Co-operation, knowledge and sustainability: Learning from Xochimilco

You are cordially invited to a panel discussion exploring issues around traditional knowledge, identity and sustainability in the context of chinampas agriculture, as practised in Xochimilco, Mexico City.

The Information School, Room RC204 – 10th July - 12:00-13.30

“The Heart of the chinampas” – Carlos Sumano Arias, Chinampayolo (https://www.facebook.com/chinampayolo/)

“Developing collaboration between the university and cooperatives in Mexico City” - Gibrán Rivera González, Instituto Politécnico Nacional

“Reclaiming traditional knowledge for cultural sustainability”- Andrew Cox and Jorge Martins, Information School, University of Sheffield

More than a thousand years ago, in the navel of the moon "Mexico", in a paradise of crystal clear waters, full of fish, birds and axolotes, men created the chinampas to live and feed themselves. The navel of the moon has become one of the largest cities in the world where channels, rivers, springs and chinampas are being replaced by asphalt and concrete. The plants and animals that lived for millions of years in this place are under threat and many agricultural producers have left the land.

In this discouraging context, in Xochimilco located in the southern outskirts of Mexico City, the heirs of the lake culture refuse to see their legacy disappear. Through community work, social participation, cooperative support, collaboration with academic, governmental and non-governmental institutions, Chinampayolo S.C. is strengthening its efforts in the areas of natural resource conservation, tourism, food production, education and commercialization. Their mission is to preserve the Chinampera culture through innovation and inherited knowledge to maintain their identity, dignity, resistance, love for the land and respect for present and future life.

Please note: two of the presentations will be in Spanish with translation to English.

For further information contact Andrew Cox, a.m.cox@sheffield.ac.uk

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New Article: Services for Student Well-Being in Academic Libraries: Three Challenges

Services for Student Well-Being in Academic Libraries: Three Challenges
Our Director of Research and Senior Lecturer, Dr Andrew Cox, has published a new article alongside Dr Liz Brewster at Lancaster University.

There has been a wave of interest in UK academic libraries in developing services to support student well-being. This paper identifies three fundamental and interrelated issues that need to be addressed to make such initiatives effective and sustainable. Firstly, well-being has to be defined and the impacts of
interventions must be measured in appropriate ways. Secondly, there is a need to identify the true nature of the underlying social problem around well-being. Thirdly, relevant approaches to the issue need to be located within the professional knowledge base of librarianship.
To read the article, click here.

Joint PhD presentation between Sheffield and Makerere, Uganda, delivered by Liliana Sepulveda Garcia

Last week saw the first presentation in a series of joint talks between the Information School's Health Informatics and Information Systems Research Groups in Sheffield. and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.The talks aim to promote research collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Dr Laura Sbaffi and Dr Efpraxia Zamani are organising this series and chairing the Sheffield presentations, and Prof Josephine Nabukenya will be chairing the presentations from Makerere.

In this first session, PhD student Liliana Sepulveda offered the audience a great overview of her PhD research on "An experiential study of the human-technology relationship between informal caregivers of people with dementia and assistive technologies".

There will be similar virtual meetings every month and the next schedule one is for Tuesday 11th June, when a PhD student from Makerere will be presenting their work. More details will be forthcoming.

You can view the recording of the session here: https://di…

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Gianmarco Ghiandoni, PhD student in our Chemoinformatics research group, recently attended and presented at the UK-QSAR conference in Cambridge.

Gianmarco attended the conference and presented a part of his PhD project, which involves the development of "Reaction Class Recommender Systems in de novo Drug Design".

'These algorithms are machine learning models that have recently acquired great importance due to their effectiveness in product recommendation', Gianmarco said. 'In particular, companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, etc., have built their reputations and businesses on the top of these models. At Sheffield, we have decided to apply these methods in order to produce suggestions for decision making in automated molecular design. The results from their application indicate that recommender systems can improve the synthetic accessibility of the designed molecules whilst reducing the computational requirements.'

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