Nancy Fried Foster

Nancy Fried Foster is a design anthropologist who helps libraries, colleges, universities, and cultural institutions use ethnographic and participatory methods to understand their users and then design spaces, services, and technologies to meet their needs. Dr. Foster served for three years as Senior Anthropologist at Ithaka S+R and for ten years as director of anthropological research for the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries. Since 2009, she has worked through the American International Consortium of Academic Libraries (AMICAL) to introduce participatory design and work-practice study to colleges and universities around the world, and from 2007 to 2013 she delivered workshops in the US through the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). Dr. Foster is an author with Patricia Steele, et al. of The Living Library: An Intellectual Ecosystem; edited Studying Students: A Second Look; and co-edited with Susan Gibbons Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester.