The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information welcomes its first Harrington Faculty Fellow, Dr. Casey Pierce, who recently accepted an appointment as visiting faculty member at the Texas iSchool for one academic year.
An Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI), Pierce’s research focuses on the changing nature of work as it relates to technology, policy and knowledge sharing in organizations. In the past, she has examined enterprise social media use, offshoring work arrangements, and the role of technology in U.S. healthcare policy implementation.
Currently, Pierce is studying how telehealth/telemedicine platforms and policies impact clinicians’ work practices and professional identities. Her research addresses implications concerning how digital platforms shape new models of patient care and the rise of contingent work arrangements in the healthcare industry.
“As a Harrington Fellow, I plan to continue my research examining how telehealth impacts the profession of mental healthcare, new forms of digital labor, and healthcare policy. I am excited to collaborate with faculty at the UT iSchool,” she said.
Pierce will serve as a Harrington Faculty Fellow beginning September 1, 2019 and ending May 31, 2020. Dean Meyer expressed his excitement about Pierce’s acceptance of the Fellowship. “We are thrilled to have Casey with us for one full academic year,” he said. “We look forward to working with her, and seeing her research strengthen the connections between Michigan and Texas.”
“Casey will be the first Harrington Faculty Fellow to be based at the School of Information. We are extremely grateful for the Harrington funding, and hope that Casey will be the first of many top young scholars to join our network of collaborators,” said Meyer.
The Harrington Faculty Fellows Program supports approximately five Fellows each academic year and brings top young scholars within eight years of their first tenure-track appointment to UT from other prestigious universities. Fellows visit the University of Texas at Austin to pursue their research and collaborate with colleagues. Although they have no teaching obligations, Fellows are welcome to conduct seminars. To maintain their connection to the University of Texas and other Harrington Fellows throughout their careers, all participants become lifetime members of the Harrington Fellowship Society.
As a visiting member of the University of Texas at Austin and School of Information faculty, Pierce intends to host a research symposium that brings together scholars and practitioners examining the changing nature of healthcare work. “The University of Texas is an exciting place to host this research symposium, given Austin’s thriving tech hub and the new Dell Medical School,” she said.
An interdisciplinary social scientist, Dr. Casey Pierce has received multiple awards for her work including best dissertation and best paper awards from the Academy of Management and International Communication Association. Her research has been published in top journals including Information Systems Research, Journal of Communication, and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Pierce earned her Ph.D. from the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University, School of Communication, and her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Southern California. To learn more about her research, visit her website: www.caseyspierce.com.