Dr. Liss Jeffrey
Director, McLuhan Global Research Network
Director of the eCommons/agora project
Chief Knowledge Media Design Scholar of the McLuhan Program
in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto
Dr Liss Jeffrey has extensive academic and professional expertise in research, design and evaluation of e-governance media and programs. Academically, she holds degrees from Harvard-Radcliffe (AB magna cum laude), York (M.E.S.) and McGill (Ph.D) Universities. She currently teaches graduate seminars on new media and policy, communications history, theory and technology, and the works of Marshall McLuhan and his approach to media studies at the University of Toronto''s McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology. There, she founded the McLuhan Global Research Network and was recently named Chief Scholar, Knowledge Media Design. Professionally, Dr Jeffrey has worked in Canada's cultural industries as a writer, broadcaster and commentator, as an independent television public affairs producer, as private TV museum director and co-curator of the original exhibition "Watching TV" at the Royal Ontario Museum. She has written and presented internationally on Canada's cultural policies, audiences and the challenges of old and new media.
In her dual role as academic and new media producer, Dr Jeffrey served as a civil society member with Canada''s delegation to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in December. From 1999 to 2001, she served as an expert on new media and public access with the Council of Europe''s Culture Committee in the program on new information technologies. For this project, Dr Jeffrey wrote for and edited the collection of essays entitled, "Vital Links for a Knowledge Culture: Public access to new information and communications technology" (2001).
In 1997, Dr Jeffrey and her team launched a research, development and production think tank, the byDesign eLab, which creates tools, platforms and training programs in support of effective citizen engagement in e-governance. Dr Jeffrey and eLab led the civil society partnership that designed and hosted the award-winning national Foreign Policy Dialogue/ Dialogue Politique Etrangère in 2003 for the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development at the Department of Foreign Affairs. eLab has also worked with the Department of Canadian Heritage, and other government partners. Dr Jeffrey and eLab founded the Electronic Commons/Agora Electronique online public space network in 1997, and with support form Human Resources Development Canada, eCommons/agora is now a pan-Canadian not for profit community of learning and practice that works to close digital divides by fostering community development, citizen participation in digital democracy and cultural content creation.
