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John Maxwell

Associate Professor
Publishing
Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Education

BA, MPub, PhD (UBC)

Biography

John Maxwell is interested in how technological change impacts book and periodical publishing, in the history of publishing, and in the emergence of digital forms, genres, and mythologies.

John has been working on the Web since 1993. Since that time, he’s been working on content management strategies, electronic publishing, SGML & XML, learning technologies, virtual communities, and reflecting on the history of all that and more. John was a member of the first Master of Publishing cohort at SFU in 1995/96. 

After working on distance learning technology at the BC’s Open Learning Agency through the late 1990s, he did his PhD in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of British Columbia, where his research focused on the cultural history of personal and educational computing at Xerox PARC in the 1970s.

John has taught in the Publishing Program at SFU since 2001, and served as Director of the program from 2014 to 2023. Currently, he teaches the MPub seminar PUB 800: Publishing and the Problem of Capitalism; the project-based PUB 607: Digital Publishing Workshop; and the undergraduate foundation course PUB 101: Publication of Self in Everyday Life.

John’s current research involves digital publishing technologies, the evolution of scholarly communications, open scholarship, and, most recently, the digitization of SFU Library’s 16th century Aldine Collection

John is almost a BC native (he was born east of the Rockies but has lived on the coast most of his life). He’s married with a couple of grown kids, one large dog, and a very fluffy cat.

Research Interests

Technology, Digital Media, History of Publishing, History of Technology, Content Management, Policy, Copyright.

Selected Publications

Maxwell, John W. 2022. "The Care-ful Reviewer: Peer Review as if People Mattered" Pop! Public. Open. Participatory. No 04.

Maxwell, John W. 2020. “Text Processing Techniques & Traditions: Why the History of Computing Matters to DH” in Doing Digital Humanities 2: A Companion Volume. ed by by Richard J. Lane, Raymond Siemens, and Constance Crompton. Routledge. 

Maxwell, John W, et al. 2019. “Mind the Gap: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Publishing Tools and Platforms.” MIT Press/Knowledge Futures Group. DOI: 10.21428/6bc8b38c.2e2f6c3f 

Maxwell, John W, Alessandra Bordini, & Katie Shamash. 2017. “Reassembling Scholarly Communications: An Evaluation of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Monograph Initiative.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 20 (1), April, 2017.