Professor Diane Rasmussen McAdee (BA, MS, PhD, FHEA, FRSA), an American born in Michigan who has also previously lived in Texas, North Carolina and Ontario, Canada, made the bold decision to apply for an academic position at a Scottish university. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, she was invited for an interview and boarded the plane feeling a bit anxious about the journey to a strange country in the British Isles that she knew very little about. Nevertheless, she took the plunge and was duly rewarded with a Lecturer position in the Academic Specialism of Library and Information Science at the University of Strathclyde. A journey that would change her life had begun.
Currently Diane is Professor of Social Informatics in the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE) at Edinburgh Napier University and Director of Edinburgh Napier's Social Informatics Research Group. Diane's research revolves around social informatics, the broad exploration of the relationships between people, society, information and technology. Her current areas of focus are ethical cataloguing, non-textual metadata, social media and online health information provision. She has edited two books.Social Media for Academic Researchers: A Practical Guide and Indexing and searching non-text information—She is a co-editor Social tagging in a linked data environmentShe has given over 150 peer-reviewed/invited talks and published over 40 papers in highly ranked information science journals.
Pursue formal and informal research; COVID-19 During the lockdown and subsequent lockdowns, Diane ended up meeting another UK Column viewer, John McAdee, in the UK Column's online chat room. The resulting “socially distanced” communication soon led to an in-person social meeting, where they exchanged their respective thoughts and opinions on the turmoil in the world around them. Their conversation also revealed a strong personal understanding and bond between them. The two later got married in Edinburgh and invited the UK Column team to their wedding.
Against the fairy-tale backdrop of a new country, professional development and romance, Diane also experienced the dark pressures and damage that COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns had on her students. Isolated in cramped accommodation, many students fell into anxiety and depression, but Diane was not trained in these situations and was unable to provide them with the support they needed. Still, she sympathized with her students, spoke out for them, and questioned the vaccination and lockdown rules, which she saw as an infringement on their and her personal freedoms. In return, she received warnings, isolation and ridicule from experts, as well as attacks on her right to legally express her opinions on social media and elsewhere.
Hear how this courageous woman refused to be intimidated and stood up to challenge the modern system of academic control.
