Information School News

  We’ve had several good news stories in the School recently, showing off the strength of our staff’s research! Lecturer Dr Mengdie Zhuang was published in the Conversation, discussing the varying degrees to which the public obeyed COVID lockdown rules Her piece, ‘Household mixing during COVID-19: our research suggests adherence to lockdowns in England declined over time’ can be read here . Lecturer Dr Susan Oman has an exhibit on Understanding Well-being Data in the Festival of the Mind The exhibit is based on her current research on well-being data, recently published as a book, and includes her recently produced videos. You can view the exhibit here . Drs Sara Vannini, Efpraxia Zamani, Caitlin Bentley and Suvodeep Mazumdar have all successfully attained Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding for their research projects Lecturer Dr Sara Vannini and Senior Lecturer Dr Efpraxia Zamani have received funding for their work on digital poverty with the Sheffield Mayoral Combin...

New Paper: Integrating FATE/Critical Data Studies into Data Science Curricula: Where are we going and how do we get there? A number of Information School academics have published a new paper for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. The paper (published by Dr Jo Bates, Dr David Cameron, Dr Alessandro Checco, Professor Paul Clough, Dr Frank Hopfgartner, Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar, Dr Laura Sbaffi, Dr Peter Stordy, and Dr Antonio de la Vega de León) reflects on the ethical and practical aspects of teaching critical data science to inform future data practices & make them fair.  Abstract:  There have been multiple calls for integrating topics related to fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics (FATE) and social justice into Data Science curricula, but little exploration of how this might work in practice. This paper presents the findings of a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) engaged in by a MSc Data Science teaching team b...

After a very interesting meeting at the lovely premises of the Connected Places Catapult last week, I am back, researching Urban Planning initiatives, studying outcomes and output measures. Based in London, the Connected Places Catapult is a UK Government-backed urban innovation agency that aims to help UK firms develop innovative products and services to help meet the growing needs of cities across the world. The CPC works with Industry, SMEs, academics, transport and local authorities and provides an excellent setting for my Researcher in Residence project, UrbanMapper . Cities are constantly adapting, changing and innovating to meet the rising demands of increasing populations, constrained resources and increased expectations from residents. With the increased availability and affordability of sensors (IoT), faster connectivity (mobile, broadband and the Internet), smartphones and high computational resources, new opportunities are emerging where large volumes of data can be collec...

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...