Professor Hazel Hall and new PhD graduate Robert Irvine in June 2013

Edinburgh Napier University’s Social Informatics Research Group welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students students. For a sense of the PhD experience within the group, please see the final post on Dr Lyndsey Middleton’s PhD blog. If you have a research idea for doctoral study that you would like to discuss, please contact Associate Professor Dr Peter Cruickshank at p.cruickshank.napier.ac.uk.

The group regularly advertise fully-funded studentships. Please check the Social Informatics Research Group blog for current calls for applications. The group accepts applications from students who are self-funding at any time.

The Social Informatics Research Group is particularly interested in receiving applications related to the broad research themes of:

• • Democratic digital engagement
  • e-Government
  • Information behaviour and practices
  • Information and digital literacy
  • Information and knowledge management
  • Information policy
  • The Information Society
  • Online communities
  • Technology and policy development
  • Work-based and organisational learning

Recent and current research students supervised by Centre for Social Informatics staff engage in a range of doctoral studies on topics that include:

• • Gender and apprenticeships
  • Machine learning and natural language processing for labour market intelligence
  • Applications of artificial intelligence to support careers guidance
  • Work-based learning environments and skills development
  • Levels of trust in digitisation and democratic thinking
  • Information systems and organisational strategies
  • Information literacy and career decision-making
  • Metaskills development in the workplace
  • Public libraries, forced migrants, and culture
  • Interactive education [completed 2022, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Activity Theory and agile computing [completed 2022, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Eparticipation and hyperlocal democracy [completed 2021, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Social media and tacit knowledge sharing [completed 2020, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Public libraries in the public sphere [completed 2020, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Innovative work behaviour [completed 2020, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Social impact of youth digital culture co-creation [completed 2019, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Personal online reputation management [completed 2019, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Social networking and career management skills [completed 2018, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Off-line and online spaces and participation in community and civic life [completed 2016, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Knowledge working as a management innovation [completed 2015, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Sociotechnical aspects of information risk [completed 2014, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Organisational factors and information systems development projects [completed 2013, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]
  • Processes of knowledge creation, creativity and innovation [completed 2012, thesis available from the Edinburgh Napier repository]

Formal applications to study for a PhD within the Social Informatics Research Group should be made through the official Edinburgh Napier University process. Further information is available on the University’s web page Find out about research degrees at Napier. For details about fees, please see the Fees and funding page.

Forms for registered research students are found on the Research degrees form page. Here you will also find a ink to the regulations.  For full information and guidance on the academic, management and administrative procedures associated with research degrees at Edinburgh Napier University, please see the Research degrees framework document (2020/1), also accessible from the same page.

Edinburgh Napier PhD students have access to a wide range of training opportunities. These include “local” courses and events offered by their Schools, and other internal events run as part of the University’s researcher development programme. PhD students are also supported to participate in external training events such as those offered by the:

• Scottish Graduate School of Social Science
• Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
• National Centre for Research Methods

The output of the Developing Research Excellence and Methods (DREaM) project workshops from 2011/12 also includes much valuable material on research methods of relevance to doctoral study.