EFI Research Awards 2019
The Edinburgh Futures Institute has awarded nine projects funding to support interdisciplinary research.
The projects that will receive up to £5,000 will explore a wide range of issues, such as fuel poverty, emergency services and the power of tech companies.
More than 30 projects entered the EFI Research Awards, and the judging panel found the calibre of entries to be very high.
Below are the winners of the EFI Research Awards 2019!
Andrew Manches – Developing Children’s Understanding of Personal Data
This project will engage with young children (3-6 yrs), parents, museum practitioners, teachers and Edtech designers to talk meaningfully about how the data captured by emerging internet-connected toys (‘Internet of Toys’) can tell someone who they are, where they are and what they do.
Beverley Hood – How do we live with the dead in a digital age? What forms of digital memorialisation exist?
Beverley’s project involves engaging with colleagues at Edinburgh Napier University and theatre professionals, to create an immersive performance pilot that contemplates digital memorialisation and how we live with the dead in the digital age.
Samantha Fawkner – How do we harness the opportunities of personal health data monitoring to encourage positive health behaviour and help prepare school aged children for a data society in an inclusive, safe and empowering way?
Sam’s work combines the work of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, Informatics, Education and elsewhere in the University to identify approaches to upskilling the next generation of digital health data users.
Pip Thornton – How can creative intervention and public art help us to think critically about data and the power of digital technology companies?
Pip’s project uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore how critical issues surrounding the value of data and data privacy can be brought to a wider public audience through artistic intervention and cultural engagement.
Kate Carter – How can digital data help housing associations to reduce fuel poverty?
Kate’s project is a collaboration between Architecture and Design Informatics and three Housing Associations to explore the complex and fragmented landscape of data with the challenge of addressing fuel poverty in social housing.
Dave Murray-Rust – How can we support non-specialist audiences in creating and engaging with data in interactive and tangible ways?
Dave’s project involves creating networked, digital kinetic displays of data that can be combined to work with all sorts of different data, creating wall size data physicalisations that can be adapted in creative ways.
Hannah Rohde – Can machine learning and discourse-analytic techniques be leveraged to improve decisions made by ambulance call handlers about emergency incidents?
Hannah’s project aims to improve decisions made by ambulance call handlers about emergency incidents. The project brings together practitioners from NHS emergency medicine and researchers in linguistics, psychology, and artificial intelligence.
Kristina Konstantoni: How can business and public play spaces and cafes be reimagined and reclaimed as social just rights-reinforcing spaces for children?
Kristina Konstantoni’s research reimagines community and business play café spaces as spaces that reinforce social justice and children’s rights, by engaging very young children and their families, play café business and community staff and practitioners in a process of collaborative design. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach which combines ideas from education, childhood studies and business.
Benjamin Bach: Which software tools exist to aid researchers and practitioners on all fields to create, design and use data visualizations in their daily work?
Benjamin’s project is creating an online platform to collect, tag, and discuss tools for data visualization such as tableau, gephi, d3, etc.. The purpose is to facilitate retrieval and of relevant tools to different stakeholders engaged in data visualization. Beyond this, the platform will allow us to analyze current trends and challenges in data visualizations tools.
Previous awards
2018 EFI Research Awards winners:
Benjamin Bach – Can data visualizations engage a wider audience in data-driven policy and decision-making about inequality?
Benjamin’s project involves a collaboration between schools across the University and outside organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to uncover how data visualisations can practically help a wide range of policy makers to tackle inequality.
Deborah Scott – Can we develop narratives to guide Scotland’s scientific research, technical innovation, commercial development, and public policy relating to near- Earth orbit and outer space?
Deborah’s project involves engaging with space scientists and engineers, social scientists of outer space, science fiction authors, and illustrators and challenges them to imagine together possible futures of Edinburgh and outer space.
Kate Symons – How can blockchain technology restore trust in sustainable development, aid and humanitarianism?
Kate’s work is a collaboration between the Centre for African Studies, Design Informatics, Geosciences, and Social Anthropology to prototype new forms of blockchain technology to help people in Africa.
Jean-Benoît Falisse – How can community-level actors use ‘data abundance’ to improve basic social services in fragile and low-income settings?
Jean-Benoît‘s work involves mapping out how communities and individuals, particularly in fragile contexts, can take advantage of the new possibilities that data provide for improving their outcomes.