Dr Bruce Ryan

After 13 years at Edinburgh Napier University, Dr Bruce Ryan’s role as Senior Research Fellow has come to an end. Last Friday, I joined Bruce for a special meal to mark his last day in paid employment at the University. Amongst the other guests were our (former) colleagues Dr Peter Cruickshank, Dr David Haynes, and Dr Rachel Salzano.

I worked closely with Bruce for over a decade when we were colleagues in the Centre for Social Informatics. Of the many projects on which we collaborated, three stand out:

1. The ambitious workforce mapping project that we undertook for CILIP and the ARA in 2014/5, and which later underpinned a REF2021 impact case study.
2. The Research, impact, value and LIS (RIVAL) project. This aimed to create a collaborative network of Scotland-based Library and Information Science researchers and practising library and information professionals interested in maximising the impact and value of LIS research. The project ran between 2019 and 2021 – somewhat longer than expected due to the coronavirus pandemic. The main output of RIVAL was our 2023 Journal of Documentation paper co-authored with Rachel Salzano and Katherine Stephen: ‘From a network model to a model network: strategies for network development to narrow the LIS research-practice gap’. Bruce’s involvement in RIVAL was cited in his nomination for Scotland’s Library and Information Professional of the Year award in 2021 alongside his contributions to CILIPS conferences.
3. The Platform to platform project (P2P) completed in 2022 to explore audience engagement with digitised archives with reference to a podcast series based on the second world war diary of Lorna Lloyd. This work was recognised in a ceremony at Lambeth Palace in London in May 2023 as a runner-up for the British Records Association’s 2022 Janette Harley Prize. With Iain McGregor and Marianne Wilson, Bruce and I subsequently wrote up our findings on audience experiences of interacting with an archive presented as a narrative non-fiction audio performance and the same core material displayed as online text and images. These were published in a journal article for Archives.

Also of importance to the great working relationship that I have enjoyed with Bruce over the years is the research that we completed with Dr Peter Cruickshank on information behaviour and use. This was principally concerned with information literacy in the context of hyperlocal government. Outputs of this stream of research include papers entitled: ‘Information literacy as a joint competence shaped by everyday life and workplace roles amongst Scottish community councillors‘, ‘Practices of community representatives in exploiting information channels for citizen democratic engagement‘, and ‘Exploring information literacy through the lens of Activity Theory‘.

More recently, Bruce has researched misinformation and disinformation in the context of Scottish schools. The first output of this, with a focus on school librarians, was released by CILIPS in September 2025. Dr Frances Ryan (no relation) is currently leading an extension of this work with reference to the role of school teachers. Bruce will maintain an active interest in this project as a Visiting Senior Fellow of the University. His appointment lasts until July 2026, also allowing Bruce to see his current PhD student through to graduation – and for the Social Informatics colleagues at Napier to enjoy a little longer his entertaining company, as illustrated below.

Addition 6th November 2025: Bruce has written about his plans for the coming months on his own blog Bruce’s IT-ish world in a posted entitled ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life‘. In his post, Bruce also explains the context for the wearing of the fluffy beards as captured in the photograph below.

Rachel Salzano and Hazel Hall play at ‘being Bruce’ on 11th March 2020, our last day in the office before the 2020 COVID19 lockdowns