Anabel Quan-Haase

Anabel Quan-Haase (born 1970s) is a Canadian academic and published author. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario located in London, Ontario, where she is cross-appointed to the Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the Department of Sociology. Quan-Haase is a past-president of the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) and currently acts as the association’s social media director.

Anabel Quan-Haase received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Humboldt University in Berlin. In 1998, she earned a Master’s of Science in psychology, also from Humboldt University. In 2004, Quan-Haase obtained a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Toronto while working under the supervision of Lynne Howarth and an advisory committee including Barry Wellman, Chun Wei Choo, and Derick de Kerckhove.

Quan-Haase’s Ph.D. work examined the flow of information in high-tech organizations and compared employees’ face-to-face, email, and instant messaging networks. Additionally, she was involved in a large-scale survey which investigated the effect of the internet on people’s social relations, their sense of community, and their political involvement. Through her research with Barry Wellman, the concepts of “hyperconnectivity", "local virtuality" and "virtual locality" were established. Quan-Haase’s current research and teaching is focused on technology and its effects on society, as well as computer-mediated communication. Presently (2014), Quan-Haase has given more than 60 talks at national and international conferences based on her research.

Quan-Haase acts as the director of the Sociodigital Lab at the University of Western Ontario. The Sociodigital lab is a research lab which explores a wide range of topics linked to how information and communication technologies lead to social change. Some of the projects under Quan-Haase’s direction include examining ending relationships in an era of digital communication (which is termed “breakup 2.0”), serendipity in everyday chance encounters, the impact of e-books and electronic scholarly communications, and the media’s role in disaster early-warning systems in Brazil.

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