Christopher Le Dantec's accepted paper, "Strangers at the Gate: Gaining Access, Building Rapport, and Co-Constructing Community-Based Research," has been named a "Best Paper" of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2015).

The premier venue for presenting research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities, and networks, CSCW brings together top researchers and practitioners from academia and industry who are interested in the area of social computing, CSCW encompasses both the technical and social challenges encountered when supporting collaboration.

Of papers accepted to the conference, only 3% are given the best paper title by a dedicated review committee. Le Dantec and co-author Sarah Fox, PhD student at the University of Washington, will present the paper at the annual CSCW conference, which will this year be held March 14-18 in Vancouver, Canada.

A second paper submitted by Le Dantec and Digital Media PhD student Mariam Asad, "Illegitimate Civic Participation: Supporting ICT Use on the Ground,"  received an Honorable Mention, a distinction given to 14% of accepted papers.

Christopher Le Dantec is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. His research is focused on integrating theoretical, empirical, and design-based investigations of mobile and social technologies in support of community and civic engagement. With an interest in digital disparities, he examines alternate constraints on mobile computing in urban life, information technology and social institutions, and the use of participatory design for articulating social issues and constructing publics.