Last week, we held our year-end Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) meeting at Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing. The bi-annual meeting was an opportunity for members of the CSI team to come together to discuss our research (investigation) activities over the previous six months, with an opportunity for questions (interrogations) afterwards. And, of course, since it was so near to the start of the Christmas holidays, at the end of the meeting we toasted the end of a successful year with a bit of Prosecco (that’s the imbibe bit*).
The format of these meetings is fairly simple: Each team member is given 5 minutes to share an update on their research and engagement activities. After 5 minutes are up, there is time for other CSI members to ask questions or to share other pieces of relevant and helpful information.
Time-keeping being what it is, however, these 5-minute sessions are known to take a bit longer than 5 minutes at times. That is, of course, until our centre director (and my supervisor, Hazel Hall) showed up at last week’s meeting with a 5-minute sand-based timer. Whilst we laughed at the excitement over such a thing, I think we can all recognise that it was a great way to keep everyone from going over their allotted time. (And it worked. Mostly.)
Ideally, I would be able to share a summary of what each member presented at the meeting. However, I wasn’t really expecting to blog about the day so I didn’t take notes. (I will do that next time though!) You can find bio pages for CSI members here, along with information about their research.
I can share with you the information that I presented though. So here goes:
- I have nearly completed the data collection for my empirical research.
- I submitted a paper based on my research methodology for a conference in Loughborough next month, which has been accepted.
- I have been invited to speak at a conference in Devon next June.
- I (along with Iris Buunk) have won a small grant to run writing sessions at the university through the end of the academic year.
I will share larger, more detailed posts about each of these things in the coming weeks – along with a couple of other exciting stories and announcements about my PhD dreams.
If you’re reading this thinking how fantastic it must be to be part of such an interesting research group – you’re right!
And if you’re thinking you might want to join the group as a PhD researcher, you’re in luck – because there are studentships available!
Stay tuned in the New Year (and maybe before then!) for some great posts about my PhD progress!
* I didn’t imbibe. How very, very unlike me! 🙂