Yuwei
LinYuwei
Lin
Biography
Research
Interests
Publications
Research
Projects
Links
Contact
Yu-Wei Lin, Taiwanese, received her BA in Economics and a Diploma in women’s and gender studies from the National Taiwan University in June 1999. Afterwards, she worked for one year as a full-time research assistant in environmental economics at the National Taiwan University conducting the research project "Environmental Economic Indexes for a Sustainable Taiwan - Vision and Strategy" funded by the National Science Research Council in Taiwan.
In October 2000, she joined Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the Department of Sociology at the University of York and started her PhD research. Under the supervision of Professor Andrew Webster, her doctoral thesis, entitled “Hacking Practices and Software Development: A Social Worlds Analysis of ICT Innovation and the Role of Open Source Software", completed in December 2004, analyses the socio-technical relationships between diverse actors involved in the innovation process of ‘free/libre open source software’ (FLOSS). Her research contributes to our understanding of "hacker culture" that she defines as a concept articulated, interpreted, negotiated and performed by diverse actors in various forms, and also to the empirical studies on the FLOSS development. Theoretically speaking, her research also sheds new light on how innovation, emerging in a dynamic and informal setting, can be codified, verified and deployed in the formal knowledge system. She has successfully defended her thesis on 2 December 2004 and her examiners are Professor Ian Miles (PREST, University of Manchester) and Professor Andy Tudor (Sociology, University of York).
Yuwei, then, worked as a one-year postdoctoral research fellow on the METIS project at the Department of Information Systems at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with Professor Marleen Huysman from March 2005 to 2006. Meanwhile, she was also funded by the PRIME project to work with Prof. Andrea Bonaccorsi and Dr. Cristina Rossi at the Universita di Pisa (Italy) on the ELISS project, conducting case studies on Free/Libre Open Source Software Projects.
Currently Yuwei works as Research Associate at the ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) at the University of Manchester. Her main remits include understanding user requirements and studying socio-technical dynamics in development and the adoption processes of e-Research tools, which range from tools for formalising knowledge (e.g., ontology, metadata, folksonomy), for discovering knowledge (e.g., data mining and text mining), and integrating and processing information in different forms (e.g., textual, audio and visual).
Apart from her academic work, Yuwei also contributes FLOSS-related articles to the Linux-Magazine.
Yuwei's current research interests centre on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS), virtual communities (in connection with e-collaboration, e-learning and e-society), usability and user requirement analysis (particularly in the area of e-Social Science), digital culture (especially in relation to hacker culture), and the cultural and socio-technical dynamics in community-based innovation systems. Other research interests include gender and ICTs, the digital divide and glocalisation of information technologies, innovation and knowledge dynamics. Additionally, her research also seeks to contribute to the genre of virtual methodology and online research methods by which researchers use new ICTs as a medium for social research itself.
I published and presented a paper titled 'Agile Management: Strategies for Developing a Social Networking Site for Scientists' at the 4th International e-Social Science conference at Manchester, 18-20 June 2008 (co-authored with Meik Poschen, Rob Procter, Alex Voss, Carole Goble, Jiten Bhagat, David De Roure, Don Cruickshank, Mark Rouncefield).
I published an article titled 'Research 2.0' in Qualitative Researcher Issue 8 (June 2008).
I gave a talk at the ESRC 2008 Festival of Social Science – Wednesday 12 March “Surveying 2.0 - digital technologies, market intelligence and social media” (organised by Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. The slides of my talk, titled “Research 2.0”, can be found here.
I have guest edited a special issue on socio-technical dynamics in the FLOSS social world for the journal Science Studies with Lars Risan. This issue (Science Studies Vol.20, no.2) is now available. See the CFP and the Guest Editorial.
'Free/Libre Open Source Software Implementation in Schools: Evidence from the Field and Implications for the Future', Computers & Education 50(3): 1092-1102. (co-author with Enrico Zini). (corrected proof available online) (PDF Offprint) (This paper was accepted in November 2006, but has just been published in April 2008. A bit weird.)
