‘Christian Higher Education Wherever Possible in our World’
About Dr. Mary Leigh Morbey
Mary Leigh Morbey is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar of Culture and Technology at York University, Toronto, Canada. She researched, taught, and published on the theory, history, ethics, practice, and education of Web participatory architecture and Social Media, and technological mediations of visual culture with an emphasis on East Africa. She holds degrees in the arts and computing from Wheaton College (USA), Hollins University (USA), The Free University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and The Ohio State University and its Advanced Computing Research Center for the Arts and Design (USA).
Her publications, mainly international, are included in Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon; Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies; SIGGRAPH Visual Proceedings; The International Journal of Learning and Media, and The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, among twenty refereed articles, as well as six books and monographs, and ten academic book chapters. During her career, she has presented over 100 academic papers globally as well as 14 plenary addresses.
The Web Social Media development of her research team illuminating Ugandan Heritage Sites + Stories is captured at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrnfvEBq9_g
She had the privilege to advise many Ph.D. and Masters students, and to be invited as a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Uganda National Museum, Kampala, Uganda; the Informational Science + Information Studies Program, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; the Louvre Museum, Paris, France, and the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Three of her computer-based visual artworks are housed in the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto.
Along with 20 years of professorial responsibilities at York University, she was a faculty member at Redeemer University College in Hamilton and Brock University in St. Catherines, all in Ontario. During this period, she served in the Senate of the Institute for Christian Studies for ten years in Toronto. Raised in a non-Christian environment in Virginia in the USA, she was introduced to Christianity at L’Abri Fellowship in the Swiss Alps through Frances and Edith Schaeffer and her aunt Jane Stuart Smith, a noted international opera singer. While at L’Abri, she was befriended by Hans Rookmaaker who was a Professor of Art History at The Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She went on to study and complete a DRS. degree with Hans at The Free University. And it was Hans who introduced her to her future husband Graham, also a graduate student at The Free University in the Philosophy Faculty. Rookmaaker frequently joked that bringing this marriage about was a major accomplishment. Mary Leigh and Graham have three children: two involved in the financial sector and one computer specialist. They recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
Mary Leigh’s varied academic background has led her to appreciate and promote the importance and exposure of Global Scholars Canada around the world. The study and engagement of Christianity by students globally, in their location, is an exciting possibility that Global Scholars Canada brings about in diverse and creative ways, predominantly in non-Western countries. Her research work in Uganda, Russia, and France as well as North America, has ignited her passion for facilitating Christian higher education wherever possible in our world.
Mary Leigh serves on the Board of Global Scholars Canada.