The Edinburgh Futures Institute is committed to funding high-quality research in areas focused on the challenges and opportunities related to data driven innovation that have demonstrable ethical, social, cultural, economic and environmental impact. We are pleased to confirm the winners of this year’s EFI Research Awards.
Successful projects receive up to £5,000 to explore a wide range of issues such as surveillance practices in higher education, architectural affordances, research in dementia, storytelling after natural disasters, and increased automation in cities.
Professor Melissa Terras, EFI’s Director of Research, said: “All applications received for the third round of this call were of a very high calibre, and covered a fascinating range of topics. We are delighted to support research that addresses these very important issues using innovative approaches, and we look forward to sharing the outcomes of these projects soon. We’re also pleased to be supporting a range of events that can help support our research community.”
The selected projects are in full swing now and EFI plans to share the work in the Autumn. The projects are:
- Lewis Killin – National Attitudes to Dementia Research and Data
- Victoria Lee – If These Walls Could Talk: Stories mining to improve architectural affordances in care homes for the elderly
- Cristina Nan – How Can Data be used to Simulate, Anticipate and Inform Mitigation Strategies for Radical Automation Zones?
- Jen Ross – Co-designing with Speculative Data Stories: Higher Education after Surveillance
- Sam Spiegel – Storytelling after Climate Disaster: Creative Communication, Post-Cyclone Transformations and Aspirations for the Future along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique Border
In addition to these research projects, EFI has supported several events, workshops and initiatives with a focus on Data Driven Innovation, including:
- Morgan Currie – Artists in Lockdown: Virtual Tours of Edinburgh Artists’ Studios
- James Loxley – Exploring the ways in which literary data – and literature as data – can be made accessible and intelligible to users through different modes of phenomenalisation
- Bettina Nissen – VizBlocks: A Toolkit for Data Education
- Larissa Pschetz – Bio-Polis: Exploring the future of smart cities through biological research
- Andreas Steinhauer – Digitisation of Austrian Parish Books: Extracting SocioDemographic Information
- Pip Thornton – Arcadia: An art installation at the Fruitmarket Gallery’s temporary Bookshop
