Elise Silva is the Director of Policy Research at Pitt Cyber where she analyzes the complex interplay between technology and society in today's information ecosystems with an eye towards creative public policy responses.
Dr. Silva brings a broad range of research approaches and perspectives to her work which is informed by humanistic analysis, a community-engaged orientation, and social science methods. Her work can be found in various academic journals including the Journal of Information Literacy and in other venues like Tech Policy Press.
Dr. Silva was formerly an academic librarian in charge program-wide information literacy curriculum and a visiting English faculty member at Brigham Young University.
She holds a PhD in Writing Studies from Pitt’s English Department, a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas, and an MA in English from BYU. In 2024, her doctoral dissertation received an honorable mention for the Computers and Composition Journal annual Hugh Burns Distinguished Dissertation Award, in 2022 she received a Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship at Pitt, in 2020 she was awarded a Sawyer Seminar Information Ecosystems Fellowship at Pitt, and in 2017 she won the American Library Association Library Instruction Round Table Innovation Award.