Elizabeth Buchanan, PhD
Elizabeth Buchanan, PhD, is endowed chair in ethics and director of the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Wisconsin(UW)-Stout. She is a scholar in the fields of research ethics, information/communication technology ethics, and research methods. Her work is particularly focused on the intersections of research regulation, internet or online venues and tools, and the subsequent ethical challenges that arise for researchers and research board reviewers.
Dr. Buchanan serves as leadership director and vice-chair of the UW-Stout IRB, and has served on both social science and medical school research ethics boards. She has presented her National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research on IRBs and internet research to the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014. She has also presented at the Office for Human Research Protections Community Research Forums, and has done professional development work with many IRBs, including the Department of Energy, Rockefeller Clinical and Translational Science Center, New York University, and Columbia University, among others. Dr. Buchanan has presented conference sessions, pre-conference programs, and webinar for Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) since 2008, and has served on various PRIM&R Conference Planning Committees since 2012. Dr. Buchanan has also been a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility since 2012.
Dr. Buchanan was a visiting research fellow in 2008-09 at the University of Oxford's E-Social Science Center, and has been a lecturer at the Upper Austrian University of Applied Science in Hagenberg, Austria since 2010. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Hyderabad in India in 2014.
Her most recent research was funded by the NSF, and examined computer science pedagogy and ethics in graduate computer and information science education. Recent publications include co-authored recommendations on internet research ethics to SACHRP; an article in Lecture Notes in Computer Science titled “The New Normal: Revisiting Internet Research Ethics”; an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entitled Internet Research Ethics; and a chapter on research ethics in the volume Research, Evaluation and Audit (Facet Publishing). Dr. Buchanan is the editor of one of the first anthologies of internet research ethics (Readings in Virtual Research Ethics, 2004), and is author and/or co-author to numerous papers on research ethics and methods in such venues as Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, Computers and Society, and the Blackwell Handbook of Internet Studies. Elizabeth is also primary co-author to the Association of Internet Researchers Ethics Guidelines for Internet Research. She holds Bachelor's degrees in philosophy and English from Rutgers University, and earned her Master’s and PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.