I gave a talk titled 'Embodying Hacker Culture in Women-friendly Free Software Groups' at the workshop 'Codes and Conduct' (the 2nd of the workshop series 'New Sciences of Protection: Designing Safe Living') at the Lancaster University, 19-20 November 2007. A blog has been set up by the blogger Jess for this workshop.
I gave a talk titled 'Women's Collective Action in the Free Software World' at the workshop 'Political Economy of Peer Production' at the Nottingham Trent University, 15-16 November, 2007. I argued that voluntary work in free software is not necessarily unpaid labour; people are motivated by a variety of matters to get involved in free software. However, the majority of the rewarded and visible labour is coding jobs largely done by men. In this talk, I drew on the stories about women's practices in developing and using free software, and tackled such overemphasis on the value of coding and men's work. I called for attention to invisible values of mutual helping, mutual learning, participating, and sharing experiences. I also called for acknowledgement of women's participation (and hence diverse ways of coding and hacking) in the free software world.
I have co-authored the following papers which were presented at the 3rd e-Social Science Conference at Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 7-9 October 2007.
An action-oriented ethnography of interdisciplinary social scientific work (with Rob Procter, Peter Halfpenny, Alex Voss, Kenny Baird)
Ontology building as practical work: Lessons from CSCW (with Dave Randall, Wes Sharrock, Rob Procter, John Rooksby)
Aligning Technical and Human Infrastructures in the Semantic Web: a socio-technical perspective (with Jenny Ure, Rob Procter, Mark Hartswood, Kate Ho)
NCeSS Project: Data Mining for Social Scientists (with Jon Gibson, Rob Procter, Peter Halfpenny, Firat Tekiner, James Nazroo, Colette Fagan)
Developing an e-Infrastructure for Social Science (with Michael Daw et al.)
'Situated Design and Universal Maintenance: A Software Evolution Pattern Inspired by the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development'. ACM Ubiquity 8(27), July 10, 2007 – July 16, 2007 (with Enrico Zini). In this essay, Enrico and I describe a software evolution pattern recognition that was inspired by the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development.
I have published a book review of My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts authored by N. Katherine Hayles (2005, University of Chicago Press) in Science & Public Policy.
18-20 April 2007, Automating the Analysis of Free-text Answers to Open-ended Questions, Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Conference (CAQDAS 07), London. (Abstract)
8-10 March 2007, Women's Participation in the FLOSS World, the 3rd Christina Conference on Women's Studies and the 4th European Gender and ICT Symposium, Helsinki, Finland. (Abstract)
'Hacker Culture and the FLOSS Innovation', in the book 'Handbook on Research in Open Source Software: Technological, Economic and Social Perspectives' edited by Kirk St.Amant and Brian Still (Idea Group Inc.). pp. 34-46. 2007.
‘Women
in the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development’.
In the
book edited by E. M. Trauth Encyclopedia
of Gender and Information Technology.
pp.
1286-1291. Hershey,
PA: Idea Group Inc. 2006. (see a
GPL-ed draft version titled 'Gender Dilemmas in the Free/Libre
Open Source Software Development')
'A Techno-feminist
perspective on the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development'. In
the book edited by E. M. Trauth Encyclopedia
of Gender and Information Technology.
pp. 1148-1153. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc. 2006. (see a
GFDL-ed draft version)
14
March 2006, invited to speak at the lunchtime seminar on the
relationships between FLOSS communities and firms at the Department
of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at the
Politecnico di Milan.
(Speech note coming soon).
15-17 June 2006, 2nd
Holland Open Software Conference, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Delivered a talk 'Improving Women's
Participation in the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development'
in the 'Social
Inclusion' track.
22-23 July 2006, Computer
in Use: Historical and Social Perspectives, Manchester, UK (paper
presented: 'Hacker Culture and the FLOSS Innovation: a Practice-based
Perspective', paper
was precirculated and discussed in absentia; commentators: Thomas
Haigh & James
Sumner)
23-26
August 2006, European
Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2006
Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland (serve as a session organiser
for the session on Dynamics
in the FLOSS Social World (with Lars
Risan, Maja van der
Velden, and Christian
Lundestad) and the session on 'STS as a Boundary Discipline:
Interacting with Organisation Studies' (with Ragna
Zeiss).
