SENIOR RESEARCHER

Biography

Liss Jeffrey is a producer, researcher, and speaker with degrees from Harvard/Radcliffe College (AB, Social Relations), York University (M.E.S. Environmental Studies: Communications Media Analysis), and McGill University (Ph.D. Communications). She is a former producer at Citytv, and co-curated the Watching TV exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum as acting director of the MZTV Museum of Television. An active member of the McLuhan Program since winning a Connaught Fellowship award for her project WoMedia: the feminist face of Toronto's media content, Dr. Jeffrey has taught Culture and Technology graduate seminars in New Media and Policy, Communications History, Theory and Technology, and Understanding McLuhan and Media, as an adjunct faculty member since 1997. She directs the McLuhan Global Research Network, and founded and directs a knowledge media and policy research and production alliance, the byDesign eLab, which specializes in citizen engagement in public policy dialogue, online and offline. eLab and its partners at the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development designed and implemented the award-winning national public consultation, the Foreign Policy Dialogue. With colleagues, students and volunteers, Dr. Jeffrey has been engaged since 1997 in creating a public space network using open source technologies to advance community development, civic participation and cultural content creation, through the national non-profit Electronic Commons/ Agora Electronique. This project is now working on creative engagement and citizen journalism, and designing an open source (drupal) digital printing press called NetiZen News. Dr. Jeffrey speaks, publishes, and broadcasts in Canada and internationally on Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communications, media ecology and the transformative effects of digital media. She was a Canadian expert on the Council of Europe’s New Information Technologies project (1999-2001), edited the compilation Vital Links for a Knowledge Culture, and was a civil society member of Canada’s official delegation to phase 1 of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.

Keywords:
McLuhan, citizen engagement, digital democracy, creative engagement, media ecology