About
The Serendipity Society is comprised of researchers, practitioners and the serendipity-curious, examining the complex phenomenon of serendipity from a variety of disciplinary and organizational perspectives. Given the growing interest among business and industry, public and academic institutions in developing spaces for serendipity, our mission is to create and nurture an active network of serendipity researchers and practitioners, which
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supports collaboration among senior and junior scholars,
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promotes rigorous and interdisciplinary research,
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works toward the consolidation of practice and the development of theory,
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creates a platform from which to develop serendipity research as an independent field of study,
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provides a resource of expertise on serendipity to which organizations, funders, innovators, and planners can turn.
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Current Society Chairs: Samantha Copeland and Wendy Ross
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Samantha Copeland is an Assistant Professor at the Delft University of Technology, in the Department of Values, Technology and Innovation. A philosopher, Samantha works to bring together work on serendipity from philosophy of science and epistemology with empirical and interdisciplinary research being done outside of philosophy. Her PhD dissertation presented a tripartite, process theory of serendipity and applied that theory to a recent discovery in neuromedicine. Her papers in Synthese and Perspectives On Science argue that a collective approach to discovery better represents how serendipity happens in science. Current work aims to integrate the insights from serendipity research on how valuable outcomes can emerge in situations of uncertainty with current approaches to urban design and policy that are guided by the ideal of resilience.
Wendy Ross is senior lecturer at London Met. Her main topic of research is the role of material serendipity in higher cognitive processes such as insight problem solving and creativity. She draws on a range of methods from eye-tracking and experimental psychology to focused cognitive ethnography. Recently, she co-edited two collections on serendipity: The Art of Serendipity (Palgrave) and Serendipity Science (Springer). She is Co-Chair of the Serendipity Society and Vice President of the Possibility Studies Network. In 2021 she was awarded the Frank X Barron prize by Division 10 of the APA.
Co-founder
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Lori McCay-Peet is an information management professional with the Nova Scotia government, and an adjunct professor in the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her research focuses on people’s perceptions and uses of digital information environments, particularly in the context of knowledge work, and examines such topics as serendipity and other aspects of user experience. Her PhD dissertation investigated the individual differences and facets of a digital environment that may facilitate serendipity. She developed two serendipity self-report scales, one to measure perceptions of serendipity and the other to measure how well a digital information environment facilitates serendipitous experiences. She has published and presented her research in several information science and computer science publications and venues including the Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology, Information Research, Information Processing and Management, and the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. In 2018, she published a book with Elaine Toms, Researching Serendipity in Digital Environments.