21-23 September,
HCC7 Human Choice and Computers Conference, Maribor, Slovenia
(paper titled 'An
Empirical Study on Implementing Free/Libre Open Source Software
(FLOSS) in Schools', in Jacques Berleur, Markku I. Nurminen, and
John Impagliazzo, Eds. Social
Informatics: An Information Society for all? In remembrance of Rob
King,
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference 'Human Choice and
Computers', IFIP-TC9 'Relationship between Computers and Society',
Springer Science and Business Media, 2006) (co-authored with Enrico
Zini).
27-29
September, 2006 Virtual Ethnography in Contemporary Social Science
Workshop, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (paper presented:
'Mutuality between Researchers and Respondents in Virtual Ethnography')
(see abstract).
5
October 2006, invited to speak at the Pre-conference
workshop on Free/Libre Open Source Software at the Mediterranean
Conference on Information Systems 2006. See abstract.
'Hybrid Innovation: How does OSS Firms Collaborate with the FLOSS Community'. Knowledge, Technology and Policy Volume 18, Number 4 / Winter 2006 (see draft version).
'The
Future of Sociology of FLOSS', First
Monday, Special
Issue #2: Open Source (October 2005).
'Learn
to Solve Problems: A Virtual Ethnographic Case Study of Learning in a
GNU/Linux Users Group', in the special issue 'Learning
in Networked Organizations' of eJOV Vol. 9. 2005. (co-authored
with Marleen
Huysman).
'Gender
Dimensions of FLOSS Development', in the issue on 'Underneath
the Knowledge Commons' of Mute
Vol.
2(1). 2005.
'Free/Libre
Open Source Software for Bridging the Digital Divide’, in the
book edited by S. Marshall & W. Taylor & X. Yu,
Encyclopedia
of Developing Regional Communities with Information and Communication
Technology,
Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc. 2005. (see draft
version)
'Is
Hacking Illegal?', in the book Sarai
Reader 05: Bare Acts. 2005. (co-authored with David
Beer)
14-15
April 2005, OSS Symposium, Padova, Italy (paper presented:
"Hybrid Innovation: The Dynamics of Collaboration Between the
FLOSS Community and Corporations") (see slides
of the presentation)
6 May 2005, A
Sociology of the FLOSS innovation. A guest lecture for
the master course of open source software at the department of
computer science, University of Pisa, Italy.
13-16 June
2005, Custom
Debian Distribution: Designing Software for Diverse Users Needs,
a position paper presented at the workshop Developing
and Sustaining Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) Applications For,
By, and With Communities at the International
Conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T2005), Milan,
Italy.
26 September - 21 October 2005, invited to
participate in the Online
Panel Discussion of the Online
Discussion Forum "Common
Ground _ collective practice & shared knowledge" held by the
Tate Museum.
20-21 October 2005, invited to speak at the
conference "Digital
Inclusion and Open Source" organised by the Norwegian
Network on ICT and Development in Oslo. The slides of my talks,
"Knowledge
Production in the Free/Libre Open Source Software Innovation"
and "Women
in FLOSS: Part of the Same Culture and Practice" are
available.
10 November 2005, Diversity
of knowledge and dynamics of knowledge creation in FLOSS communities,
a paper presented at the FADO
seminar, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde,
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
21 December 2005, invited to
speak about 'User Inclusion in the FLOSS Movement' at the workshop
'Information
Technology and Social Values: Free Software and Information Human
Right' at the National
Pingtung University of Education.
Hacking Practices and Software Development: A Social Worlds Analysis of ICT Innovation and the Role of Open Source Software (Unpublished doctoral thesis), December 2004. (see the draft version of the thesis)
‘Custom Debian Distribution and Diverse Requirements of Software’ Community Technology Review (Winter 2004-05). (co-authored with Enrico Zini)
‘Contextualising
Knowledge-Making in Linux User Groups’ First
Monday 9(11),
November 2004.
