Karen Mossberger
Karen Mossberger is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Public Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research on technology and public policy focuses on digital inequality and e-government. Her forthcoming book, co-authored with Caroline Tolbert and Ramona McNeal on Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation (MIT Press) presents evidence on the benefits that information technology has for political and economic participation, and its consequences for citizenship and equality of opportunity. This work builds on an earlier book, Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide (Mossberger, Tolbert and Stansbury, Georgetown University Press, 2003).
A forthcoming co-authored article in Public Administration Review, “Institutions, Innovation and E-Government in the American States,” is a time series analysis that shows the relationship between innovation in e-government, reinvention, and the creation of institutions to support e-government.Other recent research examines the impact of Internet use at work for less-educated workers, and patterns ofinformation technology use in poor communities. Her coauthored paper on “Race, Place, and Information Technology” (with Caroline Tolbert and Michele Gilbert) won the 2005 Best Paper Award for the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. Using multilevel models, the authors show the impact of living in high-poverty communities, which explain racial disparities in technology use for African-Americans, and restrict opportunities for individuals of all races. Mossberger is also part of a multi-national research project on “Regenerating Urban Neighborhoods,” which will include 18 cities in 11 countries. Team members recently met in Bellagio, Italy at the Rockefeller Foundation Conference and Study Center.
Mossberger’s collaborative research on information technology has been supported by grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (among others), and has appeared in Public Administration Review, Social Science Quarterly, and Urban Affairs Review. She serves on the national technology advisory board of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the Digital Opportunities Measuring Stick project on technology and youth supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and is a member of the Senior Editorial Board for the Journal of Information Technology and Politics, which will begin publication in Fall 2007. Current projects include participation in International Institute for public administrators held in Latvia in June 2007, where she will speak on e-government and communication, and a paper on Internet participation that she will present with Caroline Tolbert at a conference in Karlstad, Sweden in October 2007.A detailed curriculum vita for Dr. Mossberger can be found here.
Dr. Mossberger can be contacted at mossberg@uic.edu.
