About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Information School at University of Washington and an adjunct faculty member in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.

Email: mcifor@uw.edu | Twitter: @marika_louise | iSchool Faculty Page

I am a feminist scholar of archival studies and digital studies. My research investigates how individuals and communities marginalized by gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and HIV-status are represented and how they document and represent themselves in archives and digital cultures. This multidisciplinary scholarship uncovers how archives and digital technologies and cultures are shaping identities, experiences, and social movements.

My book, Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), delves deep into the archives that keep the history and work of AIDS activisms alive. It charts the efforts activists, archivists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the United States and the infrastructure developed to maintain it and the activation of these records on contemporary digital platforms by artists, archivists, and activists. Archives allow us to remember these social movements and to revitalize the epidemic’s past in order to remake AIDS’ present and future. In addition, my research has been published in leading journals in information studies, communication and media studies, and gender and sexuality studies (for more details, see Publications).

My ongoing collaborative research projects include:

• AfterLab: Critical Information and Data Studies at the End of the World (co-founder, with Megan Finn, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, and Tonia Sutherland)
• Border Quants: Feminist Approaches to Data, Bodies and Technologies Across Borders (with Jacqueline Wernimont, Marisa Duarte, Jessica Rajko, and Patricia Garcia)
• Immigration Information Flows (with Ricardo Gomez and the University of Washington Center for Human Rights)

In fall 2019, I joined the faculty of the Information School at the University of Washington, where I also hold an adjunct appointment in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. Previously, I was Assistant Professor of Information and Library Science at Indiana University, Bloomington and Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, where I was also affiliated with the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative. In 2017, I received my PhD from the Department of Information Studies at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) where I also completed certificates in Gender Studies and the Digital Humanities. I earned my MA in History and MS Library and Information Science at Simmons College in 2012 and my BA in History and Political, Legal and Economic Analysis from Mills College in 2007.