Student Spotlight: Fiona Jardine, PhD Candidate
Since joining the iSchool in 2012, Fiona Jardine has completed her MLS (2014), started a PhD, become a parent, completely changed her research, qualified as an Advanced Lactation Consultant, and competed as UMD’s representative in the International Three Minute Thesis competition. Her pioneering research approaches public health from an information studies perspective: she investigates the experiences of those who exclusively pump (EP) breast milk. Although her dataset is expansive, her findings focus on why EPers initiate and cease exclusive pumping, what their information behaviors and support needs are and whether they change over time, and what their lived experiences are and in what ways can they be improved. You can follow along with her findings at bit.ly/EPresearch. On campus, Fiona participates in the “Need to Feed” project, which is gathering data about existing lactation/feeding facilities and working with facilities to improve them. She redesigned the breastfeeding symbol to be inclusive of both nursing at the breast and pumping (see universalbreastfeedingsymbol.