Research/Scholarship

I’m currently very interested in the understanding of educational methods (including the use of innovative teaching and assessment) particularly within STEM subjects, but also at the cross-disciplinary boundary. A focus of my current research is in the area of Computational and Data Journalism, including studying Data Journalism and Computer Science education.

I like doing research wherever computer science, IT systems and devices brush up against the real world, as things are far more interesting when people are involved. My research and scholarship is therefore cross-disciplinary. I’m very keen on investigating the use of computer science, social media, and data science and artificial intelligence within Journalism, as both a tool for improving communication and storytelling, and as an input and tool for data gathering, story creation and newsroom workflows. I have a background in high performance computing.

PhD Supervision

I am available to supervise PhD projects. At the current time I am most interested in supervising projects related to Computer Science education itself or that focus on the use of Computer Science within education. For more information on PhD projects within the School, including applying and funding, please see the School of Computer Science and Informatics Postgraduate research page.

Current PhD Students

Matthew Moloughney

Matthew is looking at the application of Automated Assessment Tools within Computer Science education, focusing on the use of such tools for providing feedback to and soliciting feedback from novice programmers at the early stages of their studies.

Past PhD Students

Nyala Noë

I was co-supervisor for Nyala Noë (mostly during the early stages of her PhD). She completed her thesis “Personality homophily and social-spatial characteristics in online social networks” in 2018.

Reviewing and Committees

I have served as reviewer and on committees for many journals and conferences.

Journals

I’m guest editor for a special issue of the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction: “Following User Pathways”.

I have reviewed for the following journals:

Conference/Workshop Committees

I have served on various committees for conferences and workshops:

PhD Examining

Internal examining

Past Research

I was recently working on the Co-Growth project, looking at analysing, enabling and facilitating greater cooperation between breweries within Wales.

Other recent research has looked at issues of communication within and outside of the Journalism community. I have also been examining what social media can tell us about alcohol consumption.

Before I began work as a Lecturer I was working on a 12 month EPSRC Fellowship (2013 Doctoral Award Prize) examining the relationship between an individual’s personality (in terms of the OCEAN five-factor personality model) and the places they visit or check in to. This work has been published

Prior to my fellowship, I was working on the Recognition project, an EU FP7 project attempting to use relevance and human cognitive processes within IT systems to improve content dissemination and filtering. The work included areas such as how human decision making processes relate to twitter and micro-blogging, and examining the relationship between spatial places/venues and people in terms of both their personality and the expression they use towards the places they’ve been.

Before the Recognition project, I spent a year and a half working on the SocialNets project, another EU FP7 project concerning pervasive adaptation looking to improve mobile and ad-hoc systems using social network information and adaptive strategies.