Contact Information
Research Areas
Biography
Bonnie Mak is a historian of ancient, medieval, and modern information practices. She is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois and holds courtesy appointments in History and Medieval Studies.
She is author of How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2011), which examines the page as a dynamic interface in scrolls, tablets, books, and screens from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Her most recent co-edited volume, The Routledge Handbook of Information History (2026), includes her chapter, "What Is Information History For?" a complement to the co-authored article, "What Is Information History?" (Isis, 2023).
Mak has been the recipient of grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, and UTS-Sydney. She was the inaugural senior visiting fellow of the Center for Humanities and Information at the Pennsylvania State University, and has been faculty fellow of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.
Mak was organizer of “AI and the Human Condition,” a seminar series hosted by the Humanities Research Institute in AY2024/25. At the iSchool, she co-convened History Salon (2011-2017), which was dedicated to exploring the forces that shape the provision of information and production of knowledge across time. Mak serves as the campus faculty representative for the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies consortium.
Current projects include a study of blank pages, fragments, and ripening bananas. Mak's next book project explains explainable AI (XAI).
Research Interests
- manuscript studies & book history
- production & circulation of knowledge
- history of information practices
Education
- PhD in Medieval Studies, University of Notre Dame (advisors: Kathleen Biddick & Calvin M. Bower)
- MA in Medieval Studies, University of Notre Dame
- BAH in Medieval Studies, concentration in Philosophy, Queen's University at Kingston
Awards and Honors
- List of Teachers Rated as Excellent; University of Illinois (8x).
- Senior Fellow, Center for Humanities and Information; The Pennsylvania State University (2015–16)
- Faculty Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities; University of Illinois (2012–13)
Courses Taught
- History & Foundations of Information Science, a required PhD course on key concepts in information science
- Libraries, Information, Society, a required MSLIS course on key issues in library & information science
- History of the Book, on the expression and visualization of information in the book and beyond
- Information History, a cultural history of information practices
- Medieval Manuscripts & Early Modern Books
- Thinking + Doing: Making Knowledge Infrastructures Visible (with Jodi Schneider)
- History of Readers (with Kate McDowell)
Additional Campus Affiliations
- Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences
- Associate Professor, Program in Medieval Studies
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Books
The Routledge Handbook of Information History. Co-edited with Toni Weller, Alistair Black, and Laura Skouvig. London: Routledge, 2026.
Engaging with Archives and Records: Histories and Theories. Co-edited with Fiorella Foscarini, Heather MacNeil, and Gillian Oliver. London: Facet Publishing, 2017.
How the Page Matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
Articles & Chapters
"What Is Information History For?" In The Routledge Handbook of Information History, edited by Toni Weller, Alistair Black, Bonnie Mak, and Laura Skouvig, 583–597. London: Routledge, 2026.
"Situating Information History. The History and Historiography of Information and Its Practices." In The Routledge Handbook of Information History, edited by Weller, Black, Mak, and Skouvig, 3–34. London: Routledge, 2026. With Black, Skouvig, and Weller.
"What Is Information History?" Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 114, no. 4 (December 2023): 747–768. With Allen H. Renear.
"Manuscript." In Cambridge Critical Concepts: Technology and Literature, edited by Adam Hammond, 45–68. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2023.
"In Wood and Word, or, A Gloss on Documents and Documentation in the Humanities." In Law's Documents: Materiality, Authority, Aesthetics, edited by Katherine Biber, Trish Luker, and Priya Vaughan, 26–48. London: Routledge, 2022.
"Presentational Markup: What's Going On?" In Proceedings of Balisage: The Markup Conference 2021. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies 26 (2021). With Allen H. Renear.
“Wood Libraries: Knowing with Wood and Word.” The Caxtonian 29.3 (May/June 2021): 1–3.
"Period, Theme, Event: Locating Information History in History." In Information and Power in History: Towards a Global Approach, edited by Ida Nijenhuis, Marijke van Faassen, Joris Gijsenbergh, Wim de Jong, and Ronald Sluijter, 18–36. London: Routledge, 2020. With Alistair Black.
"Research Box." In Boxes in Action: A Field Guide, edited by Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, and Maria Rentetzi, 606–624. Manchester, UK: Mattering Press, 2020. With Julia Pollack.
"Cataloging." In Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research, edited by Kat Jungnickel, 228–238. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2020. With Julia Pollack.
"On the Design of the Humanities." interactions 23.4 (July/August 2016): 76–79. With Julia Pollack. doi: 10.1145/2945291
"Archaeology of a Digitization." Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65.8 (August 2014): 1515–1526.
"Book Unbound: An Exploration of the Material Form of Books and E-Books." Book 2.0 3.2 (December 2013): 137–147. WIth Julia Pollack.
"The Performance and Practice of Research in 'A Cabinet of Curiosity: The Library’s Dead Time'." Art Documentation 32.2 (Fall 2013): 202–221. With Julia Pollack.
Select Presentations
"Pre/Modern Fragmentation," invited lecture. Premodern Fragments: Remnants and Recovery. Newberry Library, Chicago. 2026.
"Reading the /," invited lecture. Digital/Analog Reading. Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures; University of Virginia. 2024.
“Sarton’s New Humanism in the Age of AI,” Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society. Mérida, Mexico. Co-organizer and panelist. 2024.
“AI and the Human Condition: A Socratic Dialogue,” invited lecture. Humanities Research Institute; University of Illinois. With Allen H. Renear. 2024.
“We Have Never Been Certain,” invited lecture. Uncertainty and the Handmade: The Fifth Collegium of Stanford Text Technologies. Stanford University. 2023.
"What Are We Studying When We Study Information?" invited lecture. Information Futures. The Pennsylvania State University. 2023.
"Books That Aren't Books," invited lecture. Wednesday Club of St. Louis. 2021.
“Information History without the Information or the History. A Morphological Approach,” invited lecture. Information History: How, What, Where, Why? University of Copenhagen. 2021.
"Presence | Absence," invited lecture. Yale Program in the History of the Book. Yale University. 2020.
"Data Visualization Before There Was Data. Or Visualization," invited lecture. The Caxton Club of Chicago. 2020.
“The Design of Information,” invited lecture. School of Design; University Technology Sydney. 2019.
“Scholarship and its Formats: Documenting the Humanities,” invited lecture. Literature and Formats. Department of English, German & Romance Studies; University of Copenhagen. 2019.
“A Sensorial Document of Scholarship,” keynote for What is a Document? A Workshop on Documentation, Records and Evidence. University Technology Sydney. 2018.
"Dimensions of a Scholarly Publication," invited lecture. iSchool Colloquia Series. University of British Columbia. 2018.
“Interdisciplinary Endings,” MLA; Philadelphia. 2017.
“Confessions of a 21st-Century Memsahib: The Offshore Sweatshops of the ̶D̶i̶g̶i̶t̶a̶l̶ Humanities,” MLA; Austin, Texas. 2016.
“Donna Haraway is our ‘Friend’: Reconfiguring Friendship Bracelets and Bibliography,” 4S/EASST; Barcelona. With Julia Pollack. 2016. Presented in absentia.
“Information’s Allure,” invited lecture. Charisma of the Book: Global Perspectives for the 21st Century. New York University–Abu Dhabi. 2016.
“Writing in Wood and Word,” invited lecture. Textual Studies Program Distinguished Speaker Series. University of Washington, Seattle. 2016.
“Time Suspended,” invited lecture. Yale Program in the History of the Book. Yale University. 2014.