From: Joshua Barker, Vice-Provost, Graduate Research and Education and Dean, School of Graduate Studies
Date: April 25, 2025
Re: Appointment of Acting Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation, School of Graduate Studies (PDAD&C #38)

I’m pleased to announce that the Agenda Committee of Academic Board has approved the appointment of Professor Sarah Sharma as the Acting Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation for a one-year term starting July 1, 2025. She will serve in this role while Professor Vina Goghari, SGS’s current Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation, is on a research leave.

Sarah Sharma is currently a Professor of Media Theory at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCT) at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), and holds a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information. She comes to her role with extensive experience in improving outcomes for graduate students, including through her role as Director of the McLuhan Centre from 2017-2022, where she initiated a university-wide program in technology and culture focused on graduate students with fellowships, residencies, working groups, seminars and symposia. Since then, she has also served as Director of the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology – a unit with 1500 undergrads and 30 faculty members. In recognition of her outstanding work as a researcher, Professor Sharma recently received the 2024 UTM Desmond Morton Research Excellence Award.

Professor Sharma received her PhD in Communication and Culture from York University in 2006 and joined the University of Toronto in 2016. Her research program focuses on the relationship between technology and the social experience of difference, with particular attention to technology and the cultural politics of time, a critical feminist retrieval of the media theory of Marshall McLuhan, and a techno-feminist media theory to address contemporary gender struggles in and around big tech.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Sarah Sharma as she begins her term as the Acting Vice-Dean, Research and Program Innovation in the School of Graduate Studies.