![\"The](\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/files\/2015\/03\/The-Avatar-Stand.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
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We are approaching a rare constellation of events \u2013 International Women\u2019s Day, National Science Week (formerly National Science and Engineering Week), and the UK\u2019s biggest outreach<\/strong> event in the calendar \u2013 the Big Bang Fair.\u00a0 All three events fall in the month of March, and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about my work as it fits within all three events.<\/p>\n As an academic in Psychology at the University of Southampton, I am involved in a number of research activities. However, the biggest of these is the SuperIdentity project (www.southampton.ac.uk\/superidentity<\/a>). This is a collective endeavour across six UK universities, and seven disciplines.<\/p>\n My job is to lead this project and, whilst it has brought its challenges, it has been an immensely interesting piece of work to be involved in.\u00a0 Now, I can hear you asking \u2013 what is the SuperIdentity project all about?\u00a0 In essence, we are interested in all the identity cues that make up who you are.<\/p>\n Within our modern world though, we know that those identity cues exist online as much as they do offline.\u00a0 We also know that those online cues might paint quite a different picture of you compared to your offline cues.\u00a0 Our task has been to try to figure out how the degree to which your online and offline identities might nevertheless be linked to one another because \u2013 and here comes the punchline \u2013 because all cues relate back to you \u2013 the source \u2013 the superidentity<\/em>.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been working hard using methods that span forensic anthropology, automated recognition, biometrics, and human cognitive capacities in handling complex volumes of information.\u00a0 All of these help us clarify your identity in the real world, and they give us clues as to what might define your identity online.\u00a0 We like the term \u2018cybermetrics\u2019 to describe your online identity cues.<\/p>\n Alongside all this work on cues to identity, we have also worked hard to find out how people feel about their identity, and about their privacy. This has been incredibly important for us because, while our project has been running, various EU law reforms have come into force regarding data protection and privacy.\u00a0 We have been really careful not to ignore this.<\/p>\n As a result of all our work, we have a much more modern understanding of identity now, and this may help in instances such as missing persons investigations, and when teaching young people about staying streetwise online.<\/p>\n Talking of our young people and superidentity, we are thrilled to be hosting a series of workshops at the Big Bang Fair at the Birmingham NEC from 11-14\u00a0 March (www.thebigbangfair.co.uk<\/a>).\u00a0 Our workshops invite you to come and join the identity detectives<\/em> for a day, during which we share some of the new and cool ways of revealing identity.\u00a0 You can find out more about our Big Bang workshops via our own website (www.southampton.ac.uk\/theidentitydetectives<\/a>) or, if you are in the area, come and find us in the Alive Zone.\u00a0 <\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s fitting that International Women\u2019s Day falls in March too.\u00a0 At a personal level, I have loved the opportunity to push barriers of understanding in my field of science, and to bubble over with enthusiasm when telling others about our discoveries.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also loved working at the junctions between sciences \u2013 using biology, mathematics, modelling, statistics, and human creativity, to solve a shared problem.\u00a0 In this sense, \u2018I love it when a plan comes together\u2019.\u00a0 In the SuperIdentity Project, it really has.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr Sarah Stevenage, Associate Dean for Education & Student Experience (Strategy & Innovation), is part of a team bringing the concept of Superidentity to thousands of children at The Big Bang Fair 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74545,"featured_media":89,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,449985],"tags":[880072,881297,880259,879886],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-social-sciences","tag-big-bang-fair","tag-identity-detectives","tag-sarah-stevenage","tag-superidentity","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/fshs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/em><\/strong>It\u2019s no coincidence to us that the Big Bang Fair runs at the same time as National Science Week.\u00a0 Both events are devoted to sharing the brilliant work that goes on at universities in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), and both aim to attract as many girls as boys into these subjects.<\/p>\n