Research Overview
My academic journey began with research into health information behaviour and information literacy, including work examining how people responsible for companion animals seek and use online health information. It established an ongoing interest in the relationships between information, health and human–animal relationships.
My doctoral research investigated information experience within multispecies families, examining how humans and companion animals participate in shared everyday worlds. This research has explored cognitive, embodied and affective dimensions of information, including the ways in which human and animal ways of knowing can become intertwined within everyday relationships.
A significant part of my research examines information experience: how information is encountered, interpreted, embodied and lived within everyday situations. My work explores questions such as:
- How do humans and other animals participate in shared information environments?
- What forms can information take beyond conventional textual and digital representations?
- How might information behaviour be understood when agency is distributed across humans, animals, technologies and environments?
- How can Information Science recognise forms of knowing that are embodied, situated and relational?
- What methodological approaches allow researchers to attend to multispecies information phenomena?
- What could Information Studies education look like when the more-than-human world is taken seriously?
Multispecies Information Science
My primary research program develops Multispecies Information Science as an emerging perspective within Library and Information Science.
Edited by Niloofar Solhjoo | Routledge | 2026
Multispecies Information Science brings together international perspectives on information and knowledge shared with animals, plants, microbes, technologies and landscapes.
The volume explores how multispecies perspectives can contribute to documentation, information behaviour, information pedagogy, information design, technology and information services.
Current Research Projects
Assessing the Effectiveness of Multispecies Pedagogy in Asynchronous Online Information Studies Learning
Investigators: Niloofar Solhjoo, Nicola Thomas This project investigates the effectiveness of multispecies pedagogy in asynchronous online Information Studies learning.The project examines how students respond to learning activities that introduce animals, plants and other more-than-human entities into information education.
Grant: Charles Sturt University, School of Information and Communication Studies Research Theme Funding Agreement 2026
Supervised Peer Assessment for Online Information Studies Education
Investigator: Niloofar Solhjoo
This project explores conference-style supervised oral assessment as an approach to creating interactive, authentic and discipline-informed learning experiences for online Information Studies students.
Grant: Charles Sturt University Teaching Academy Grant Program
Documenting Nonhuman Information:
The Guinea Pig Reference Library
Investigators: Niloofar Solhjoo, Alison Hillyer, Patricia Ferreira MonticelliThis interdisciplinary project explores how the vocal and postural behaviours of domestic guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) can be documented and represented as forms of nonhuman information. Bringing together information science, ethology and animal welfare, the project is developing a digital reference library using audio-visual recordings, published research and observations of guinea pig communication. The project asks how animal-generated information might be collected, curated and shared while recognising the limits of human interpretation and the ethical questions surrounding nonhuman consent, representation and authorship. Ultimately, the resource aims to support greater understanding of guinea pig communication and more informed multispecies relationships.
Grant: Self-funded
Supervision & Collaboration
I welcome opportunities to supervise, co-supervise and collaborate on research relating to Information Studies and interdisciplinary relationships and more-than-human worlds
Research interests
- Information experience
- Generative AI and information creation
- Information science education and pedagogy
- Health information literacy
Dr Niloofar Solhjoo 