Diane H. Sonnenwald
Diane Sonnenwald is an information scientist well-known for her idea of "information horizon", which focuses on how the perceived information options influence one's information behaviors. She was the first person working outside North America to be elected President of ASIS&T (2011-2012). She is Emerita Professor and Emerita Chair at the University College Dublin School of Information and Communication Studies since 2014.
Life
Sonnenwald received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and German from Muhlenberg College in 1976. In 1984, she received her M.A. in Computer Science from Montclair State University, and she received her Ph.D. in Communication, Information and Library Studies from Rutgers University in 1993.[1]
Contributions
Prior to working in academia, Sonnenwald worked in telecommunications and IT service management as Director at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), now iconective, from 1985-1993.[2] Upon completing her Ph.D., Sonnenwald completed a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) and NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Risø National Laboratory at the Technical University of Denmark. She worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1995 to 2003 as assistant professor and associate professor, and was then professor at University of Gothenburg and University of Borås (2003 - 2009), and professor at University College Dublin (2009 - 2014). Sonnenwald also served in visiting roles at University of Copenhagen (2014-15), and at the National Taiwan Normal University (2015). She served UCD as Head of School from 2009 to 2012.
Sonnenwald researches collaboration, information behavior and collaboration technology in a variety of contexts, including inter-disciplinary and inter-organizational collaboration in emergency healthcare, digital humanities, academia and industry. Her research was funded by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, European Science Foundation, and private corporations and foundations. Sonnenwald was the first person working outside of North America to be elected president of ASIS&T (2011-2012). She chaired the 2016 ASIS&T Annual Meeting held in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has received several awards from ASIS&T including the Award of Merit.
Publications
- Greenberg, Jane; Sonnenwald, Diane H.; Hartel, Jenna; Montague, Kaitlin; Fourie, Ina. (2023). "Reflecting on Two Decades of Information Horizons Theory and Method: Applications and Innovations". Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 60: 780–784. doi:10.1002/pra2.860
- Sonnenwald, D. H. (2016). Theory Development in the Information Sciences. University of Texas Press.[3]
- Sonnenwald, D.H., Wildemuth, B. M., & Harmon, G. L. (2001). A research method to investigate information seeking using the concept of information horizons: An example from a study of lower socio-economic students' information seeking behaviour. The New Review of Information Behavior Research 2: 65–86. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/567681.567686
Awards
- ASIST Fellow, 2024
- ASIST Award of Merit, 2020
- Distinguished Alumni Award from Muhlenberg College, 2017
- ASIST Watson Davis Award, 2016
- ASIST SIG USE Elfreda A. Chatman Award, 2014
- ASIST Lecture Series Award, 2013
- U.S. Army Research Laboratory Scientific Contribution Award, 1996
- IEEE, Senior Member, 1991
- American Society of Information Science (ASIS) Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship Award, 1991
Further Reading
- "Diane H. Sonnenwald". Wikipedia. 2026.[4]
- "Diane Henley Sonnenwald - 1976". (2025). Muhlenberg Magazine.[5]
- "Four Members Chosen for the 2024 ASIS&T Fellowship". (2024). ASIST.[6]
- "Sonnenwald to Receive ASIS&T Award of Merit". (2020). ASIST.[7]
- Nanayakkara, Yolande. (2016). "ASIS&T is proud to announce the winners of the eminent Watson Davis Award to Diane H. Sonnenwald, PhD and Donald O. Case, PhD". ASIST.[8]