest Missouri
- Areas of interest: Visual and popular media (including graphic novels), multiculturalism, and LIS education
- Hobbies and activities: collecting all things related to squirrels, reading comics/graphic novels, and traveling
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Bahn Thai Restaurant
- Favorite book/movie/music: Anne of Green Gables/?/?
- Weird or fun fact about you: I have a Curious George collection
Tien-I Tsai
- Hometown: Taipei, Taiwan
- Areas of interest: Academic libraries, information behavior, collection management, and scholarly communication
- Hobbies and activities: Listening to classical music, reading, talking to my family through Skype.
- Favorite Madison restaurant: New Seoul, Sunroom Cafe, and Imperial Garden
- Favorite book/movie/music: Mozart's and Schumann's works, Mulan Pipa Concerto, and other classical or Chinese music
- Weird or fun fact about you: I played Chinese lute, zhong-ruan, in the NTU Chinese Orchestra in college; I love learning different languages and cultures. I speak Chinese, Taiwanese, English, a little Japanese and German, and consider to begin a new language.
Barbara Walden
- Hometown: grew up in Cleveland,Ohio but lived longest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Madison is my hometown now.
- Areas of interest: History, Digital Libraries, International studies
- Hobbies and activities: making music (currently sing with UW Choral Union and Madison Chamber Choir, founding member of Madison Flute Club, am on the Advisory Board of the Madison Early Music Festival.) Also, reading, gardening,travel, hand-papermaking and book arts.
- Favorite Madison restaurant:Monty's Blueplate Special, Chautara
- Favorite book/movie/music: too many to list!
- Weird or fun fact about you: I'm one of the SLIS part-time doctoral students, recognizable by my split personality: theory/practice--which one am I doing now? Also, Sharon McQueen says I am a punctuation maven.
Xiaohua Zhu (Awa)
- Hometown: Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
- Areas of interest: Licensing and copyright, digital resource services
- Hobbies and activities: Movies, music, cooking, travel, window shopping
- Favorite Madison restaurant: Saigon Noodles & China Palace
- Favorite book/movie/music:My favorite books are Jane Austen's all six novels, and Maugham's novels and plays. But I haven't read many of them in English.
- Weird or fun fact about you: I still ask my mom to buy clothes for me in China and send them over here...