User: James Howison

James Howison is a Doctoral Candidate at the top-ranked School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.  His research focuses on the organization of distributed collaboration; his dissertation specifically focused on organizational change in free and open source software projects.  His publications include articles in IEEE Computer, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications, Software Process Improvement and Practice as well as Knowledge, Technology and Policy.  He has presented at the International Conferences for Information Systems and Software Engineering.  He has been invited to speak at O’Reilly’s eTech, OSCON and FOOcamp conferences.

Born in Scotland, James grew up in Australia, earning his undergraduate Economics degree from the University of Sydney and pursued masters study in Software Engineering at the University of New South Wales before transferring in to the PhD in Information Science and Technology in 2002.  Prior to returning to graduate school James worked as an information systems implementation consultant with KPMG management consultants and as a consultant with Control Risks Group, an international crisis management and corporate investigations consultancy. In 2005 James was chief scientist for a prize winning business plan competition team, organized by the top-ranked Entrepreneurship program at Syracuse.

James is a keen golfer and sailor, competing in national and international championships in the Ethchells and Sydney 38’ classes as well as over 1500 nm offshore experience.  He is a keen supporter of Rugby and Cricket but is always open to American attempts to convince him of the value of North American sports.