'Epistemologically
Multiple Actor-Centered Systems: or, EMACS at work!'. ACM Ubiquity,
Volume 5, Issue 1, February 25 - March 2, 2004.
(This
work-in-progress was also presented at the
3rd Oekonux conference, 20-23 May 2004, Vienna, Austria)
[Note]: On 25 November 2007, Richard Stallman wrote to me and requested a correction on this article: “Neither Weinreb nor Moon worked on Emacs, at least not in a major way or at the beginning. It's possible they contributed occasionally later on.” He also noted that “The passage in Free as in Freedom about "standardization" is so unclear that I can't tell what in the world it could refer to.”
23-26
June 2004, invited to present a paper ‘Hybrid
Innovation: The Dynamics of Collaboration between the Public and the
Private in the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Innovation
System’ at the LinuxTag 2004 Conference, Karlsruhe,
Germany.
Has Software Development Ever Been Lost in
Translation? - From Local Epistemologies to Cosmopolitan Expertise’.
A paper presented at the
4S-EASST joint conference, Paris, 25-28 August 2004.
'The institutionalisation of hacking practices'. Ubiquity, Vol. 4, Issue 4, March 18 - 24, 2003.
'Creativity, culture and innovation'. A paper presented at the joint seminar of SATSU (Science and Technology Studies Unit), and the HCI group at computer science and psychology department on 20th May 2003, University of York, UK.
6-9
June 2002, invited to present a paper 'The pan-hacker culture and
unconventional software innovation: exploring the socio-technical
dimensions of Linux' at the LinuxTag 2002 conference, Karlsruhe,
Germany.
'The social shaping of software: a case study of
Linux'. A paper presented at the EASST (European Association for
Studies of Science and Technology) biannual conference, University of
York, UK. 2002. (See abstract.)
'The hybrid identity of computer hackers in the dynamic software innovation systems'. A paper presented at the STS summer school, University of Laussane, Swizerland. (See programme & contact list of delegates & abstract.)
Seminars/Workshops/Conferences Attended (selected)
19 March, NCRM/SRA Data Linkage Workshop, London, UK
21-22 March, the 2nd Ontogenesis Network Meeting, Manchester, UK
10-13 September, UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, Nottingham, UK
7-9 October, the 3rd e-Social Science Conference, Ann Arbor, USA
21-22 November, the 2nd Data Curation Conference, Glasgow, UK
9-21 July, International Summer School on Grid Computing, Ischia, Italy
28-30 June, 2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, UK.
Using Text Mining for Frame Analysis of Media Content, funded by JISC e-Research Theme e-Infrastructure Programme, in collaboration with National Text Mining Centre (NaCTeM) and ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC).
'Social and Ethical Issues in Developing and Implementing e-Research and e-Health Technologies', an international collaboration with Prof. Pau-Choo Chung, (Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University), funded by the British Academy and the Taiwan National Science Council.
A core member of the EPSRC and AHRB jointly funded project “Technology and Social Action: A Designing for the 21st Century” research cluster, whose aim is to foster active dialogue and collaboration among innovative ICT designers and socila movement activists.
A PRIME-funded researcher. Prof. Andrew Webster and I have been awarded 10,000 EURO grant from the PRIME project to conduct FLOSS-related research. Through this grant, we have established cooperation with Prof. Andrea Bonaccorsi and Dr. Cristina Rossi to investigate the interactions and relationships between firms and the community in the FLOSS social world. There are three main research questions we try to answer in this project: 1) Firms' business models: why hybrid business models can succeed? 2) Firms' incentives: why do firms entre the open source field? 3) Firms' participation in FLOSS projects: why do firms contribute to the private provision of collective goods?
METIS
project
As a member of the METIS project funded by the
Telematica Instituut, our research aims to understand the
socio-technical dynamics in the knowledge-sharing process in on-line
communities based at the corporate environment. I also
coordinate a special interested group 'Knowledge
and Communities' at the VE-Forum
as a related playground for our research.
Contact
Email yuwei AT ylin DOT org
Thanks for visiting. Have some fun with Shaun the Sheep.