Barry Wellman
University of Toronto

I argue that many people in the developed world work and find community as networked individuals, rather than as members of densely-knit, tightly-bounded groups. To support this argument, I provide evidence from our NetLab's Netville and National Geographic studies of community, and our studies of knowledge workers in corporations and universities.

Prof. Wellman was educated at the Bronx High School of Science (Honors, 1959) Lafayette College (Honors B.A. in History, 1963) and Harvard University (M.A in Social Relations, 1965; Ph.D. in Sociology, 1969). His doctoral thesis examined how race, class, and school segregation affect adolescent identity and cosmopolitanism.

Professor Barry Wellman studies networks: community, communication, computer, and social. His research examines virtual community, the virtual workplace, social support, community, kinship, friendship, and social network theory and methods. Based at the University of Toronto, he directs the NetLab, teaches at the Department of Sociology, does research at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and the Bell University Laboratories' Collaborative Environment Lab, and is a cross-appointed member of the Faculty of Information Studies. He is a Fellow of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, and a committee member of the Social Science Research Council's (and Ford Foundation's) Program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security. He is the (co-)author of nearly three hundred articles, co-authored with eighty scholars, and is the (co-) editor of three books. (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/)

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