Information School News

Last month (5-10 August) Dr Jorge Martins visited the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, to meet with Professor Solange Macamo at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology. The research visit, sponsored by the QR Grand Challenges Research Fund , enabled the development of a partnership to scope out a research project focused on the opportunities created through digital technologies for the promotion and presentation of cultural heritage in Mozambique. During the visit, Jorge met with research students working on information and communication technologies and heritage management projects and gave a research seminar on ‘Creative Industries and Digitalisation’ at the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences.

Between June 18th and June 24th, Dr Efpraxia Zamani and Dr Laura Sbaffi travelled to Malawi to carry out fieldwork for their GCRF QR Pump Priming grant on promoting support networks for informal caregivers of people living with HIV in Malawi. The project focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #3: ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages’, and seeks to develop a collaborative network among caregivers, academics, NGOs, local authorities and health trusts for the support of caregivers of people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi. Malawi is third in world-wide rankings with respect to HIV-related deaths (more than 35,000 deaths in 2017), with 10.6% of the adult population in 2016 being affected by HIV. HIV/AIDS requires a lot of self-management for monitoring symptoms and conducting a healthy lifestyle, while being self-reliant. As a result, considerable support is required to help patients make decisions, adjust their behaviour and adapt to the...

The Information School initiated a strategy around Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) funding in 2018-2019 and appointed a member of academic staff (Pamela Abbott) as a GCRF lead to champion this stream of funding and raise awareness about its potential for the school as a whole. To achieve this end, three GCRF awareness-raising briefings were held in the school and faculty were encouraged to align some of their research ideas around this potentially lucrative and long-term funding scheme. Several members of staff subsequently joined the GCRF collaborative network in the university and some also joined the Digital Technologies, Data and Innovation (DDI) theme of Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) to further engage with at least one theme relevant to the school and to GCRF – ICTs for Development (ICT4D). As a result of these initiatives, the school can now claim some success in the last two rounds of GCRF QR (Quality Research) pump-priming awards, having wo...