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.
Her first book, How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2011), examines the page as a dynamic interface in scrolls, tablets, books, and screens from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Mak's chapbook, Reproducing by Fragments, is forthcoming from Yale University Press in collaboration with the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the latter of which will house her associated "archive" of handmade fragments. A co-edited volume, The Routledge Handbook of Information History, is in production and forthcoming in Summer 2025.
Mak is the organizer of “AI and the Human Condition,” a seminar series hosted by the Humanities Research Institute. She has served as a member of the Senate Committee on the Library since 2022.
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, on major concepts in IS, including measurement, trust, and explainability in AI
- History of the Book, on the expression and visualization of information in the book and beyond
- Information History, a cultural history of information practices, including collection, description, classification, and transmission
- 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
Recent Publications
"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.
"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.
"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.
“Wood Libraries: Knowing with Wood and Word.” The Caxtonian 29.3 (May/June 2021): 1–3.
"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.
"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.
"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.