Dr Jessica Bates is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an experienced lecturer and researcher in the School of Education, Ulster University where she is Course Director for the Library and Information Management programme and undertakes research across Education and Library and Information Science.

Dr Bates’ research interests relate to information, education and social inclusion; digital literacy; and improving library and information services. She is currently leading a series of Community Conversations with local communities across Northern Ireland about education provision in their area, and has developed a Community Conversation Toolkit for use in this work.  She is also currently researching citizenship education and political literacy amongst young people in Northern Ireland, and has carried out wide-ranging research in Library and Information Science and published on digital information literacy, information and knowledge management, academic libraries, e-books, school libraries amongst other LIS topics. Her research has been published in key international journals including the Journal of Academic Librarianship, Library and Information Science Research and School Libraries Worldwide. Dr Bates’ PhD was on the information needs and information-seeking experiences of residents in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Dublin, Ireland. Prior to joining Ulster in 2009, she was a College Lecturer in information and library studies at University College Dublin.

Dr Bates supervises a number of doctoral candidates at Ulster in education and library and information science and has also been a PhD External Examiner at other UK institutions. She also regularly co-authors with Library and Information Management and PhD students and graduates and is a strong advocate of mentoring postgraduate students and new professionals.

Dr Bates regularly reviews for a number of academic journals and is an Editorial Board Member of the New Review of Academic Librarianship. She is the Chair of the Advisory Panel of the National Collection of Northern Ireland Publications (NIPR) and a member of the Board of NIPR. She was also a Member of the review group for the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for librarianship, information, knowledge, records and archives management (2015).