Information School News

PhD student Ian Widdows shares his experiences of his internship with UKRI, engaging with the government on policy-making. Like all researchers, I want my research to make a difference.  When I first considered the possibility of writing a research proposal for a PhD, I was powerfully motivated by a desire to make things better.  My research is into secondary school performance measures in England - their effectiveness, effects and an exploration of alternative approaches. In part this comes from having spent 28 years working in secondary schools. During that time I formed some strong opinions about the way that schools are judged. I feel that things really need to change and I want my research to contribute to the debate.  Over the years, I have made many contacts already working in this field, including academics, data scientists, school and school trust leaders, consultants and senior representatives of teaching unions. I have been part of numerous working parties look...

  The Information School at the University of Sheffield, ranked number one in the world for library and information management in the QS World University Rankings 2021, is advertising for up to two funded PhD Scholarships to start in the 2021/22 Academic Year. Job Title:  Departmental PhD Scholarship – GTA Department:  Information School, University of Sheffield Deadline for applications: Monday 5 th  July 2021 at 5pm The successful applicant(s) will be expected to provide up to 180 hours of teaching support per academic year. Payment for teaching support will be made in addition to bursary and fees, at the rate set by the  Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA)  scheme. We welcome applications for research in any of our  research specialisms . Research Environment When you undertake a research degree with the Information School, you can be assured that you are getting not only world-class supervision, but also exceptional facilities. In the 2014 REF (Resea...

Now the dust has cleared from the 2019 iSchool Conference, we’ve had a break and come up with some interesting findings from the presentations at the event. The conference boasted a wide range of disciplines that PhD students from the iSchool are researching. The day kicked off purely with quantitative research, followed by mixed methods methodologies and ending with some thought-provoking qualitative research presentations. Here are our top highlights: Recommendation Systems in Drug Design The morning began with the first presentation by Gianmarco Ghiandoni, a 3rd year PhD student in the Cheminformatics research group . The study looks at De Novo design, a branch of cheminformatics dealing with the design of molecular structures. Gianmarco adapted  methods that are widely applied for recommendation purposes on human data - for example by companies such as Google, Amazon, or Netflix - to the computational drug design processes, where chemical and biological data are mai...

A seminar series on post-PhD career development and opportunities outside of academia was successfully held on Wednesday 6th June. This event was co-organised by Yuhua Wang, a PhD student from Information School, and Youcao Ren, a PhD student from the Landscape Department. The PGR Forum of the Faculty of Social Science funded this event. This event has also received generous help and support from iSchool Society and Campus Capital, with Marc Bonne, president of the Society, chairing the seminars and Itzelle Medina Perea helping during the sessions. Initiated by Yuhua and Youcao from as early as 2017, this event was designed to offer a variety of information on and insights into the job world outside academia, to help PhD students and graduates make more informed career decisions. Opened by Dr Darcey Gillie, an experienced careers adviser from The Researcher Development Team of the University, the event welcomed PhD students from a variety of departments including the Information Scho...

To celebrate the launch of the iSchool Society, a coffee afternoon was held on the 6th of October in the iSpace. This is the first official Information School society registered with the Students Union. Postgraduate taught and research students had the opportunity to vote for future events and to sign up for membership. One of the key aims is to bring together postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students in take part in inclusive social events. The committee is formed of four postgraduate research students as followed: Marc Bonne (President), Liliana Garcia (Secretary), Wasim Ahmed (Publicity and Inclusion Officer), and Itzelle Medina (Treasurer). The Information School Society has a Facebook page where you can keep up to dates with events, and a Twitter account which will contain information on any event cancellations or alterations. Membership can be purchased from the website of the society .

My name is Wasim Ahmed and I am a PhD student at the iSchool , where I also obtained my MSc in 2013. I recently completed a work placement at Manchester United within the analytics department on a social media research project. The collaboration was made possible due to a University of Sheffield scheme known as the Postgraduate Researcher Experience programme . I have been a life-long fan of the club, so I was really happy to have had this opportunity. I found the placement to be very beneficial for a number of reasons. This is because after spending a number of years working in an academic context, I had not fully considered the intelligence that could be extracted from social media platforms for commercial uses. My academic research, as a result of the internship, has improved and I will now consider potential uses of a research project, as well as the academic insight that can be gained. As a research student you will develop a number of skills that can be applied in a...

CILIP Conference (5-6 July, Manchester) is a highlight of the professional calendar for library and information professionals in the UK, and this year the Information School is delighted to award bursaries for six postgraduate students to attend the conference and share their experiences. Our bursary award-winners are: Hannah Beckitt – MA Library and Information Services Management Erica Brown – MA Digital Library Management Jaimee McRoberts – MA Library and Information Services Management Itzelle Medina – PhD (and previous MA Librarianship student) Lucy Sinclair – MA Librarianship Louise Wasson – MA Library and Information Services Management All are looking forward to making the most of the conference programme , including excellent keynotes by Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, and Luciano Floridi of the Oxford Internet Institute, and the Your Career track, which is sponsored by the Information School. Watch out for tweets and blog posts from our students about thei...