Jens-Erik Mai

Jens-Erik Mai is Professor of Information and an experienced university leader. He has previously served as vice-dean at the University of Toronto and he is currently head of the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen.  He is an active participant in the international information science community as conference chair, workshop organiser, reviewer, editor, speaker, and editoral board member for the Journal of Documentation, Aslib Journal of Information Management and Journal of Education for Library and Information Science.

In his research, Jens-Erik addresses fundamental  questions about data and information in the digital society.  His research explores philosophical, ethical, cultural, and contextual dimensions of information, information and communication technology, digital media, and information and cultural institutions.  He has contributed to philosophy of information with analyses of information quality from a Gricean perspective, and to information ethics and privacy with analyses of the concept of personal information in the context of datafication.  His work in knowledge organization/classification has significantly impacted the conceptual and methodological foundations of the field, and his papers on semiotics, philosophy of language, and post-modernity in this area are widely cited and used.  Jens-Erik was PI on the collaborative, inter-disciplinary research project: “Don’t Take it Personal” – Privacy and information in an algorithmic age  supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Previously Jens-Erik was associate professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, where he also served as Vice Dean and Acting Dean. Prior to that he was a faculty member at the Information School of the University of Washington where he also co-directed the Center for Human-Information Interaction.  He earned his Ph.D. in Information Science from the the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright Scholar, and his Master and Bachelor degrees from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark.

Jens-Erik lives in a small town north of Copenhagen with his wife Mette Ribergaard Mai.