Damon Carucci

Damon Carucci recently defended his dissertation at the University of Michigan School of Information and will graduate in December 2026. He uses critical qualitative methods to examine how institutional information environments and social relationships shape access to healthcare and education.

In his dissertation, Damon examined why some doctoral students struggle to access mental healthcare even when universities provide free campus services. He found that a university mental health system designed to preserve student autonomy unintentionally placed a significant navigational burden on students when they were least equipped to handle it. He developed the concept of Information Care Work to describe the relational labor that helped people turn information about their needs and available support into access to meaningful care.

Damon has a first-authored publication in the proceedings of ACM CHI and has presented research at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. He was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Rackham PACE Fellowship in recognition of his research and sustained commitment to improving campus climate for diverse students.

In Fall 2026, Damon plans to develop chapters from his dissertation into journal articles for Library and Information Science venues. His future research will extend Information Care Work to new contexts, including access to substance use disorder care in LGBTQ+ communities.

Pronouns

he/they

Dissertation title

Information Care Work: Cases of Mental Health Access Among Doctoral Students

Dissertation abstract

When a university provides free campus services, why are some doctoral students able to access mental healthcare, while others cannot? Previous research identifies limited time and financial concerns as primary barriers, yet students who receive care face these same challenges. Drawing on theories of Information Marginalization (Gibson & Martin, 2019) and Information Resilience (Threats, 2025), this dissertation examines why institutional information about mental healthcare does not always translate into access to care for students in significant distress.

I present three qualitative studies at one well-resourced public research university: a critical discourse analysis of 67 institutional web documents, a thematic analysis of 30 interviews with doctoral students, and a situational analysis integrating both datasets. I argue that an overwhelming mental health information environment, designed to preserve student autonomy, unintentionally burdened doctoral students when they were least equipped to navigate it. Students’ reported lack of time often reflected this navigational burden rather than a literal shortage of time.

Access to care often depended on a trusted person who validated students’ distress, interpreted clinical language and institutional policies, guided transitions between healthcare systems, or revealed the hidden curriculum of care-seeking. Doctoral peers and close friends frequently performed this work. Therefore, access often depended on connections to people experienced in navigating mental health systems. For some students, identity-aligned peer groups provided this support, while students less integrated into these networks often lacked it. 

I conceptualized this as Information Care Work: the relational labor of helping people reach meaningful care by supporting how they recognize, interpret, and navigate information about their needs, options, and available support systems. This dissertation contributes a qualitative account of doctoral students’ mental healthcare experiences, introduces Information Care Work as a concept explaining how healthcare information becomes actionable, and reframes a reported lack of time as an institutionally produced information burden. It offers recommendations for designing information systems that enable institutions to assume some of this labor, reducing reliance on informal care networks that are not equally available to all students.

Areas of interest

Health Justice; Information Environments; Information Practices; Qualitative Methods

Education

BFA in Photography and Video, School of Visual Arts, 2015
MS in Information, University of Michigan, 2017
PhD in Information, University of Michigan, December 2026