The educational landscape has seen a major shift over the past 12 months. As the world starts to heal, it is important to reflect on what worked and what did not, so we can provide new insights into ways of helping both students and educators move forward and ensure efficacy in teaching/learning.

SICSA Education will host an online event on the 29th April, and we would welcome people talking about their experiences. At this stage we would welcome any presentation which you can propose via this form, that can relate to the theme “Lessons from Lockdown”. These could include (but are not limited to) delivering, assessing and managing CS education in online or dual modes, supporting student learning and wellbeing, accessibility of CS education, etc.

Presentation timings will be confirmed following acceptance, but each talk is expected to last 10 – 15 minutes.

Submission deadline: 26th March
Registration opening on the 5^th  April.
Contact: Mark Zarb, Debbie Meharg

The Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, in partnership with the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities, is excited to announce that applications for Spring into Methods 2021 is now open.

The Spring into Methods programme brings together arts, humanities and social science doctoral researchers from across Scotland and offers sessions providing an interdisciplinary and in-depth approach to learning a specific research method. These interdisciplinary workshops are open to all doctoral researchers aligned with SGSAH, SGSSS, SOCIAL AI or SICSA at member HEIs.

Eight workshops will be running as part of Spring into Methods between Tuesday 06 April and Friday 21 May 2021:

• Advanced Interviewing & Oral History Theory & Practice post COVID-19
• African Feminism: Transformative Purpose and Power in Research Methodology
• Autism in Qualitative Research: Facilitating Inclusion and Participation of Autistic People as a Marginalised Group in Research
• DIY Academic Archiving: Curating your Research Materials and Creating Open Research Data
• Entangle your Doctoral Project: Posthuman Research Approaches
• Financial Diaries in Times of Pandemic
• Narrative Portraits in Qualitative Research
• “Sketchbook Thinking”: Visual Experimentation as a Research Method

Applications are open via Social at 9am on Monday 15 February and close at 5pm on Monday 01 March.

Registered with Social.

If you have any questions regarding this scheme then please do not hesitate to get in touch with Mike Crabb.

Artificial Intelligence Research Theme

On 1st January 2021, we welcomed Dr Dimitra Gkatzia, Edinburgh Napier University, to the position Co-Leader of the SICSA Artificial Intelligence Research Theme.  The research theme will have a further change in leadership in April this year when Dr Sandy Brownlee, Stirling University will also commence as joint Co-Lead and will work alongside Dimitra in directing and driving the AI Research Theme forward.  We are thrilled to have Dimitra and Sandy as the new theme leaders; both have been closely involved with SICSA in the past and we look forward to working with them going forward.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Professor Emma Hart, Edinburgh Napier University, and Professor Helen Hastie, Heriot Watt University the outgoing AI Theme Leaders.  Both Emma and Helen have been instrumental in driving the AI theme forward in this time of change including their input and SICSA representation with Scotland’s AI Strategy. We thank them both for their hard work and commitment to SICSA over the years.

Networking & Systems Research Theme

Dr Jeremy Singer, University of Glasgow, also joined us as the co-lead of the SICSA Networking and Systems Research Theme from the 1st January 2021 and with Dr Paul Patras, (University of Edinburgh), will be responsible for shaping and directing the Networking & Systems Research Theme as well as providing a national representation for the theme area.

We are very pleased to confirm that Professor Stuart Anderson from the University of Edinburgh has been confirmed as the Director of SICSA.   Stuart took over from Professor Aaron Quigley on an interim basis but was confirmed in post by the SICSA Committee in December last year and will now lead SICSA through the transitional period of the Research Pools.  When informed that his appointment had been confirmed by the SICSA Committee Stuart said, “I am delighted to have been chosen as SICSA Director.  In these challenging times the research pools are a tried and tested way to act across the entire community and to link with other research pools to tackle recovery and development out of the pandemic.  I feel privileged to contribute to the development of SICSA’s role in Scotland’s economy and society.”

Stuart previously held the position of SICSA Director back in August 2014 and we are so pleased to have him back.

A new cross discipline collaboration has been initiated between the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities, the SOCIAL Centre for Doctoral Training and SICSA.

The Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH) and the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS) are collaborating on Spring into Methods to commission high quality methods training for our postgraduate students. This year, they are also accepting applications from, and offer training to, staff and doctoral researchers affiliated with SICSA.

The Spring into Methods programme brings together arts, humanities and social science doctoral researchers from across Scotland and offers sessions providing an interdisciplinary and in-depth approach to learning a specific research method for up to a maximum of 10 hours.

Proposals are welcome from members of staff in any of the affiliated HEIs to provide this interdisciplinary online training. Considering the global pandemic, and to increase accessibility, we are asking for interactive online proposals that may be flexibly spread over several days. We aim to support 6-8 proposals for events with a maximum cost of £1500 each

Proposals are welcome on the following topics where demand has been identified, however proposals are also welcome in areas that have a convincing case that demonstrates need and demand.

The topics for this year are:

• Building research methods on principles of equality, diversity and inclusion
• Adapting methods for research during a pandemic
• Rethinking ethics for research during a pandemic
• Decolonising Methods
• Methods and Climate Crisis
• Creating and using open research data
• Feminist research methods
• Mining administrative data
• Exploring secondary analysis of multimodal or qualitative datasets
• Posthumanist or more-than-human research
• Survey design and analysis
• Relating your research to the Sustainable Development Goals
• Rethinking ‘vulnerability’ in participatory research
• Open category

The initial deadline for workshop proposals is Friday 22nd January 2021 and more information can be found here.

Do you need access to high quality, high volume medical imaging data for your research projects? PICTURES is a 5-year programme aimed at increasing the capabilities of Safe Havens to support emerging technologies and new data types such as images, MRIs, CTs, X-rays etc in health data research.

The PICTURES team want to hear from researchers about their tools, technology and image data needs to better inform these new capabilities. If you would like to have your say and shape the future of health data research in Safe Havens, please complete this short survey. It should take around 7 minutes to complete and closes on 17^th November. You can access the survey here.

The MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences invites you to our virtual celebration of the Suffrage Science Awards 2020 ‘Life Sciences’ and ‘Maths and Computing’ groups on Friday 6th November 2020, 6pm-7pm.

Come along and hear stimulating stories of women in Maths, Computing and Life Sciences. The event is hosted by Science Storyteller Dr Kat Arney.

There’s a great speaker line-up including:

• Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon (Maths and Computing Awardee 2020)
• Lakechia Jeanne (Girls in Science)
• Dr Jennifer Rohn (Life Sciences Awardee 2014)

The panellists will be visible on screen. Attendees will be able to ‘chat’ with them, and with others in the audience, via a text feed.

Programme of the event:

6:00 Welcome

6:05 Life Sciences video premiere

6:15 Panel: key themes of 2020 and the Suffrage Science network

6:45 Maths and Computing video premiere

6:55 Close

7:00 End

Registration

To attend, please click this link  to send your name and email address, by Sunday 1st November.

After this date participants will be contacted with details of the event portal.

You can find out more about the Suffrage Science Awards here.