Biography

Amelia Acker studies the emergence and standardization of new information objects in wireless communication networks. Currently, she is researching information infrastructures and digital preservation contexts that support long term cultural memory and literacy.

Her award-winning dissertation was a history of the text message as it became a standardized information object. This research demonstrated how the infrastructure of mobile communication, including transmission protocols and the stabilization of the SMS data format, is one of the seminal developments in present-day networked, digital culture. Amelia's dissertation is one of the first scholarly works to describe the transformation of the mobile phone to a reading and writing machine that supports new kinds of literacies.

Amelia's current research program addresses emerging digital traces and mobile computing cultures that are shaped by new data collection practices amongst different kinds of users, designers, technologists, and institutions. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and has been published in journals such as the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Archival Science, and the Annals of the History of Computing.

From 2006 to 2014 Amelia worked as an archivist, librarian, and preservation consultant for libraries and archives in Southern California. During her PhD she worked as an arts librarian and cataloger for John Baldessari. Prior to joining the faculty at UT Austin, Amelia served for two years as an assistant professor and lead faculty of the archives program at the University of Pittsburgh's iSchool.

Degrees

Doctor of Philosophy, Information Studies, 2014
University of California, Los Angeles.

Master of Library & Information Science, 2008
University of California, Los Angeles.

Bachelor of Arts, Comparative Literature and Women's Studies, 2006 University of California, Irvine.