The creative use of digitised archives: roundtable to be presented at the BBC at 100 Symposium

Posted on July 18, 2022 by Hazel Hall

The BBC at 100 symposium, organised by Dr Marcus Collins, Reader in Contemporary History and AHRC BBC 100 Fellow at Loughborough University, takes place at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, and online, between 13th and 15th September 2022. A team from the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI), with a colleague from the BBC Archive, is delighted to be presenting at this event. Continue reading →

Congratulations to Dr Alamri, Dr Chita, and Dr Meharg

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Many congratulations to all who graduated at the Edinburgh Napier University ceremonies last week!

I am especially pleased that three members of the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) were awarded their PhDs on 7th July 2022: Continue reading →

Centre for Social Informatics ‘all centre’ meeting June 2022

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Social Informatics Research Group Edinburgh Napier University selfie

Dr Peter Cruickshank, Dr David Brazier, Dr David Haynes, Dr Hazel Hall, Katherine Stephen, Dr Bruce Ryan, and Dr JP Vargheese pose for a post-meeting selfie

For the first time since 18th December 2019, this week members of my research group gathered for an end of year ‘all centre’ meeting to celebrate our recent research highlights.

Although not everyone could make it on this occasion, those who could enjoyed spending the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd June together. We took it in turns to deliver short personal updates to the rest of the group on our own research. We also read out details sent to us by email from those who could not participate in person, and gave each absent colleague a round of applause. Continue reading →

The public library as public sphere: a longitudinal analysis – full article available as EarlyCite

Posted on June 24, 2022 by Hazel Hall

The public library and pubic sphere: a longitudinal analysis is now available as a full paper (HTML or PDF) from the Journal of Documentation as an EarlyCite publication. This is the final output from Dr Leo Appleton‘s part-time doctoral study, completed in 2020 within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University. Continue reading →

Applications open for 10 fully-funded PhD studentship places within the School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University

Posted on June 23, 2022 by Hazel Hall

PhD supervisors Dr Frances Ryan, Dr David Haynes, Debbie Meharg, Dr David Brazier

PhD supervisors from the Centre for Social Informatics

The School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University is currently advertising ten fully-funded PhD studentships across a wide range of subjects, from sound technologies to cybersecurity. Amongst these are four proposed by Centre for Social Informatics colleagues: Continue reading →

Lorna Lloyd’s ‘Diary of the war’ podcast series launch event: review and resources

Posted on June 18, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Actor Bethany Ray, pictured here with the original Diary of the war, plays her great-great aunt Lorna Lloyd in the podcast series

After several weeks of preparation, on Tuesday 24th May 2022 we launched the Diary of the war podcast series at Great Malvern Priory. This blog post provides a review of the launch. It also provides links to materials related to this event, and to the wider Platform to platform (P2P) project. (Please scroll to the bottom of the post for the full list of resources.)

The content of the podcast series episodes centres on 25 year old Malvern resident Lorna Lloyd‘s chronicle of the first 16 months of World War II, complemented with contemporaneous news coverage related to the events and issues that she discusses in her writing. A further four ‘bonus’ episodes that comprise a selection of Lloyd’s poetry are included in the series. Continue reading →

Acceptances at Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2022 for Edinburgh Napier team #isic22

Posted on May 30, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Marina Milosheva has recently learnt that both of the submissions that she made earlier in the year for Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2022 have been accepted. Marina will participate in the doctoral workshop, and present a full paper co-authored with her PhD supervisors (myself, Professor Pete Robertson, and Dr Peter Cruickshank) as one of the contributions to the conference programme. Continue reading →

Data collection by multi-location, longitudinal focus group: an application in library and information science research

Posted on May 13, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Dr Leo Appleton

I have recently published a new paper on research methods in Library and Information Science (LIS) research with Dr Leo Appleton of the Information School at Sheffield University.

This work is concerned with the data collection phase of Leo‘s part-time doctoral study completed in 2020 within the Centre for Social Informatics. For this, Leo deployed a novel multi-location longitudinal focus group method. Fifty-three participants took part in three rounds of focus group meetings in eight public library authorities in England and Scotland over a period of three years. Continue reading →

The public library as public sphere: new article accepted for publication in the Journal of Documentation

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Hazel Hall

The public library as public sphere: a longitudinal analysis has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Documentation. I recently co-authored this article with Dr Leo Appleton (Senior University Teacher at the University of Sheffield).

In the article, Leo and I discuss the role of the UK public library as a public sphere, and the ways in which this role relates to the epistemic, community, and political functions of public libraries. The article is a major output from Leo‘s doctoral research, which he completed part-time in the Centre for Social Informatics. The findings presented in the article derive from the analysis of empirical data that Leo collected in 24 focus groups with active public library users over a period of four years. Continue reading →

Hazel Hall

Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Napier University

Category Archives: Projects