Research Café

26 Feb 2025, 14:10-15:40, 1.07 Main Library 

Booking link 

The themes of the next café are research methodologies and research well-being. 

Our Research Café presenters: 

Dr Iona Beange: Depression Detectives: An Online Citizen Science Project.

Depression Detectives was an online, citizen science project, where people with lived experience of depression and data scientists co-produced a small research project. They found that most people who self-report depression, have no mention of it in their GP records. This has implications for data scientists, doctors and policymakers.Dr Iona Beange is a Patient and Pubic Involvement Co-ordinator at the University of Edinburgh. She has worked in science communication and public engagement for over 20 years and is passionate about two-way engagement and letting voices be heard. She enjoys being creative and brings that into both her work and home life. 

University Profile: www.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-iona-beange

Frankie Vale: Empowered Journeys: A Co-Curated Exploration of Breast Cancer Surgery

Frankie Vale is a final year PhD student in History of Art, whose work considers representations of the body after breast cancer surgery in art and curation, and how they intersect with ideas about gender, care, and forms of knowledge production. Her project, Empowered Journeys, is co-curated with members of the breast cancer community, using creative workshops and exhibition-making as a platform for people existing in post-surgery bodies to regain control over their narrative and representation.

Jimmy Turner: The Ripple Past, Present and Future: Crafting community knowledges through art

‘The Ripple Project: Past, Present and Future’ project gathered together a team of Ripple Project staff, volunteers and members; Binks Hub researchers and students; and freelance artists. Collectively they worked through a variety of workshops, art-making sessions, and fun activities to create four artworks which explored the experiences, dreams and demands of communities who live in Restalrig and Lochend, and which have been exhibited publicly at both the Ripple and the Dovecot Studios.

Jimmy is an anthropologist and artist working for the Binks Hub, which specialises in conducting participatory social research in partnership with marginalised communities. As a team they bring together established social research methods with artistic and creative methods and practices in order to collaboratively craft otherwise seldom-reached knowledges.

Dr Alice Austin: Web archives for information activism: participatory collections as resource and methodology

• What is web archiving? (https://edin.ac/41ffGWd)
• Archive of Tomorrow project (https://edin.ac/413Bzrd)
• Collecting Covid-19 Initiative https://edin.ac/4gDAATm

As the University’s Web Archivist, Dr Alice Austin’s role is focused on securing a record of the University’s published web content. Her other research interests include contemporary and ‘rapid response’ collecting practices in heritage institutions, the ethical implications of collection development, and the relationships between heritage and identity.