Rate My Professor Ellie Sayyad Abdi

Dr Ellie Sayyad Abdi is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Humanities, at Curtin University, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Research for higher degree by research students in the school. She is affiliated with the Libraries, Archives, Records and Information Science (LARIS) program. Ellie is a highly experienced information scholar, educator, and practitioner with more than nine years of research, teaching, supervision, learning design, and leadership experience in higher education across Australia and internationally. As an applied researcher, her work centers at the nexus of information, people, technology, and learning. Her research specializations include information literacy in everyday life and the workplace, immigrants' information experiences, leisure information behaviors, and emerging topics such as AI and data literacy among graduate researchers. She has designed and led numerous research projects, secured grants, published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, and contributed to peer review and examination processes.

Prior to Curtin, Ellie held positions at Queensland University of Technology, including Associate Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Researcher. She was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of the Pacific. Key publications include 'Rebalancing Research and Practice – Reflections on the RAILS Conference After 20 Years' (Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 2025, with Gaby Haddow and Petra Dumbell), contributions to 'Information Literacy in the Workplace' (2018), 'Immigrants' information experiences: an informed social inclusion framework' (Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 2018, with Paola Beretta and Christine Bruce), and 'Constructing information experience: a grounded theory portrait of academic information management' (2019). Ellie demonstrates significant influence through leadership roles, including Posters Chair at iConference 2024, organising committee and co-chair positions for RAILS conferences, and co-chair of the ALIA Research Advisory Committee. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).