Emmanuelle Vaast is Professor of Information Systems at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University. She teaches the core Information Systems course as well as Managing Information Technology (BCom), Technology and Innovation for Sustainability (BCom) and research methods (PhD. Program).
Emmanuelle Vaast is currently Division Chair of the Organizational Communication and Information Systems (OCIS) division of the Academy of Management. She also serves as Senior Editor at Information Systems Research.
Her research examines how social practices emerge and change with the implementation and use of new technologies and how these new practices are associated with organizational and change dynamics. She has in particular investigated the learning and knowledge dynamics taking place at different levels (communities and networks of practice, for instance) and the boundary spanning involved in these dynamics when new Information Systems get implemented and used.
Professor Vaast has been fascinated by the new practices and social and societal changes associated with social media such as blogs and microblogs. Some of the themes she has especially been interested in deal with the emergence of new organizational forms and with new dynamics associated with organizational and occupational identification, as well as the future of work.
Professor Vaast is interested in methodological issues. Most of her research so far has been qualitative, relying upon case-based evidence analyzed from an interpretive perspective. She has however become increasingly in the opportunities and challenges of combining qualitative and quantitative analysis of electronically-collected data.
A native of France, Professor Vaast earned an M.A. in Economics and Political Sciences from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris, an M.A. in International Economics from Dauphine University in Paris, and an M.Sc. in Management Sciences from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan. She also holds a Ph.D. in Management Sciences from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris.