Ccbb: Dr. Bernard Beitman, Md

Lennart Björneborn works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Studies, University of Copenhagen. He is especially interested in what design dimensions in physical and digital spaces may enable and support serendipitous encounters. His PhD thesis (2004) dealt with “small-world” web structures that create short link distances between very different topics on the web, thus facilitating serendipitous encounters when people follow web links. Later on, he has studied serendipity dimensions in the design of physical public libraries (2008), as well as “micro-serendipity” as meaningful coincidences in everyday life shared on Twitter (2013). Recently, he has published a conceptual framework on “Three key affordances for serendipity” (2017) connecting environmental and personal factors in serendipitous encounters. In a new research project, focus is on researchers and how their research interests emerge, develop, and change over time, and how this is affected by serendipitous encounters with peopl