June was good. People and things were dully celebrated, as I had hoped for last month. That included child 1’s 21st birthday and conclusion of her undergraduate studies at Oxford University; Portugal day; and my friend Sarah Quinton’s promotion to Professor and Associate Dean Research & Knowledge Exchange (no photos because we were so engrossed in conversation that I forgot to take photos!).
Research
The month started with the recording of a podcast with Finola Kerrigan, Jack Coffin and Mike Molesworth, discussing the latter’s paper “A Heteronomous Consumer Romance”. It was such a fun way to explore alternative ways to share research! I will let you know when the podcast episode is out – I think it will be sometime in July.
Continuing on the theme of research engagement, I also did a workshop for the British Academy of Management, about the use of social media in academia; and did some work on creating an Independent Advisory Board for Brunel’s Centre for AI: Social and Digital Innovation.
This month also saw the conclusion of the research project about travelling in England, post-Covid-19. We submitted the final report, which included a lovely testimonial from our business partner about how our work had made a tangible and substantial positive contribution to the business. Papers will likely follow, from this project, because they are the currency of academia. But, honestly, knowing that you helped a business navigate this crazy period is really, really rewarding, too.
We continue data collection on the eGovernment and on the NFT projects. If you are a resident in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, or a Nigeria-based artist creating NFTs (or can facilitate introductions to anyone that meet these criteria), please get in touch.
The other big activity this month has been the “Role of images in research dissemination and impact project”. We are hosting a focus group on July 14th, at Brunel – could you join us?
I also had a great lead about a potential partner for a grant application related to my online misinformation work. So happy with that.
Writing
This month saw the publication of The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Marketing, for which I was invited to contribute a chapter on “Approaches to Emotion and Sentiment Analysis”. I will be sharing more about this, very soon.
I also co-authored and submitted an expert piece to the UK Parliament, about Smart Technology. Moreover, I did quite a bit of work on the Gender and Money paper, though there was a very annoying version-control issue with it. Additionally, I did some work on the Covid-19 contact tracing paper; plus, a literature search about the metaverse. Oh, and a review for a conference.
Teaching
In June, I delivered the Social Media module for the MBA class and marked the associated coursework. I also did lots of exam marking for another module and joined two exam boards.
I held various meetings with masters’ dissertation students, and with personal tutees; organised examiners for one of my PhD students; and reviewed two masters’ programmes.
On a side note, I wrote this blog post on Saturday, July 2nd. On the one hand, July 2nd is a Saturday like any other. On the other hand, it is the year’s halfway point. I, personally, like to use this kind of dates to stop and take stock. To check where I am vs where I want to be, reassess priorities, and make sure that life is not just passing me by.
Do you do this kind of reflective exercise; or do you find it all a bit pointless?
Ana Canhoto 
Congratulations to your child!
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Thank you 🙂
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