Mike Ananny

Mike Ananny has completed a PhD in Communication at Stanford University.  His dissertation focused on the relationship of networked digital technologies to journalistic practices and press freedom.  In 2010, he was a post-doctoral scholar at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA, and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University for the 2010-2011 academic year. Before Stanford, Ananny was a founding member of Media Lab Europe (the MIT Media Laboratory’s European partner) where he researched, designed and evaluated informal learning technologies.  Ananny holds a Bachelors of Science (Honours) from the University of Toronto (double-major in Computer Science and Human Biology) and, while an undergraduate, was a founding member of Expresto Software Corporation (sold in 2002).  Ananny also holds a Masters in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Laboratory where he researched, designed and evaluated embodied conversational software agents and tangible, technology-enhanced toys to support children’s language learning.  He has worked or consulted with LEGO, Mattel and Nortel Networks, helping to translate research concepts and prototypes into new product lines and services.

Experience as a Trudeau Scholar

The Trudeau Foundation is its people, and I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to have learned from them how and why to address important problems with humility, compassion, humour, and rigourous intellect.  The Foundation has been a kind of second home that has—especially important for a Canadian living in the United States like myself—anchored me in Canadian relationships and issues.  I’ve strengthened my connections—intellectual, personal, cultural—to the people, conversations and ideas that make Canada unique and critically important in international debates of all kinds.  My Foundation connections are life-long relationships, lenses through which I now see the world and, most fundamentally, touchstones for how smart and caring people can make differences in their communities.  It’s been an absolute privilege to have been a part of the Foundation and I’m profoundly grateful for its generosity and influence on how I understand Canada and the world.