Congratulations Dr John Mowbray!

Posted on November 2, 2018 by Hazel Hall

PhD graduate Dr John Mowbray with his Director of Studies Professor Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Dr John Mowbray, who was awarded his PhD at the Edinburgh Napier University graduation ceremony at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh yesterday. I was John’s Director of Studies, his second supervisor was Professor Robert Raeside, and third supervisor Pete Robertson.

John’s PhD was funded by an ESRC Skills Development Scotland Collaborative studentship. We won the grant for the award through a competitive process administered by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science in spring 2014, and John came to us later in the October of that year having applied for the PhD studentship that we advertised in June 2014. Continue reading →

Contributions from the Centre for Social Informatics to #ISIC2018

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 takes place in Kraków, Poland, this coming week from 9th to 11th October 2018. Representing Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics at the conference will be third year PhD students Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins). Continue reading →

Successful submissions to #isic2018 for the Centre for Social Informatics

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins) on the recent news that the conference submissions that they made in March this year to Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 have been accepted. The conference takes place in Kraków, Poland, 9-11 October 2018. Continue reading →

Measuring the social impact of digital youth participation: new paper available on OnlineFirst

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Hazel Hall

The seventh (and final) article that I recently co-authored for publication in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. Entitled ‘Youth digital participation: measuring social impact‘, the content of the article concerns scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects, and approaches to their evaluation. My co-authors Alicja Pawluczuk, Colin F Smith, Gemma Webster and I reveal (1) an over-reliance on traditional evaluation techniques for such initiatives, and (2) a scarcity of models for the assessment of the social impact of digital participatory youth projects. Continue reading →

Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces: newly published research by Ella Taylor-Smith and Colin Smith

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics colleagues Dr Ella Taylor-Smith and Dr Colin Smith on the publication of their article ‘Investigating the online and offline contexts of day-to-day democracy as participation spaces’ in Information, Communication and Society.

The main theme of the article is citizen-led participation in democracy, and the online and offline spaces – introduced as ‘participation space’ – in which people work together to influence those in power, and to improve their communities. The findings draw upon a sociotechnical analysis of data from three case studies to expose the relationship between activities of local, grassroots democracy and the characteristics of the online and offline spaces in which it occurs. Continue reading →

Alicja Pawluczuk presents at Transmedia Literacy International 2018 #Transliteracy2018

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Alicja Pawluczuk presents her slides (Photo credit Angélica Elisa)

Transmedia Literacy International 2018 is currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain. This afternoon at the conference, Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Alicja Pawluczuk presented a paper (co-authored with her supervisors Dr Colin Smith, Dr Gemma Webster and Professor Hazel Hall) on perceptions of social impact held by youth workers, and processes for the evaluation of digital youth projects. Continue reading →

Seven JoLIS paper acceptances for CSI #i3rgu

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Last summer members of the Centre for Social Informatics delivered nine papers at Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017. Following the conference, we were given the opportunity to develop this work into submissions for the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS). We took up this offer by working seven of the nine conference papers up to full journal article manuscripts. These were all submitted by the deadline of September 30th 2017. Following peer review and revisions all seven were accepted, and they will be published in JoLIS in due course. The manuscripts for all accepted articles have now been added to the Edinburgh Napier repository, and can be downloaded by clicking the article titles below. Continue reading →

Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: paper acceptance at Transmedia Literacy International #TransmediaLiteracy

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Alicja Pawluczuk on the acceptance of the paper that she recently submitted to Transmedia Literacy International 2018. This conference takes place in Barcelona, Spain next month between 22nd and 24th March.

The paper, which Alicja co-authored with her PhD supervisors Dr Colin Smith, Dr Gemma Webster and Professor Hazel Hall, is entitled ‘Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: tensions between vision and reality‘. Its content is concerned with the perceptions of social impact held by youth workers, and processes for the evaluation of digital youth projects. The conference programme shows that Alicja will present this work in the ‘Methodologies and interventions’ session on Friday 23rd March between 14:00 and 16:00 Spanish time. Continue reading →

Centre for Social Informatics at the 18th European Conference on Knowledge Management #ECKM2017

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Hazel Hall

The 18th European Conference on Knowledge Management (#ECKM2017) has been taking place in Barcelona this week at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC).

Today Iris Buunk (one of the PhD students in the Centre for Social Informatics) is presenting a co-authored paper at the conference. Entitled ‘Skills in sight: how social media affordances increase network awareness’ this work examines the extent to which social media afford new capabilities in the sharing of tacit knowledge. The slides for the paper are available on SlideShare, and below.

Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017 review #i3rgu

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Hazel Hall

CSI staff Peter Cruickshank, Dr Laura Muir, Professor Hazel Hall & Visiting Professor Brian Detlor at #i3RGU

Centre for Social Informatics colleagues Peter Cruickshank, Dr Laura Muir, Professor Hazel Hall & Visiting Professor Brian Detlor gather at #i3RGU

This blog post was updated in March 2018 to include links to the full text of seven manuscripts of articles developed from nine of the papers presented by CSI staff at i3 2017. These articles will be published in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) later in 2018.

Information: interactions and impact (i3) 2017 took place at Robert Gordon University at the end of last month from Tuesday June 27th until Friday June 30th 2017, with a packed programme for delegates who had travelled to Aberdeen from across the world. As in previous years, staff and research students from the Centre for Social Informatics (who didn’t have too far to travel) enjoyed participating at the event. We delivered a total of nine papers, as summarised in the table below. Continue reading →

Hazel Hall

Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Napier University

Tag Archives: Colin F Smith