FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Professor Barry Wellman, the S.D. Clarke Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, will deliver the 2009 Ferritor Community Lecture, “Connected Lives: The New Social Network Operating System,” at 6 p.m Monday, April 13, in Room E107 of the Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wellman, who directs NetLab at the University of Toronto, studies the impact of social, computer and communication networks on everyday life. In The Internet in Everyday Life, he and co-editor Caroline Haythornthwaite bring together leading experts who examine the social effects of the Internet and how the Internet fits into people’s everyday lives.

He is currently writing Connected Lives with Lee Rainie, head of the Pew Internet and American Life project. Wellman has written more than 200 papers and has won career awards for Internet studies, community studies and communication. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

His co-edited Social Structures: A Network Approach was named by the International Sociological Association as one of the “Books of the Century.” He has published articles about the theory, methods and substance of social network analysis. He coined the terms “network city” in 1973, “network of networks” in 1983, “networked individualism” in 2000, and, with Keith Hampton, pioneered the use of “glocalization” in discussing computer mediated communication networks.

He was a founding member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Electronic Community Center committee, and he co-developed the National Geographic Society’s Web Survey 2000 on millennium trends and Web Survey 2001. He has been a Fellow of IBM’s Institute of Knowledge Management, a consultant with Mitel Networks, a member of Advanced Micro Devices’ Global Consumer Advisory Board, a keynote speaker at conferences ranging from computer science to theology, and a committee member of the Social Science Research Council and Ford Foundation Program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 articles and is the co-editor of three books. He serves on the advisory board of the University of Toronto’s Knowledge Media Design Institute and on the editorial boards of 11 journals. #

The Dan Ferritor Community Lecture Series pays tribute to the legacy of Dan Ferritor, who led the University of Arkansas for over a decade as chancellor from 1986 to 1997. His tenure laid a firm foundation for the university’s continued progress in the 21st century. Among his many achievements was the leadership he provided during the campaign to save Old Main, rallying the state of Arkansas to contribute nearly $13 million toward restoring Arkansas' symbol of higher education.

“The Ferritor lectures are geared toward issues related to community development and growth, minorities and the disadvantaged, and ways we might better understand and nurture social capital in northwest Arkansas,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, the Bernice Jones Endowed Chair in Community in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.