Julien to Receive the 2025 Award of Merit
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Heidi Julien is the recipient of the 2025 ASIS&T Award of Merit, the highest honor presented by the Association. The award’s purpose is to recognize an individual who has made particularly noteworthy and sustained contributions to the information science field. The award is based on 3 criteria: impact on theory, scholarship, and practice; exemplary leadership and sustained involvement; and education and mentoring.
Heidi Julien earned her PhD at the University of Western Ontario and has worked as an academic in New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Her scholarship has focused on information behavior, digital literacy, and theory use in Information Science. She has served in multiple leadership roles at universities and in the discipline and collaborates with colleagues around the world. At this career stage, she particularly enjoys mentoring students and early career scholars.
In nominating Julien, Diane H. Sonnenwald said, “Professor Heidi Julien has been an international leader in information science for over three decades. She is a leading scholar in information literacy and human information behavior, and has been identified as one of the most prestigious academic researchers in North America based on her numerous publications in prestigious journals and the citations to those publications. Most recently, she was the keynote speaker for the Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2024 conference and gave 4 invited research talks in South Korea. In the past 15 years she has been invited to present her research in 13 countries. Over the past 20 years, she has served as chair, vice-chair, or member in over 40 committees for ASIS&T, ALISE, and CAIS. She has been a vital connecting link across these associations. Throughout her career, Professor Julien has helped countless students and junior faculty worldwide. She has supervised or examined 47 doctoral dissertations in a variety of countries, including Canada, US, Australia, Pakistan, Hong Kong, China, South Africa, and Malaysia. She has served as a mentor for multiple years at various conference seminars, including the ASIS&T Annual Meeting Doctoral Seminars.”
Upon learning of her selection as winner of the ASIS&T Award of Merit, Heidi Julien responded, “I am truly humbled by this honor. It has been a privilege to be a part of the ASIS&T community for the whole of my career. I am deeply grateful to my teachers and mentors, and to friends and colleagues who have provided so much support and encouragement. I am also enormously thankful to my family for their support and love; they certainly share in this recognition.”
Heidi Julien will receive the award during the 2025 meeting of ASIS&T which will be held 14-18 November 2025 in Crystal City, VA.
About ASIS&T
ASIS&T is the pre-eminent professional association for thousands of researchers, developers, practitioners, students, and professors in the field of information science and technology from 50 countries around the world. For more than 80 years, ASIS&T has been leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.