Professor, School of Communication and Culture 

Gilbert Vanburen Wilkes IV is a professor in the School of Communication and Culture. He holds a BA in English Literature from Butler University in Indianapolis, IN (1994); an MA in English with a concentration in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA (1995); and a PhD in Rhetoric also from Carnegie Mellon (2004). 

He teaches in a number of courses in both the BA in Applied Communication and MA in Professional Communication programs, mainly in the area of communication technology. In 2004 Wilkes came to Royal Roads University from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), where he taught Composition, Argument and Argumentation Theory, and Professional Writing. 

His research focuses on trends and developments in human computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work. He has published and presented on the topics of Writing systems, the social organization of writing as graphic expression, trends in networked communications and the organization of information. 

Wilkes has been collaborating with Dr. Vivienne Wilson, an environmental scientist. Drs. Wilson and Wilkes are attempting to develop a critique of network theory, as articulated primarily by Barabasi, and others, as it relates to the Web and other human phenomena. Their critique is based on structural ecology, or how energy passes through systems. What Wilkes and Wilson are attempting to argue on analytical grounds is that the properties of scale free networks are insufficient to explain the shape or the structure of the computer mediated communication, the conditions of its use, or predict how users will behave within it.