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On 5th December, the Web Science Institute invited Professor Rob Kitchin of Maynooth University to discuss the praxes and politics of building city dashboard. Rob Kitchin is the principal investigator on Programmable City project and the Building City Dashboard project. Nowadays, City dashboards are increasingly becoming a tool for urban management and governance. The lecture considers the creation and uses from both a technical development perspective and that of critical studies. Continue reading →

Day 1 - The first day at CUHK was based around small group workshops to discuss our research and presented it to others interested in the field – Anna attended this workshop as her research fell within the western music theory and analysis category. I found it useful to show how my research relates to other fields and also how this traditional discipline of music theory relates to the developments of the web. Continue reading →

 PhD Symposium On an extraordinarily sunny Sunday (at least as judged by locals!), we started with the PhD Symposium session, composed of 10- 15-minute lectures with Q&A. Students presented their PhD projects - results, ongoing work and plans. The diversity of topics was astonishing and a good insight into the interdisciplinary nature of the conference - although probably it is hardly surprising for someone accustomed with Web Science on a daily basis. Continue reading →

The 25th May was the birthday of GDPR - the European general data protection regulation came into force. Most of us will have noticed this based on the incredible amount of emails we received from websites we didn’t even remember ever giving our data to. With GDPR, we now have more rights with regards to organisations that hold data about us. Among others, this includes the rights to access our data, restrict how it is used, or have it deleted. Continue reading →

Today’s WSI Distinguished lecture with Professor Richard Rogers focuses on the pervasive view of social media being a tool from which to gleam ‘vanity metrics’, and how these metrics may be reworked for social research purposes. Continue reading →

On the 5th February, I attended a thought-provoking talk entitled ‘Building a free and unrestricted digital museum and library’ by Tom Scott, the Head of Digital Engagement at the Wellcome Trust. Tom began his talk with an introduction to the Wellcome Trust, describing how Henry Wellcome started a collection of objects, art and books in the late nineteenth century. The theme of the whole collection is health and the human condition. Continue reading →

One October afternoon I received an email to ‘Save the date’ for a Terrarium-building workshop. The email stated that members of the CDT would have the opportunity to meet and mingle with each other, but also to create an individual mini-ecosystem. The penny dropped and I remembered that a Terrarium is a small-enclosed container in which plants are grown. Continue reading →

On Friday, I was invited to take part in a discussion-based lunch with Rory Mullarkey. Rory is a playwright whose current show, George and the Dragon, is on at the National Theatre. The lunch was arranged because Rory has been commissioned to create a play about the Internet (of which the Web is obviously a very important part!) by the Nuffield Theatre. Rory has a completely open brief and was invited to the Web Science Institute for inspiration. Continue reading →

The moment the notification email went around advising that Dr Ben Williamson was going to give a talk, I booked my place. As a ‘resting’ secondary school teacher taking a sabbatical to do a PhD, anything edu-related is always of interest. When it’s also embedded in Web Science, that’s a double bonus. Dr Williamson has written extensively about ‘the digital age’ and education. Continue reading →