Victoria Lemieux

Professor

Research Classification

Archival, repository and related studies
Records and information management (except business records and information management)
Digital humanities

Research Interests

Blockchain technology and Ecosystems
Trust and Records
Privacy
security
Risk management
Transparency and the public interest (in public sector and financial contexts)

Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs

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Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters

Blockchain at UBC
Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research
Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS)

Research Options

I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.
I am interested in working with undergraduate students on research projects.
 
 

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Recruitment

Master's students
Doctoral students
Any time / year round

1. Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Archives, specifically decentralized, blockchain-based federated machine-learning for archival data exchange and research

2. Blockchain Ecosystems, specifically understandng and exploring the 'life worlds' of blockchain ecosystems

I support experiential learning experiences, such as internships and work placements, for my graduate students and Postdocs.
I am interested in supervising students to conduct interdisciplinary research.

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Supervision Enquiry

If you have reviewed some of this faculty member's publications, understand their research interests and have reviewed the admission requirements, you may submit a contact request to this supervisor.

Great Supervisor Week Mentions

Each year graduate students are encouraged to give kudos to their supervisors through social media and our website as part of #GreatSupervisorWeek. Below are students who mentioned this supervisor since the initiative was started in 2017.

 

Vicki is a wonderful supervisor because she has great knowledge in our field of study, she is very supportive and always believes in me, even when I don't. She incentivizes me to pursue new skills but always respecting my personality and will. She is always using positive words and her critiques are always constructive and objective so I can really improve myself. I feel very blessed to have her as a mentor in a challenging stage such as the Ph.D. course.

Danielle Batista (2019)

 

Graduate Student Supervision

Doctoral Student Supervision

Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.

An intelligent class: the development of a novel context capturing method for the functional auto-classification of records (2024)

The need to accurately classify records is a core problem in many domains. Historically, the classification of records was done manually as records were received and then categorized. Unfortunately, due to a significant growth in the volume of records, the need for robust auto-classification methods that can effectively “read” and classify records, is high. Today, significant challenges remain to the development of effective auto-classification processes for records. This is because the records traditionally require functional classification based on context, not topic classification based on content. Functional classification traditionally has been a challenge for both humans and machines, with little research on how to effectively functionally classify a record. In order to move research forward, this thesis will address the challenges of both human and machine classification of records. Firstly, this thesis, will seek to evaluate the efficacy of human manual classifiers on a classification task, using knowledge from this process to articulate a process for automated functional classification that utilizes a record’s archival diplomatic context. Secondly, this thesis will compare the efficacy of manual versus machine (i.e., auto-classification) using a record set with over 500,000 records, using a novel auto-classification approach that leverages a record’s context, not just its content, to improve classification accuracy. As this thesis will discuss, there is significant variance between expert human (i.e., records managers) during the manual classification process, with statistically significant differences in their ability to accurately classify both administrative and operational records. Moreover, this thesis will demonstrate that an auto-classifier, when trained using key elements of context, can statistically outperform a group of expert human classifiers on a classification task.

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Master's Student Supervision

Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.

Learning to trust: exploring the relationship between user engagement and perceptions of trustworthiness in self-sovereign blockchain systems (2022)

Blockchain can be characterized as a technology that enables social trust between actors. In Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision, trust emerges through transparency, as the technology allows for expert users to verify any transaction by consulting a shared ledger. However, for lay users the technology itself can be quite opaque. Further, in private, permissioned medical blockchain applications, transparency can conflict with the need for confidentiality. This leaves an open question of how blockchain can enable social trust in these situations. Research on blockchain technology points to the importance of user experience design as providing a foundation. What then is the relationship between how users experience blockchain systems and how they may come to trust them? While there is some research exploring how user experiences with blockchain systems influences trust, the relationship between the front-end design of these systems, user engagement, which has been a major focus of user experience design for non-blockchain systems, and user trust in blockchain and distributed ledger systems has not explored previously. To address the gap in this nascent area of literature, this study presents original exploratory research on the relationship between user engagement and the user’s perception of trustworthiness with MYPDx, a prototype blockchain system that utilizes self-sovereign identity principles to enable patients to share genetic and other biomarker information with healthcare researchers. This research utilizes multiple methods to explore the relationship between user engagement and users’ perception of blockchain system trustworthiness, utilizing survey and interview data gathered during usability testing with a diverse sample of users (n=20). A strong positive correlation was established between the extent to which users found the system engaging and assessed the system to be trustworthy. The extent to which MYPDx was seen as usable was most strongly correlated with users’ assessment of its trustworthiness. Analysis of the research data indicates that users undergo a process of learning about the system through engagement, employing indicators from the system’s user interface to assess whether to trust the system. This study explores this interaction in more detail, presenting a theoretical picture of this phenomenon and design principles to inform future design and research.

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Publications

Current Students & Alumni

This is a small sample of students and/or alumni that have been supervised by this researcher. It is not meant as a comprehensive list.

Trinh Nguyen

Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD)

Research Topic
Exploring information governance in sustainable decentralized projects

Hoda Amal Hamouda

Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD)

Research Topic
Incorporating the view of archival diplomatics into the authentication practices of citizen journalists videos captured during historically significant events
 
Victoria Lemieux's Profile
ORCID Profile
Other link
Supervision Enquiry

Membership Status

Member of G+PS
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Program Affiliations

Library, Archival and Information Studies
Archival Studies and Library Information Studies
Archival Studies

Academic Unit(s)

School of Information
 

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