And, just like that, half of 2023 is gone. Woosh. Though, to be fair, I am very glad that the GCSEs are done with. Over. Behind us. Check.
This month we also celebrated child 1’s birthday, and child 2’s ice-hockey tournament with England’s U16 team.
Very sadly, I also learned that someone I had been meaning to call since 2020 had died. So, point 1 in this Instagram post by Anna Scarna really resonated with me: If you wait for the right time, your life will pass you by.
Research wise, this was a good month. A team that I belong to were awarded a grant to investigate “The role of consumers in driving UK manufacturing’s digital transformation”. Even though the grant only starts in September, officially, we already had a very good meeting to set out some general principles of how we are going to work together, plus identify the likely “bottlenecks” in the project and discuss how to deal with (i.e., ease) them.
In addition, I submitted the ethics application for the misinformation project. Hopefully, it will be cleared over summer, so that we can be in a position to start collecting data in September.
I also made some progress on another grant application, working towards submitting it in July. Moreover, I accepted the invitation to lead the Digital Marketing special interest group of UKAIS, and wrote the call for papers for the next conference. Robin Croft also put me in contact with someone who works for a large women’s charity, and who would like some help with their digitalisation. I really, really hope that this leads to a joint project. Thank you, Robin.
Conversely, this was a poor month, as far as writing is concerned. I was aiming to submit a paper for a special issue that was very relevant for my work, but I ended up missing the June 15th deadline. I am so, so annoyed with myself. The Chatbot and the Generative AI papers also continue on hold. The only saving grace is that we received the reviews for the Metaverse paper, and it all seems very doable.
Teaching-related work really was the main focus of this month, which is ironic as this is also the time of the year when people will say “So, you are on holidays, now”, whenever they find out that I am an academic. There were lots and lots and lots of marking. One exam board. Many, many meetings with my dissertation students, plus reviewing their research plans and their ethical applications. Reviewing and giving feedback on reports from students on placement. Plus, a meeting with a student who received a Junior Research Assistant grant to work on a project about the metaverse, which I will be supervising.
Other than the above, I also attended lots of job talks for various positions at Sussex, and had some mentoring meetings. Oh, and had lunch with Tim Kourdi and Liyuan Wei to “celebrate” the third anniversary of our collaboration, which started back in 2020, when the first lockdown was announced. Now, that was a crazy period where it felt like time was both flying by and standing still.
How was your June?
Ana Canhoto 
Not sure why, but the line “I submitted the ethics application for the misinformation project” made me smile.
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