He primarily researches and teaches professional and technical communication in digital environments and research methods and methodologies. His empirical work is diverse, exploring professional communication genres and practices among software developers, playwrights, Roman Catholic Priests and parishioners, and media researchers, among others. Brian’s recent work develops the notion of ambient research methods, a systematic, qualitative approach to the collection and analysis of ubiquitous social software data. In ambient research methods, social software genres are surfaced and traced as the infrastructural and coordinative work mediating the everyday practice of many contemporary knowledge workers.