I have been invited to speak at the “Academics Online: Building your research profile in the digital age” workshop to be held at Edinburgh Napier University’s Craiglockhart Campus on 2 May 2017 (9.30 am – 3.30 pm). The event, hosted by the Business School, is aimed at Early Career Researchers (ERCs) and doctoral students and is free to attend.
The one-day workshop will offer practical tips on how to increase the impact of research by maximising the potentials of social media engagement. Delegates will also be asked to critically consider the ethical issues around online identities and the importance of building an academic reputation in the digital age. (In case you’re new here, that’s basically what my PhD research is about: Online information and reputation!)
I will be the first speaker of the day and my talk will be about how academic reputation can be built and maintained using common social networking platforms (i.e. Twitter and LinkedIn) as well as other social media tools such as blogs and university researcher profiles. I will also cover topics such as bibliometric impact and h-indexes, and the role that “altmetrics” plays in the building and evaluation of academic reputation.
My session is not about how to use social media in your academic life – it’s about why you should use it! I am hoping that it will be a fairly engaging session with some good discussions (or at least some interesting questions) and a bit of audience participation.
The other speakers at the workshop are:
Nick Blackbourn, Content Officer at Edinburgh Napier University, who will run a workshop exploring practical ways and specific tools for building an online audience and using a “work out loud” approach. He requests that delegates bring a connected device to access their Twitter accounts, so there’s no doubt he’s expecting audience participation!
Vanessa Heggie, University of Birmingham, is running a session that will consider the risks as well as the rewards of social media and will work through a series of tactics, hacks, and coping mechanisms to make sure we’re not only presenting ourselves (and our research) well in public but also having the most positive experience online that we can.
Steven Vass is the Scotland Editor of The Conversation, an original and essential outlet for comment and analysis. He will remind us that what we do is both valuable and fascinating, and provide ideas of how to turn our research into articles that will open eyes, make waves and reach the widest possible audience.
The workshop is organised by Dr Ivana Rihova and Dr Nathalia Tjandra, thanks to support from the Research and Innovation Office (RIO) and the Researcher Development Fund 2016/17.
Space is limited so get your free ticket now if you’re interested!
“Academics Online: Building your research profile in the digital age” on 2nd May, 9:30 am – 3.30 pm in the Rivers Suite, Craiglockhart.
For those unable to attend, I will share my own presentation slides on the day and will be tweeting during the event using the #AcademicsOnline hashtag.