DPhil student Erin Canning awarded the ASIS&T 2025 Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Scholarship Award

The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is a professional association for researchers, developers, practitioners, students, and professors in the field of information science, which aims to lead the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information. The scholarship award fosters research in information science by recognizing the year’s most outstanding doctoral dissertation proposal while encouraging and assisting doctoral students in the field with their dissertation research.

Erin Canning is a DPhil student in the Oxford e-Research Centre, and is co-supervised by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Their AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership research explores potential uses of computational methods for critical cataloguing in museums and for enabling critical engagement with museum object data.

Erin says, “My work examines how computational methods might be useful for helping museum practitioners to think through some of the ethical aspects of their work, namely the presence of what is called ‘problematic terminology’ in cataloguing and object description. This term refers to language that can be offensive, outdated, or otherwise expressing views that the museum today may not hold. I aim to build tools that support museum practitioners working to address this in their institutions, and work in alignment with the goals that they have for these endeavours. My approach is highly interdisciplinary in nature, bringing theories from feminist ethics and approaches from information science and museology to the considerations of technical development in this area.”

In supporting Canning’s application titled ‘Novel application of computational approaches in addressing problematic terminology and descriptions within V&A Museum catalogues’, their primary supervisor at the Oxford e-Research Centre, Professor David De Roure, said, “All members of the supervisory team are very excited by Erin’s research proposal, programme of work and progress. This is an enormously important and yet challenging problem, and Erin has performed exceptionally from the outset.”

Erin adds, “I am delighted to have received this year’s Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Scholarship Award from ASIS&T. The encouragement of my research expressed by the ASIS&T Scholarship Jury and Board of Directors gives me confidence in my theoretical and methodological approach, and this award will allow me to explore new dimensions of my study that would not have otherwise been possible.”

Erin will receive the grant during the 2025 ASIS&T annual meeting which will be held 14-18 November, 2025 in Crystal City, Virginia.