KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr Virginia Barbour
Ginny Barbour joined Public Library of Science (PLoS) in 2004 and was one of the founding editors of PLoS Medicine. She was appointed the journal’s first Chief Editor in 2008. Her background in publishing comes from The Lancet, where she worked from 1999 until joining PLoS. She initially studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, and then medicine at University College London and Middlesex Hospital School of Medicine, London. After training in Haematology at the Royal Free Hospital, London, she was awarded a DPhil for research into globin gene regulation in Oxford and then did post doctoral work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
She is the Chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, and is a member of the Ethics Committee for the World Association of Medical Editors. She has participated in discussions on a number of guidelines for reporting standards in publishing, including revisions to the CONSORT statement, and the development of the PRISMA statement. She has led PLoS Medicine in campaigning on many issues in medical publishing including open-access, ghostwriting, and the influence of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries
Dr Tara Brabazon
Tara Brabazon is Professor of Communication at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) and Director of the Popular Culture Collective. Previously, Tara has held academic positions in the United Kingdom, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. She has won six teaching awards, including the National Teaching Award for the Humanities, along with other awards for disability education and cultural studies. In 2005, Tara won both the Murdoch University Postgraduate Supervisor of the Year and the Teaching Excellence Award. In 2009, she won the Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Brighton for both undergraduate and postgraduate education.
She is the author of thirteen books on popular culture and digital technologies and their role in education and over 100 refereed articles alongside journalistic works, having been a columnist for the Times Higher Education in the UK. This commitment to public education and media literacy resulted in Tara being a finalist for the 2005 Australian of the Year and the 2005 Telstra Businesswoman of the Year in the Community Service category. In 2009 and 2011, Tara was nominated for the Australian Woman of the Year in the UK. She is currently serving the YMCA Durham as a member of their “Green Team,” promoting a sustainable and walkable Oshawa.
Dr Tracey Bretag
Tracey Bretag, BA(Hons), MA, EdD has an eclectic background in English literature, gender studies, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and education. She teaches communication, ethics and professional development courses at the University of South Australia. Tracey is currently the Director of the Global Experience Program, a university-wide extra-curricular program designed to enhance students’ global competencies.
Tracey’s research for the last decade has focused on all aspects of academic integrity. She is currently the Project Leader of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded project, Academic integrity standards: Aligning policy and practice in Australian universities. She is also the founding Editor of the International Journal for Educational Integrity, and the Co-Chair of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Educational Integrity. Her most recent publications have included papers on academic integrity policy, students’ understandings of academic integrity, publication ethics and the decision-making process for breaches of academic integrity.
Kirby Ferguson
(Photograph by Gene Driskell)
Kirby Ferguson is a New York-based writer, filmmaker and speaker. He is the creator of the popular video project, Everything is a Remix, an online series exploring how creativity incorporates copying and recombining from other sources. His realms of interest include social creativity, cognitive bias, and the history and influence of markets, law and government.
Originally from Prince Edward Island, Canada, he began his career in graphic design and gradually shifted into video production. Less than a year after launching Everything is a Remix, he quit his day job and is now self-employed.
Kirby has worked with CNN, The Discovery Channel, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and has spoken at many conferences, schools, and corporation, including Google, Columbia University and The Gel Conference. He is currently working on a series about the 2012 US election.
Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (via live videolink)
Jonathan Zittrain is an internationally-known cyberlaw scholar, writer and speaker, who currently teaches at Harvard University. Jonathan's main areas of interest include law and policy surrounding the internet, as well as intellectual property, censorship, content control and computer security. He is widely regarded as a leading expert in his field.
On completing a first degree from Yale University in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, he went on to gain a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His recent research includes the study of Internet filtering by national governments, the role of intermediaries as points of control in Internet architecture, and the taxation of Internet commerce. He is the founder of the H2O Project, which produces simple, unobtrusive but novel tools for use in classrooms, and is co-founder of the Chilling Effects web site, which monitors internet activity and freedom of speech.
Jonathan is the author of numerous works including The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It, Jurisdiction, Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering and Technological Complements To Copyright.