Information School News

From 14th to 25th January Dr Jorge Martins is visiting the Finland Futures Research Centre at the Turku School of Economics , University of Turku, Finland. Jorge is hosted by Professor Markku Wilenius , who is an Advisor to the ESRC-funded Regional Technology Foresight project. Markku is Professor of Futures Studies and UNESCO Chair in Learning Society and Futures of Education. Turku School of Economics Finland Futures Research Centre Jorge’s visit to the Finland Futures Research Centre will strengthen collaboration and knowledge exchange on a number of key areas of research: methodological approaches to foresight studies, organisational futures, industry 4.0 and smart specialisation. During his visit Jorge will give three presentations of his work to academic colleagues and students at the Finland Futures Research Centre and the Turku School of Economics: Regional Technology Foresight: linking foresight to the innovation capability of regions – at the Helsinki and ...

This week saw a poster session for the Faculty of Social Sciences BA Digital Media and Society students, a cross-department programme to which the Information School contributes two core modules. The posters are the result of a 2 week 'group challenge' in which students had to develop a proposal for a digital media campaign aimed at raising awareness about how personal data are gathered from online sources to be analysed and used by different people for different purposes. Well done to all the students involved, and particularly the winners of the Best Poster award, seen below! Group 10, winners of the Best Poster award: Shuyue Deng, Yoonho Jeong, Su Hyun Kim, Luyi Ma and Jianuo Wang Group 4, runners up:  Shu Ki Cheung, Qinghanyue Li, Yijie Lin, Eun Phil Lee, Huiting Zhao and Shafei Zhuang

This week Professor Stephen Pinfield is visiting Sun Yat-Sen University in China. Whilst there, Stephen will be giving three lectures on recent research projects in which he has been involved and also discussing research collaboration opportunities. Stephen is hosted by old colleagues Miguel Nunes and Alex Peng, who are both Professors there; Miguel is Dean of the Information School. The three lectures that Stephen is giving on his visit are as follows: Open-Access Mega-Journals and the Future of Scholarly Communication (research conducted with Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Valérie Spezi, Simon Wakeling & Peter Willett): Open-access mega-journals (OAMJs) represent an increasingly important part of the scholarly communication landscape. OAMJs, such as PLOS ONE and Nature’s Scientific Reports, are large scale, broad-scope journals that operate an open-access business model, and which employ a novel form of peer review, focusing on scientific ‘soundness’ only and not judgments o...

This week from Wednesday 9 - Friday 11 January 2019 winter graduations are taking place for postgraduates. It's a time to celebrate the success of our students as well as the dedication and hard work of colleagues from across the University. Graduands from the Information School will graduate at 12:30 on Friday 11th January. From those who have taught, supervised and supported our students, to the people working to make sure everything runs smoothly behind the scenes on the day, thank you for the part you have played in helping our students enjoy this special moment with their families and friends. Attending the ceremonies alongside our students are six prestigious honorary graduates, among them current staff and alumni of the University who have achieved extraordinary things. One honorary graduate is  Ciara Eastell, one of the UK’s leading public librarians. "I am delighted that Ciara Eastell has been awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctorate of Letters) from the University...

ICT Manager and PhD candidate Paul Fenn  will be presenting at the Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference on the 9th January. Social media is now part of “the mainstream” but in terms of Higher Education it is the mainstream of marketing and selling education or an integral part of the mainstream of learning and teaching through developing digital confidence, capabilities and critique.  The SocMedHE18 conference provides open spaces to share, discuss and develop notions of what and why we currently do, what we could do and what should we do next with social media within an Higher Education learning and teaching context. Paul's session will be titled 'Exploring the impact of institutional policies on the use of social media in UK HE teaching'. 'The above will focus on my PhD, started Jan 2019', says Paul. 'At the conference presentation I will be discussing my research objectives, research methods and discuss part of my PhD research in ...