Who I am

Karyn's headshotHi! I'm an Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and the Canada Research Chair in Inclusive Social Computing. I lead the Accessible Computing Technologies Research Group where we study how technologies can be envisioned to enable older adults and people with disabilities to better share, communicate, and connect with those around them. Our work has been recognized with Best Paper awards from ASSETS, CHI, and CSCW. I'm currently Treasurer of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS) and an Associate Editor for ACM’s Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS). I recently served as Technical Program Co-Chair for ASSETS 2020 and Sub-Committee Co-Chair, Accessibility and Aging for ACM CHI 2023. Prior to joining McGill, I was a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Unversity of Toronto. I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2010.

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Research

My research is in Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility. I spend most of my time thinking about how we might design interactive technologies differently if we forefronted the needs, preferences, and lifestyles of older adults. Recent projects have designed new augmentative and alternative communication technologies for aphasia, investigated social sharing environments for dementia, examined older adult's learning preferences for novel devices, and considered ways of making social technologies more inclusive for older adults. At the moment, I'm especially interested in how recent advances in AI stand to impact technology design for later life, in both positive and negative ways. Most of work these days involves qualitative methods.

The most up to date listing of my publications can be found on Google Scholar. More details on my research can be found on the ACT Lab website.

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Teaching

Courses

I currently teach the following graduate courses in McGill's Master of Information Studies program. Students outside the program may be able to take these courses but should contact the School directly to inquire about permission and process.

I also developed an introductory programming course for our MISt program.

Undergraduate Research

I supervise a small number of undergraduate research projects each year, typically with students from the McGill Cognitive Science program. If you are interested in conducting a project under my supervision, please fill out this application form.

Please note that it takes weeks to go from an initial point of contact to a meeting to discuss interests to a final course application. I am often offline for a good part of August and December. Last minute project requests will not receive a response.Moreover, undergraduate supervision requests often exceed my supervisory capacity, so submitting a detailed application on time is critical for full consideration.

Recommendation Letters

If you would like me to write a letter of recommendation, please complete this form at least two weeks before the submission deadline. I generally can write positive letters for people I've had in more than one class and who earned an A in those courses. Of course, recommendation letters vary in their requirements. The kind of letter requried for a national doctoral scholarship is very different from that needed for a summer job. Please do not hesitate to reach out by email if you think the general guidelines might not apply to your specific case.

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Service

I focus my scholarly service efforts within the ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGACCESS communities and typically turn down requests from outside those communities. Please refer to my CV for a list of recent activities.

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