October was… intense. I didn’t make enough – and much needed – progress on a paper. But, maybe, that was a bit unrealistic given everything else that was going on. I even managed to spend some time with my parents, with the kids and with friends. As well as some much needed me-time.
Research
This month, I spent a lot of time working on two small grant proposals: writing, calculating budgets, getting support letters… It does feel a bit ridiculous to spend so much time (and bother so many people) for such small amounts and only a 20% chance of success. It only makes sense because it would be seed money for a larger project.
Data collection for the washing machines project is delayed, because we haven’t yet got ethical clearance for that. And our research assistant’s contract has been a nightmare to sort out because of Brexit. 😩😩😩😩
I also attended the InterAct conference, inLondon, at the start of the month.
And, later, returned to London to do a keynote talk at the Westminster Digital Business Forum. The topic was Artificial Intelligence, and I talked about trust vs distrust, and its role in technology adoption.
Writing
As mentioned, I did not make much progress on a paper that I really wanted to submit next month. And it doesn’t help that the first two weeks of November will be really busy.
On a more positive note, I did manage to review a paper and a book chapter, and returned them to the respective co-authors. Moreover, we got the literature review started for the washing machines project.
A piece of good news, this month, was the publication of the paper “Online information search by people with Multiple Sclerosis: a systematic review”. This led to an interesting contact from someone using machine learning to make research accessible, which, we hope, will result in some sort of research collaboration in the near future.
Teaching
The main teaching-related activity this month has been meetings with students to discuss their research projects. Overall, I offered in excess of 150 meeting slots, which was, well, time consuming. But, hopefully, that ensures that students have a great start, and will save lots of stress later on. I am now reviewing their topic forms, and allocating supervisors.
I also participated in a doctoral consortium information day, trying to recruit a student for a project about food waste disposal practices. There was some interest, but I am not sure that it will translate in actual applications.
Service
Applied for a role as lead of research in practice at a doctoral consortium. And interviewed, but… didn’t get it.
How was your October?
Ana Canhoto 