The Department of Information Science focuses on the following research areas:
- Knowledge management and Competitive intelligence
- Information processes
- Meta-context of information
- Multimedia
- Book and publishing studies
Our Departmental Research Committee is chaired by Professor Beth le Roux.
Supervisors are listed underneath each focus area
1. Knowledge management and Competitive intelligence
| Dimensions | Special interests |
| Policy and strategy | - Theories and models of strategy
- Strategies and policies for various environments
- Measurement
|
| Tools and techniques | - Audits
- Communities of practice
- Storytelling
- Intranets and portals
- Expert locators
- Knowledge maps
|
| Organisational culture and leadership | - Creating a conducive environment and culture for KM
- Organisational learning
- Knowledge sharing
- Impact of corporate culture
- Leadership and governance
|
| Knowledge infrastructures | - Physical infrastructure
- ICT for KM
- Human resources
- Intellectual capital
- Indigenous knowledge
|
| Knowledge systems | - Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)
- Other knowledge systems
|
| Competitive and business intelligence (CI/BI) | - Establishing a CI/BI strategy for an organisation in order to gain a competitive edge in the market
- Investigating the benefits of the implementation of CI/BI within a specific business sector
- The effective implementation of CI/BI tools in organisations to improve or sustain competitiveness
|
| Teaching, theory and practice | - Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
|
2. Information processes
Supervisors
Prof Theo Bothma, Email: [email protected]
Prof Archie Dick, Email: [email protected]
Prof Marlene Holmner, Email: [email protected]
Ms Anika Meyer, Email: [email protected]
| Dimensions | Special interests |
| Information organisation and representation | - Metadata schemas
- Taxonomies, ontologies, topic maps and folksonomies
- Abstracting, indexing and thesaurus construction
|
| Information dissemination and use | - Current awareness services and alerting services
- Push technologies
- Informal electronic communication, including social media
- User studies
- Personal information management (PIM)
|
| Information behaviour, seeking and searching | - Models and theories
- Information behaviour in context (including collaborative information retrieval and affect and emotion in information behaviour)
|
| Information retrieval (IR) | - Information retrieval system design and evaluation
- Relevance studies
- Web information retrieval
|
| Digitisation and curation | - Digital libraries
- Digitisation and curation technologies (including archiving)
- Policies and procedures
|
| Information literacy (IL) | - Theory and practice of IL
- Workplace IL
- Digital, media and other literacies
|
| Digital humanities | - Annotation of text corpora for retrieval and analysis
- E-lexicography
|
| Data science | - Research data management
- FAIR data principles
- Data management plans
- Data repositories
- Data literacy
|
| Teaching, theory and practice | - Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
|
3. Meta-context of information
Supervisors
Prof Archie Dick,, Email: [email protected]
Prof Theo Bothma, Email: [email protected]
Prof Marlene Holmner, Email: [email protected]
Ms Anika Meyer, Email: [email protected]
Dr Tumelo Maungwa, Email: [email protected]
| Dimensions | Special interests |
| Information ethics | - Social media and information ethics
- Privacy (moral values, protection of private information, management of private information, surveillance, trust, information security)
- Access (accessibility, gender issues)
- Intercultural information ethics (information ethics in Africa)
- Information ethics and Governance (social justice, information ethics and power, information ethics and politics, e-democracy/e-government)
- Emerging trends and technologies (e-waste, information and cyber warfare)
|
| Legal issues | - Intellectual property rights (including fair use, copyright)
- Open access
- Freedom of access to information and freedom of expression
- Information legislation
- Protection of Private Information Act (POPIA)
|
| Socio-cultural issues | - Globalisation
- Information and knowledge society
- Digital divide
- Information and development
- Information poverty
- Information flows
- Informatisation and “information consumption”
|
| Economic and political Issues | - Information economy
- Information politics
- Pricing of information (fee vs. free)
|
| Information communication | - Accessibility of information content
- Content repackaging
|
| Teaching, theory and practice | - Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
- Blended / Online Learning
|
4. Multimedia
Supervisor
Prof Theo Bothma, Email: [email protected]
Ms Annique Smith, Email: [email protected]
| Dimensions | Special interests |
| Virtual Reality and HCI | - Virtual Reality and interaction design
- Gesture control
- Lower body gesture control
- Virtual Reality and intersensory illusions
- Tangible interfaces
- Haptic feedback
- Illusory feedback
|
| Game studies | - Game design theory
- Alternate Reality Games
- Game-based learning
- Pervasive/Immersive games
- Serious games
- Gamification in Education
- Gamification and intrinsic motivation
- Gamifying tertiary education
- Game-based Learning
|
| Information architecture | - Usability
- Heuristics based on information architecture
- Website usability based on information architecture
|
| Interaction design | - Tangible interfaces
- Low cost tangible interfaces
- Internet of Things
- Access control
- Surveillance and communication
- Augmented reality
- Augmented reality and navigating academic spaces
|
5. Book and publishing studies
Supervisors
Professor Beth le Roux. Email: [email protected]
Dr Jana Klingenberg, Email: [email protected]
Ms Samantha Miller, Email: [email protected]
| Dimensions | Special Interests |
| Authorship | - Multilingual and local language writing
- Translation practices
- Profiles of South African writers
|
| Current publishing practice | - Publishing list analysis and bibliographic studies
- Editorial policy, practice and issues for print media products
- Ownership and business profile analysis
- Product and cost analysis
- Regulation, censorship and national policies
|
| Digital and e-publishing | - E-publishing formats
- E-publishing technologies and processes
- Publishing in multiple formats and media from single sources
- Enhanced e-books
- The impact of digital publishing
|
| Book and print history | - Histories of publishers, printers, booksellers and related industries
- History and development of practices of reading
- History of orality, performance and print cultures
|
| Dissemination and reception | - Access to print media products
- Distribution networks and bookselling practices
- Marketing and markets
- Audience research
- Reception and readership studies
- Reading promotion campaigns, including issues of literacy
|
| Teaching, theory and practice | - Curriculum development
- Teaching methodologies
- Experiential learning and vocational training for the publishing industry
|
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