Guest Speakers

  • Siân Bayne

(Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh)

      Profile: http://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/sian-bayne

Sian Bayne is Professor of Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also Assistant Principal for Digital Education. She directs the Centre for Research in Digital Education and teaches on the MSc in Digital Education. Her research is currently focused on critical approaches to teaching automation, open and distance education, and the application of theory from the humanities and social sciences to digital education.

More information about her work is on her web site at: http://sianbayne.net and you can follow her on Twitter at @sbayne.

 

  • Stuart Lawson

(Doctoral researcher at Birkbeck, University of London, undertaking a PhD in the politics of open access)‌‌

Stuart is an information professional and radical librarian who is a founding editor of the Journal of Radical Librarianship. Much of their work, both research and practice, has involved opening up financial data about journal publishing and open access.

- The tittle of his talk is "The history, politics and perils of open access publishing. Where are we, how did we get here, what does it all mean and what is next?".

 

  • Paul Watson

(Professor of Computer Science at Newcastle University, Director of the Digital Institute and PI of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big)‌

       Profile: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/paulwatson.html#background

Watson graduated from Manchester University with a degree and PhD in Computing before - following a time as a lecturer there - he moved to industry. He returned to academia at Newcastle University in 1995 and has been the PI for many large research projects in the area of scalable information management. Professor Watson is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a member of the UK Computing Research Committee. He also sits on the board of Dynamo North East, an industry-led organisation created to grow the IT economy of the region. In 2014 he received the Jim Gray eScience Award.

- The tittle of his talk is "Big Data: opportunities and threats".