The North Haugh campus was brimming with bubbling experiments, interactive activities, and research displays as St Andrews welcomed in its Mind and Matter Festival 2024 on 27th October 2024.
As a festival dedicated to inspiring creativity and curiosity from the lens of various disciplines, we were thrilled to see three of our very own researchers from the School of Computer Science presenting their latest research and subject passions to the wider community.
Starting off, Dr Kirsty Ross (Industrial Liaison) was exhibiting ‘We Can Edit: St Andrews on WikiCommons’. This was badged as a Cloud Activity (one of the six groups or categories of activities participants could engage with) which was all about transforming the perspective of how we understand ourselves and how we use our knowledge:
“What we’re doing today is encouraging folks to sign up to Wiki and then go on a listed building hunt round St Andrews and add photos of those buildings to WikiCommons.”
The project is a part of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Network, and engages with “the increasing interest in Wiki and open knowledge.” Founded in April 2021 (alongside her colleague Dr Abd Alsattar Ardati who she had never actually met face-to-face due to the pandemic), Dr Ross recalls how it all started as a way of “getting people involved, whether that’s research, teaching, or knowledge exchange.” As the Wikimedia project is more than just Wikipedia, containing various sister projects such as Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, etc, Dr Ross remarked that this project is all about “increasing the impact of our research and making it accessible to everyone” through their active participation.
In line with this collective effort, Dr Ross noted that it’s presence at a festival such as Mind and Matter helps put a “human face” to research that could equally fascinate experts, as well as those who are new to the topic. Most importantly though, it reminds us that “our audience is not just an empty vessel that turn up and you fill them with knowledge, and that’s our job done. They come with their own interests, background, and passion, and it’s about finding the hook that works for each person that you talk to.” A wonderful reminder that innovative research engagement begins from something as simple as the conversations being held around us.
On a similar note, Dr. Dharini Balasubramaniam (Senior Lecturer) displayed her Cloud Activity ‘Once upon a time there was the web’ poster which shared research insights into intergenerational approaches for making digital services more inclusive.
“When we started looking,” Dr. Balasubramaniam commented, “we very quickly realized, it’s not something that computer scientists can solve by themselves. We must work with all the stakeholders who are involved, including the older adults who are disadvantaged by the proliferation of the technologies, as well as the people who support them.” This includes collaborating with local groups and organisations here at St Andrews such as St Andrews Public Library, Haydays Fife, North East Fife Community Hub, and more. It also entails contributing time to festivals like Mind and Matter because co-creating solutions (participatory design) hugely revolves around talking to people as “not everyone will have the same attitude, abilities, or reactions to digital technology. Therefore, we cannot make any assumptions about how accessible something is to a particular person without actually talking to them.”
The project arose from Dr. Balasubramaniam’s interest in representing digital ethics within software architectures, which extends to broader thinking about the social and cultural effect of our technological systems. It then led to important conversations being had between herself, her family, and older people within the town of St Andrews about where they had felt left behind, demonstrating that “a lot of work needed to be done for it.” A crucial part of this work involves increasing software literacy. In other words, “making people aware of how digital technologies work and the impact of the choices they might make.” It also includes “making service providers aware of the particular challenges that marginalized groups might face in access. What if you are an older person and you have physical or cognitive impairments? What if you are part of a minority group in some way? If you have a certain disability, or if you have moved here from another part of the world and the language used isn’t necessarily accessible to you?”
Dr. Balasubramaniam remarked that presenting this research to the public is both exciting and humbling: “It reminds me of the big picture and why we are doing this, and what’s been really inspiring is how keen people are to engage with researchers and to contribute. That’s the most amazing thing.”
Turning to a Tree Activity, panels dedicated to connecting us with the natural world and sustainable futures, Dr. Alan Miller (Lecturer) exhibited ‘Virtual Reality for Sustainable Development’ which allowed participants to interactively contemplate sustainability, cultural preservation, and the effects of climate change.
“At this festival we are showing work concerned with two things — representations of the past and future. One is making digital reconstructions of the world heritage site, St Kilda, as it was in 1819. Another is raising awareness about the effects of climate change through the representation of Paradise Bay in Antarctica by showing the situation today and how it’s likely to change as a result of climate change, as well as demonstrating the potential future of Glasgow based upon James Rae’s work that shows a ten meter rise in sea-level which is consistent with the levels of carbon that we have in the atmosphere at the moment.”
Dr. Miller explained that it was the efforts of many being shown at Mind and Matter, including PhD work being conducted by Maria Andrei (virtual reality and climate change) and Sharon Pisani (sustainable development through digital tourism and heritage), as well as his own interests in applying 3D technologies to experiences of the past and future in order to promote the United Nations 2023 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The project is based on the idea of experiential learning being a deep form of education that can help overcome “psychological distance, whereby people maybe don’t appreciate statistics and numbers of what the impact of climate change will be” and therefore if they can “experience what it might be like, it could make it easier to achieve the sort of behavioural changes we need in order to holt climate change.”
While climate crisis and sustainability are large scale issues that can often feel out of our reach, engaging with it within our local community can hugely enable researchers and participants alike to consider its significance. Dr. Miller best described it as applying “practice-led research, whereby we try to develop initiatives in the community and understand its impact,” which when presented to local and non-local audiences at a festival, open a feedback loop of communication on what works and what does not.
“I suppose the most exciting part is you put together your research but then it’s when people come along and interact with it, and maybe it changes the way they think about the world or the way in which they carry themselves within it. It’s nice to know that the research we do has some impact on people’s lives.”
There are coherent themes of inclusivity, accessibility, and community being explored within the Department of Computer Science demonstrating how tech and data can be used for good. What is most appealing is that the research exhibited at the Mind and Matter Festival are actively increasing their scope throughout the university and St Andrews.
Dr. Kirsty Ross commented on the IDEA Network wanting to scale their work through a ESPRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council) grant; Dr. Dharini Balasubramaniam mentioned the project being in the process of setting up a monthly digital support session in local community spaces, as well as volunteer opportunities readily available; and Dr. Alan Miller is a part of the Open Virtual Worlds Group which hosts various workshops, collaborations, and projects that allow those interested in immersive technology for the preservation and promotion of heritage to get involved.
It is thrilling to see where computer science is taking us! What remains now is to anticipate what innovative initiatives will be fore fronted at next year’s festival and throughout the school over the next academic year.
By Nina Globerson, Science Communicator for the School of Computer Science
