International Summit for Community Wireless Networks

Alison Powell is a PhD candidate in the Communication Studies department at Concordia University in Montreal, where she holds a Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her work focuses on the design, governance, and regulation of urban WiFi networks, and the practices of alternative, non-commercial technological development, especially the development of wireless technologies for use in public spaces. She has been a member of the Canadian Research Alliance on Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP) and the Ethos Group. Her work examines community and municipal wireless projects in terms of their contribution to broad social and political shifts. She has published recently in Government Information Quarterly and forthcoming in Atlantis: A Journal of Women’s Studies. In October 2008 she will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Oxford Internet Institute.