Interim Dean, School of Information Studies
Jeff Hemsley was appointed Interim Dean of the School of Information Studies (iSchool) in July 2024. Previously, Hemsley served as an Associate Professor at the iSchool.
Hemsley’s research mirrors the iSchool’s mission to explore the intersection of technology and humanity. He focuses on understanding how information flows on social media, the ways in which some people have more influence over those flows than others, and the ways that information flows manifest differently on different kinds of social media sites. Hemsley draws on theories and concepts such as information gatekeeping, personal influence and viral events, and uses exploratory data analysis (data visualization techniques), inferential statistics, social network analysis and content analysis to answer his questions. He teaches courses in information visualization and information organization.
Hemsley earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington’s Information School, where he was a founding member of the university’s Social Media Lab. The lab received RAPID and INSPIRE awards from the National Science Foundation, an Amazon Web Services in Education research grant award, and a gift from Microsoft Research. His research has appeared in several journals, including Policy & Internet, American Behavioral Scientist and the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. He is co-author of the book “Going Viral” (Polity Press, 2013), which explains what virality is, how it works technologically and socially, and draws out the implications of this process for social change. The book received the ASIS&T Best Science Books of 2014 Information Award and was selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2014.
Before entering academia, Hemsley spent 15 years in the software industry as a software test engineer and quality assurance manager for major companies, including Autodesk and Symantec.