Oceania Chapter Meet-and-Greet

Description

The Oceania chapter of the Association for Information Science & Technology is hosting a virtual Winter Meet and Greet on Tuesday, July 30! It's a low-key, informal social event. There will be a brief welcome message, followed by a short program by our invited speaker, Dr. Yazdan Mansourian, Senior Lecturer at the School of Information and Communication Studies of Charles Sturt University. As a new ASIS&T Chapter, Oceania brings together information science and technology professionals and researchers from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the Pacific Islands. In this online Meet and Greet session, Dr. Yazdan Mansourian is invited to reflect on the concept of 'leisurely information' and explain its liberating power. About the Speaker: Yazdan Mansourian is a senior lecturer in the School of Information and Communication Studies at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He received his PhD in Information Science from the University of Sheffield in 2006. Since then, his research interests have focused on the cognitive and affective aspects of Human Information Behavior in different contexts. Since 2017, he has concentrated on HIB in the context of serious leisure. In this ongoing research program, he explores the role of joy and other positive emotions in engaging people with hobbies, amateurism, and voluntary activities and how joyful experiences inspire them to seek, share, and use information. He also investigates to what extent people's engagement in joyful information activities can contribute to their overall well-being. Theme of the Event: Liberating Power of Leisurely Information: From Engagement to Improvement About the Talk: The liberating power of information means the transformative capacity embedded in how we experience information for various purposes in everyday life. For example, serious leisure allows people to pursue mastery in their chosen activities and enjoy their achievements. This mastery gives them a chance to express themselves through artistic expression, athletic performance, or simply joining a community of interest or practice. It also empowers them to shape their own identity. Therefore, engaging in serious leisure is a self-directed learning and discovery journey, where the liberating power of information transforms their curiosity into passion, passion into mastery, and mastery into purpose and meaning.