Information School News

There have been several changes to staffing within the School during 2015. Firstly, we are delighted to welcome the following new staff. Dr Christopher Foster has joined as Lecturer in ICT and Innovation. Chris was previously a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and his work focuses on the impact of digital technologies and information flows on innovation within organisations. With a background in engineering, IT innovation and R&D, Chris will mainly be contributing to teaching on the Information Systems and Information Management degrees. Dr Paul Reilly is Senior Lecturer in Social Media and Digital Society and joins us from his previous posiiton as Deputy Director of Research, Department of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Paul has a particular interests in the study of online political communication and how social media is used to promote better community relations in divided societies, and he is the author of...

Dr Barbara Sen  has been awarded one of the Faculty's 2015 Teaching Excellence in Social Sciences (TESS) awards for outstanding learning and teaching. Congratulations to Barbara.

Congratulations to Dr Barbara Sen and Dr Gianluca Demartini , both of the Information School, who have won Faculty Awards. Dr Sen has received a Faculty Learning and Teaching Award. Her nomination was based on her extensive and impressive contributions to learning and teaching throughout her time in the Information School, with a focus on bringing real world practice to the classroom and promoting students' professionalism and employability. She will be presented with her award at an Awards event in ICoSS on 7th October. Dr Demartini has received a Faculty Early Career Researcher Award at the recent Faculty Research Conference. The award is in recognition of his recent EPSRC First Grant (BetterCrowd: Human Computation for Big Data) .

iFutures, now in its third year, was held on the 7th of July 2015. The conference is for all information science PhD students and is organised by PhD students from the University of Sheffield’s Information School. The conference is deliberately open and welcoming for early stage researchers to present their research to their peers in a constructive environment.  The keynote speakers included Prof. Helen Kennedy in the morning session and Prof. Fabio Ciravegna in the afternoon session. As with previous years there were two parallel workshop sessions, one led by Prof. Paul Clough and the other by Dr Barbara Sen. PhD students across the Information Science discipline presented their research over three sessions:  the morning session: applied social media, the Pecha Kucha Session, and the paper session. Over l unch PhD students also had the opportunity to showcase their research via colourful poster presentations.  This year saw PhD delegates and speakers from not on...

Congratulations to Dr Barbara Sen of the Information School whose paper, “Community, complexity, the public library and community orientation”, has been published in Library Review and  selected by the journal’s editorial team as a Highly Commended paper in the 2015 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. The paper is freely available until the end of July 2015 from the Emerald Group Publishing website.

Today a number of iSchool academics are presenting at the the University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences learning and teaching conference. The talks are: Pamela McKinney and Barbara Sen : Situational analysis of group work: student reflective assessment Paul Clough : Utilising MOLE for multiple choice assessments: a case study in the Information School Peter Stordy : Back to the future: reinventing exams Sheila Webber : Futurelearning! Reflections on teaching in the Future Learn Play MOOC Briony Birdi: Supporting isolated adults via the Six Books Challenge in Sheffield: developing student cultural awareness and community engagement

The University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Social Science hosts its inaugural inter-disciplinary Faculty research conference on 19 September 2014 with strong representation from the Information School. Six members of the Information School are speaking at the conference, with subjects highlighting the range of leading research which is carried out in the School: ·           Alex Peng – ‘Socio-Technical Challenges in Building Future Smart Cities’ ·          Barbara Sen – ‘The information coping trajectory’ ·          Peter Bath – ‘Sharing information online among people with life-threatening, chronic and terminal conditions’ and ‘Experiences of a Sandpit – life before, during and after the ESRC EMoTICON sandpit’ ·          Sheila Webber – ‘Is this a game?   Blended interplay of information between digital and physical worlds'...

Today Barbara Sen and Robert Villa of the Information School are presenting the results of a European Association of Health Information and Libraries project at the EAHIL Conference in Rome. A full report of the project can be found on White Rose Research Online .

Dr Barbara Sen and Pamela McKinney of the Information School are among the speakers at LILAC 2014 , which takes place at Sheffield Hallam University from 23 to 25 April 2014.     On Wednesday 23 April Barbara and Pamela will be delivering a workshop entitled ‘Supporting information literacy educators: reflective pedagogic planning improving information literacy practice’ , which draws on research in reflective practice which has been carried out at the University of Sheffield. Barbara will also be speaking in two further sessions at LILAC 2014.  On Thursday 24 April she will presenting on ‘Innovation, creativity and change: utilising appreciative enquiry and reflective practice to achieve asset based information literacy’ in collaboration with Vicky Grant and Denise Harrison of the University of Sheffield Library; and on Friday 25 April she will speak with Hannah Spring of York St John University on ‘Supporting young people’s health information needs’ . L...

The winter 2013 edition of Library Trends is dedicated wholly to the the Information School at the University of Sheffield. Edited by Barbara Sen and former Head of School Prof Sheila Corrall, the issue is composed entirely of work produced by academic staff, research staff and research students of the Information School.

Students from the Health Informatics Research Group are presenting their research at the 15th International Symposium on Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR 2011) which takes place on the 8-9 September 2011, in Zurich, Switzerland. Liz Brewster is presenting a poster on her work entitled "Concepts of bibliotherapy: from initial definitions to patient empowerment" in collaboration with her supervisor, Barbara Sen. Robinah Namuleme is giving a paper on her research entitled "Information disconnects for people infected with, or affected by, HIV/AIDs" in collaboration with Nigel Ford and Peter Bath. Tom Poulter is presenting a poster on his research "Requirements for oncology EPRs – a mixed methods approach" in collaboration with Peter Bath. Tom is also presenting a paper on "An Analysis of Electronic Document Management in Oncology Care" in collaboration with Brian Gannon (Birkbeck College) and Peter Bath. Tomislav Dimitrovski is presen...

Barbara Sen and Peter Bath, from the Information School, are organising the 15th International Symposium for Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR 2011) in collaboration with colleagues from the University Hospital Zurich and the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. The conference is being held in Zurich on 8-9th September 2011 and is being attended by over 70 delegates from different countries throughout the world. Barbara Sen is organising the doctoral forum at the conference. Further details are available at: http://www.ishimr2011.com/