I’m always excited when we advertise for new staff and research students, particularly when they are in my area. Who will apply? Who will be short-listed for interview? Who will be offered the job? How will the new appointee contribute to teaching of the Information Systems group? What will the new appointee bring to the research in the Centre for Social Informatics?

Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing, in which the Centre for Social Informatics is based, currently has a number of vacancies for permanent academic staff. These were advertised last week on the University vacancies web page and jobs.ac.uk. The deadline for applications for these posts is Friday 20th February 2015 has been extended to Friday 6th March.

At least one new appointee will join the Information Systems group. This is the teaching group to which I belong, along with the majority of my immediate academic colleagues from the Centre for Social Informatics. It is highly likely that the new staff appointed to the Information Systems group will find a home for their research activity with us within the Centre for Social Informatics and help us build on our achievement in the most recent UK research assessment exercise. In REF2014 we contributed to the University’s submission to Unit of Assessment 36. 74% of the research output submitted was judged to be world-leading (4*) or internationally excellent (3*). The research environment also attracted a high score of 90% 4* and 3*. Our result puts us in the top quartile nationally for Unit of Assessment 36.

We are currently seeking applications from those who offer expertise that aligns with our existing work. Our teaching and research interests cover a broad spectrum of topics that can be classed under the umbrella term ‘Information Systems’. These include (but are not limited to):

• Business systems analysis and design
• Database design
• Ecommerce
• Egovernment
• Electronic public services
• Information policy
• Information management
• Information science
• Information seeking behaviour and use
• The Information Society
• Knowledge management
• Library and information science research
• Online communities
• Project management
• Social informatics
• Social media
• Social networking
• Sociotechnical analysis of organisational systems

It should be said that we don’t expect a single person to be able to cover all these areas: these are simply examples to show the wide range of our work! Indeed, it is worth saying here that the University is well aware that its employees have lives outside work and this is recognised in our policies and practice, particularly to support those with caring duties. For example, in the School of Computing we schedule school-wide meetings in core hours, and we operate a scheme where we can request that certain timetable slots be blocked off to fit with caring commitments such as taking children to and from school. To seek recognition of its commitment to gender equality in STEMM subjects, the University recently applied for an Athena SWAN bronze award, and it is the School of Computing’s ambition to work towards a departmental award in the near future.

As well as contributing to our taught courses at bachelors and masters level (including working on initiatives such as e-Placement Scotland, where we expect to expand the team through the new appointment), we also supervise research students to PhD. These students are funded in various ways including through grants from the AHRC, the ESRC, and sponsorship from business and organisations such as Skills Development Scotland. There are over 40 research students in the School as a whole, distributed across its five research centres.

We currently have eight research students in our group. They are working on the following doctoral studies:

• The evolution of social networking and its impact on career management skills
• The impact of social media tools on tacit knowledge sharing practices between employees within public sector organisations
• Modelling information literacy from a lifelong learning perspective
• Participation space studies: a sociotechnical exploration of activist and community groups’ use of online and offline spaces to support their work
• The population census as a tool for building the good society
• Public libraries within the Information Society: the contribution of library and information services to citizenship
• The role of online information in reputation management
• Tracing the adoption of a management innovation labelled ‘knowledge working’ in a public 
sector organisation

You can see from our web pages that there’s some great work going on in the School of Computing, from small-scale contract research to large research council funded grants, all of which contributes to the teaching that we undertake.

If the range of work described above excites you, and you meet the eligibility requirements as noted in the job advert (in short, you hold a PhD, have a commitment to your own professional/academic development, and offer experience to develop high quality teaching and research in the area in which you have chosen to specialise), then we’d love to receive an application from you by Friday 20th February the extended deadline of Friday 6th March.

Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that we are based on a modern campus that boasts its own medieval tower; the campus in situated in what estate agents call a ‘very desirable area’ close to shops, banks, restaurants, bars and a fabulous independent cinema; there is easy public transport to campus by bus and we’re a short walk from Haymarket railway station; it takes just a few minutes to reach the beautiful open space of the Meadows if you fancy a walk or run at lunchtime; and, if you’ve never been to Edinburgh before, it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the UK, regularly featuring high up the charts of ‘best places to live’.

Summer on the Meadows

Useful links

• Job advert: Information Systems
• Job advert for other academic posts in the School of Computing: Computer Security and Forensics
• School of Computing web site
• Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation (IIDI) web site (IIDI is the research institute within the School of Computing)
• Centre for Social Informatics web pages (CSI) (CSI is the research centre within IIDI/School of Computing to which a number of the members of the Information Systems teaching team belong)