Jonathan Furner: Expert on Cultural Stewardship Takes the Helm as IS Chair

This month, Jonathan Furner, professor of information studies at UCLA, has assumed the post of department chair. A scholar of the history and philosophy of cultural stewardship, Professor Furner teaches classes on the representation and organization of archival records, library materials, and other cultural artifacts.

A prolific author of more than 50 scholarly papers in the field’s leading journals, Furner frequently uses conceptual analysis to evaluate the theoretical frameworks, data models, and metadata standards on which information access systems rely. He chairs the Association for Information Science and Technology’s special interest group on classification research and the Dewey Decimal Classification’s editorial policy committee. He is associate editor of JASIS&T, co-editor of a book series for MIT Press and Facet (UK), and a regular reviewer of contributions to journals and conferences in the fields of philosophy of information, knowledge organization, and bibliometrics.

“Jonathan Furner is a scholar’s scholar,” says UCLA Ed & IS Dean Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “He is a deep thinker, a prolific writer, and a marvelous university citizen. I am personally gratified that I will be working closely with Jonathan to take UCLA’s Department of Information Studies to the next level of excellence, service, and dedication to the the principles of social justice in this defining domain for our country moving forward: information in the service of citizenship and democracy. I also want to take this opportunity to thank outgoing IS Chair Greg Leazer for his superb leadership of the department over the last six years.”

Professor Furner is a faculty affiliate of UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities. He earned his master’s degree in philosophy and social theory at the University of Cambridge in 1990 and his Ph.D. in information studies at the University of Sheffield in 1994.