Funded Marie Curie Sabbatical for Cognitive Memory Researcher

3 Visiting Fellow Positions at University of Sheffield, UK in Personal
Information Access and Retrieval

We are looking for experienced visiting fellows to contribute to an
exciting new large scale 4 year multidisciplinary project, Memoir,
addressing the design and development of technologies to support
personal memories. The project is funded by the EU under Marie Curie.
Fellows will visit the Information Studies Department in Sheffield for
a 4 month period supported by an EU stipend of ?20,000, plus travel
money for yourself and immediate family.

Project Description:

Memoir is an EU training grant to build expertise in a new
multidisciplinary area. Memoir will study the new area of personal
memories, to better understand the technology, ethics and psychology of
storing and accessing personal information. The major technological
success of the last decade has been the development of methods for
accessing public data such as documents. The current consensus however
is that these word-based techniques have reached a plateau and that new
research is needed to explore methods for accessing other data such as
video, images, and speech. And changes in digital storage technology
mean that people are beginning to store huge amounts of digital videos,
photographs, music and speech in personal file systems. We will explore
cultural and social differences in such memories within different EU
cultures, as well as socially disadvantaged communities in our local
region. Our project may help address the digital divide as
personalisation has been suggested as a way of making technology
relevant to sections of the society who are reticent to adopt it.

Fellows will advise a multidisciplinary team involving people with
expertise in computer science, psychology, design and information
studies, in one of the following areas:

· Digital Ethics - There are notable ethical problems concerning the
collection and access to personal data. Applications which record
people's images or personal conversations need to have procedures for
soliciting permissions for recording and use, and techniques for
controlling access to private data.
· Cognitive Science - These personal systems will have to take into
account the ways that people remember, access and utilise information,
so that expertise in human memory and cognition would be highly
informative and relevant
· Social History - Social Historians have long documented the
creation and use of artefacts to create and sustain personal and
cultural memories, and we would hope to benefit from expertise in this
area.

Research fellows will advise the core team, as well as presenting a
short seminar series in an area related to their expertise and relevant
to the Memoir project. The project will provide opportunities to meet
and collaborate with other researchers and help define this important
new area. The project will offer important opportunities for fellows to
network with other researchers in Sheffield and the UK.

The Information Retrieval group is part of the Department of
Information Studies at the University of Sheffield. The department was
founded in 1963 as the Postgraduate School of Librarianship. It has an
international reputation for the quality of its research, the expertise
of its staff and the achievements of its graduates. It was awarded a
top 5*A rating in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and has been
awarded an 'excellent' score of 22 points for Teaching Quality by
HEFCE.

Once devoted to being a world-leading steel town, Sheffield's largest
money-making industries are now its Universities. The fifth largest
city in the UK, Sheffield is one of the country's greenest: filled with
parks and trees. The University of Sheffield is located in the
delightful west end where, restaurants, and cafes are within easy
walking distance of the Department of Information Studies. It is also
close to the Peak District - an area of outstanding natural beauty and
Britain's most visited National Park which can be reached in less
than 10 minutes from the department.

Please send a copy of CV detailing research experience, interests and
publications to Heather Scott, Information Studies, University of
Sheffield. Enquiries to Prof. Steve Whittaker, s.whittaker@xxxxxxxxxxx

Note: There are restrictions as to who can apply. Fellows should be
currently resident outside the UK, and preferably EU citizens. Please
contact us if you have questions about eligibility. They must also have
between 4-10 years research expertise (dating from the time they began
their PhD or equivalent).

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