Farewell 2020

Social Informatcis staff and students all centre meeting December 2019

The way we were, December 2019. L to R: John Marshall, Peter Cruickshank, Lyndsey Middleton (now graduated with PhD), Katherine Stephen, Rachel Salzano, Marina Milosheva, Laura Muir (now retired), Hazel Hall, Leo Appleton (now graduated with PhD), Ella Taylor-Smith, David Haynes, David Brazier, Frances Ryan (now Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen), Colin Smith, Wegene Demeke, and Bruce Ryan.

Just over a year ago, on 22nd December 2019, I summarised the the previous six months of activities of the members of the Centre for Social Informatics. I illustrated this account with a jolly photograph of us all bunched closely together around the table a few days earlier in room C34a of Edinburgh Napier University’s Merchiston campus. Continue reading

iConference acceptances for Marina Milosheva and Rachel Salzano #iConf2021 #iconf21

Last week two of our Centre for Social Informatics PhD students learnt that they will be contributing to iConference 2021. Continue reading

RIVAL network event 3: preview

RIVAL logoAfter two postponements and a decision to move to virtual delivery, we (myself, Dr Bruce Ryan and our Edinburgh Napier PhD student helpers Rachel Salzano and Katherine Stephen) will (finally) be hosting the third RIVAL network event next week on Thursday 19th November 2020. Continue reading

Newly published: version 11.2 of the Centre for Social Informatics flyer (autumn 2020)

Centre for Social Informatics bannerThe Centre for Social Informatics flyer (version 11.2) has just been updated for the new academic year. Follow the link to read about the work of our group, including details of research expertise, funders, recent PhD completions, and recent publications. The flyer includes profiles of the group’s academic and research staff: Continue reading

Congratulations Dr Iris Buunk!

Congratulations to our Centre for Social Informatics colleague Dr Iris Buunk on the award of her PhD yesterday. Normally we would have celebrated with Iris at the Edinburgh Napier University graduation ceremony at the Usher Hall. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, we had to find an alternative way to mark Iris’s achievement: a jolly drinks party on Zoom. Continue reading

SFC COVID-19 funding for two new projects in the Centre for Social Informatics

Scottish Funding Council logoOn 6th May 2020, the Scottish Government announced a ‘£75 million boost for Scottish university research’ to contribute to the mitigation of effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Scottish university research base. This recognised the wide range of impacts to both the income and activity of university research in the short, medium and longer term. The Scottish Funding Council then announced the allocation of this funding to the Scottish universities  on 12th June, and in recent months each institution has considered the best use this investment to meet the objectives of: Continue reading

All set for #isic2020

ISIC 2020 banner logo

The 2020 Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) conference is hosted this week by our colleagues at the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Had circumstances been different, several members of the Centre for Social Informatics would be in South Africa now. The PhD students would be joining today’s doctoral workshop in person, and everyone preparing to present their papers and posters face-to-face over the course of the main conference from Tuesday to Thursday this week (as has been the case at past ISIC conferences, e.g. 2018 in Kraków, Poland, 2016 in Zadar, Croatia, 2014 in Leeds) . Continue reading

Rachel Salzano to present poster on culture as a concept in LIS research at #ASIST2020

ASIST2020 logo Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Rachel Salzano on the acceptance of her poster submission for presentation at the (virtual) 83rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST2020) next month. The submission, which Rachel prepared with two supervisors (myself and Dr Gemma Webster), is entitled ‘Coralling culture as a concept in library and information science research’. The abstract for Rachel’s poster reads: Continue reading

Centre for Social Informatics contributions to Information Seeking in Context 2020 #isic2020

ISIC 2020 banner logo

Hosted by the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, Information Seeking in Context 2020 (#isic2020) takes place as a virtual conference between 28th September and 2nd October 2020. As has been the case in the past (e.g. 2018 in Kraków, Poland, 2016 in Zadar, Croatia), colleagues from the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University are looking forward to the opportunity of presenting some of their research at the ISIC conference. Continue reading

Rachel Salzano contributes to the work of the Alan Turing Institute

Rachel Salzano

Rachel Salzano

The Alan Turing Institute is the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. It was established in 2015 with headquarters at the British Library in London. The work of the Institute is achieved through collaborations between universities, businesses, and public and third sector organisations to address some of the biggest challenges in science, society and the economy.

Currently Rachel Salzano, a PhD student within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, is contributing to the institute’s research on detecting and understanding harmful content online. She has been employed by the Institute in two roles. Continue reading