Summary

In this talk, I will be presenting two recent studies with homeless young people, age 13 to 30. The first study investigated how homeless young people hold themselves in relation to personal digital artifacts, such as mobile phones and music players. The second study investigated how mobile phones might improve the safety of homeless young people. I will also give a brief overview of the research I am proposing for my dissertation, a study of music and risk-taking behaviors among homeless young people in Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA.

Jill Palzkill Woelfer is a PhD candidate at The Information School, University of Washington and a visiting graduate student at UBC. Jill is a 2010 US Anita Borg Memorial Scholar and a 2011-2012 Fulbright Fellow to Canada. Since 2007 Jill has investigated the roles that information systems and personal digital technologies play in the lives of homeless young people. Her projects have spanned research, service, and design, including collaboration with Street Youth Ministries to fund and create a community technology center for homeless young people, where Jill was a volunteer instructor. Jill has published her work at CHI, HICSS and other conferences, and her work has also appeared in journals such as the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Journal of Information Technology, Children & Youth Services Review, and Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

Jill Palzkill Woelfer's CV can be found at this website