Professor Coye Cheshire to visit HIIT in June 2012 as a Fulbright Visiting Specialist

Associate Professor Coye Cheshire from the School of Information of University of California, Berkeley, will visit HIIT in June 2012 as a Fulbright Visiting Specialist (co-funded by FuNeSoMo). The academic host of the visit is professor Niklas Ravaja, the leader of HIIT's recently formed Social Interaction and Emotion research group.

The visit is part of HIIT's long-term research collaboration with the ISchool of  UC Berkeley. Professor Cheshire has been involved in a series of collaboration with HIIT since 2008, including joint research projects, advising visiting student researchers from HIIT, co-authoring publications with HIIT researchers, and participating in UC Berkeley - HIIT research workshops.

Professor Cheshire is an expert in social exchange, cooperation, trust, and interpersonal relationships in computer-mediated environments. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University, and M.A. and B.A. in sociology from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively. 

The main aim of the visit is to conduct ongoing research and continue long-term collaborations together with HIIT researchers especially in the Network Society research programme. Furthermore, professor Cheshire will facilitate specifying and starting two three-month research projects focusing on local online gift exchange and privacy management, respectively. The projects will be conducted on the ground by two of HIIT's FuNeSoMo summer interns. After prof. Cheshire's three-week research visit, the research collaboration will continue over distance.