Information School News

Farida Vis, Faculty Research Fellow, has been elected to the Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors. The Big Boulder Initiative is dedicated to the advancement of social data in businesses and organizations of all kinds. The BBI bring together representatives from companies within the ecosystem to collectively address key challenges in order to establish the foundation for the long-term success of the social data industry. Alongside Farida, two other new board members were elected: Justin De Graaf, Global Media Insights Director at The Coca-Cola Company and Mark Josephson, CEO of Bitly. The BBI board is chaired by Chris Moody, VP for Data Strategy at Twitter. In an official press release he welcomed the new board members by stating: “On behalf of myself and the entire board of directors, we are excited to have three new voices join the discussion as we kick-off 2015. With these additions, we have strong representation from the social data ecosystem that will help us drive our...

Dr Peter Bath has been appointed Deputy Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee (UREC) . Peter is currently the Senate representative for the Faculty of Social Sciences and has been on the UREC since 2007. The UREC reports to Senate and its tasks include promoting an awareness and understanding of research ethical issues throughout the University, advising on any ethical matters in research within the University. One of Peter's early roles as Deputy Chair is to look into the feasibility of an online system for the research ethics application process.

With three new academic appointments this year, the School now has a larger complement of staff than at any previous point in its history. Dr Jorge Martins originally joined the School as a doctoral researcher in 2008, and now joins us as a member of academic staff. With a background in e-learning research, knowledge and information management and information systems, Jorge will be teaching on a range of courses, including his own Information Architecture module for our new undergraduate Informatics degrees. Dr Stephen Pinfield joins us from his Chief Information Officer post at the University of Nottingham. Stephen has a particular interest in scholarly communication futures and library and information strategy, and research and teaching experience in a wide range of subjects, including digital library development, project management, systems implementations in organisations, scholarly communications, publishing, and research data management. Dr Farida Vis   was previous...

Professor Philippa Levy has been appointed Deputy Chief Executive (Academic) of the Higher Education Academy , a national body for enhancing learning and teaching throughout UK higher education. In this role Phil will draw on her previous experience as Director of a national Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, as well as on her leadership of other learning and teaching development initiatives for higher education and on her research expertise in a range of areas of higher education development. She will be stepping down as Head of School at the end of May 2012 in order to take up her new role on secondment from the University of Sheffield.

Jesus Lau , PhD graduate of the Department, is the president-elect of the Mexican Library Association and has joined the Governing Board of IFLA. Jesus graduated from the Department of Information Studies in 1988. His thesis was entitled "A study of selected social factors influencing information development in low, middle, and highly developed countries : an assessment for the period 1960-1977."

On Saturday 10 May, Prof Sheila Corrall travelled to London to take part in the second annual SLA Europe Dissertation Award event, celebrating the success of recent MA Librarianship graduate, Clare Sinclair , who won one of three prizes awarded this year. Clare’s dissertation was a case study of Knowledge Management in Government, based on the Department for Work and Pensions, and the expertise gained through this project helped her to get her current job as Knowledge Management Projects Officer at the Royal Institute of British Architects. SLA Europe Board Members attending the event included Penny Leach (President) from Goldman Sachs International and Marie-Madeleine Salmon, from Publicis Conseil, who travelled from Paris to join the celebrations. More info about SLA Europe’s student awards can be found at http://www.sla-europe.org/awards/students/students_a.html .

Dr Philippa Levy has been promoted to a personal chair, in recognition of her national and international profile for innovation, publication and enterprise in university teaching.

Prof Steve Whittaker has been elected to the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Academy , in recognition of his sustained research contribution to the field of Human Computer Interaction.

Dr Mark Sanderson will next year co-chair SIGIR , the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. This international conference is the world's largest in the field of information retrieval.

Today we welcomed Barbara Sen , formerly Senior Lecturer in Information Library Management at Liverpool John Moores University, as a new lecturer in the Department. We will profile her more fully in a future blog entry.