Social & Cultural Informatics Platform (SCIP)
We are a digital research unit supporting digital methods and data analysis for researchers in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Science.
Our Services
Since 2015 SCIP has been the first University of Melbourne platform supporting University staff and graduate researchers in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) disciplines.
The SCIP team continues to support a range of digital research activities, from researcher consultations and workshops, partnering on local and national HASS research projects, through to professional learning in digital methods.
We provide direct support in:
- Data analysis and Visualisations
- Virtual and Augmented reality
- Linguistics Data Management
- Digital mapping and Spatial analysis
- Grant planning and support
- Research consultations and training on request
- Collaborations with other platforms and services across the university
SCIP forms part of the Melbourne Collaborative Research Infrastructure Program (MCRIP). The SCIP Governance Group includes researchers, academics and professional staff from across the university.
Platform staff
| Name | Position | |
|---|---|---|
| Dr Trent Ryan | Data Scientist | trent.ryan@unimelb.edu.au |
| Ms Amanda Belton | Data Scientist | amanda.belton@unimelb.edu.au |
Platform Governance
- Prof. Rachel Fensham (Chair) (SCIP CI and Assistant Dean Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts)
- A/Prof. Nick Thieberger (SCIP CI & Platform Manager, Faculty of Arts)
- Prof. Sophie Arkoudis (ADR MGSE, Ass. Director Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education
- Dr Kathryn Coleman (SCIP CI, MGSE)
- Ms Cat Knights (Research Manager, Faculty of Arts)
- Dr Bella Blaher (Manager, Research & Industry, Melbourne Education Research Institute (MERI), MGSE)
- Ms Donna McRostie (Deputy Director, Research and Collection Stewardship, Student and Scholarly Services)
- Dr Lyle Winton (Manager, Digital Stewardship, Research and Collection Stewardship, Student and Scholarly Services)
- Dr Andrew Siebel (Melbourne Data Analytics Platform)
- Dr Robert Lazarus (Faculty of Arts)
- Dr Fabio Martioli (Faculty of Arts)
Book a consultation
Research consultations or inquiries can be made by appointment and will be delivered via Zoom.
Contact us to book a consultation with one of our research specialists, inquire about project/grant support or make a training request.
Digital research support
Our costing model is designed to support researchers seeking preliminary advice through to funded research projects seeking the skills of a data scientist to work on their project for a dedicated period of time.
SCIP's business model is to provide up to ten hours of support and advice per year to a particular researcher, but to partner in funding applications to bring revenue back to SCIP for more detailed projects. Because of the number of projects we are involved with, any additional capacity needed has to be funded externally.
SCIP Pricing Model
Activity Type / Description | Pricing |
Expert Informatics support Single consultation session; Up to 1-day support for approved projects. | Free |
Prioritised Un-Funded Projects SCIP supports unfunded projects that develop the digital HASS capability and align with the University's digital research priorities. Supported schemes will be considered by the SCIP Governance which includes faculty internal grants, near-miss funding, articulated seed grant schemes, phased grant schemes with seed/planning/development phases. | Free |
Funded Projects SCIP provides dedicated informatics support on research projects that are funded or have available funds. Any budget reductions of successful grants can be adjusted to meet any budgeted SCIP costs. | Daily rate at A7 level |
External Projects (contract rates) External projects are those where SCIP is contracted by an organisation external to the University, such as national HASS infrastructure projects. (Collaborative projects with internal CIs and external partners are ordinarily not considered external projects.) | Specific to project scope. |
-
Gender, collective action and governance in rural Indonesia (Dr Rachael Diprose)
SCIP supported a WordPress development & Interactive map for research into women ’s collective action in rural Indonesia.
Faculty of Arts -
Shakespeariana in Melbourne (A/Prof David McInnis)
Shakespeare's presence is all around us. This interactive map documents Shakespearean landmarks and key places in Melbourne.
Faculty of Arts -
Care of the Ageing (Dr Nicholas Walsh)
SCIP developed an interactive map of Ageing and Aged Care research collaborations.
Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH) -
Science Gallery's Youth Symposium (Dr Kathryn Coleman, Dr Niels Wouters, et al)
SCIP was part of the Science Gallery's online conference designing a data generated interactive game.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
The International Classroom Lexicon Project (Mrs Carmel Mesiti, Prof David Clarke, et al)
SCIP helped develop an interactive the lexicon of middle school pedagogical practice.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
The Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (A/Prof Wesley Imms, Prof John Hattie, et al)
SCIP supported this ARC linkage project with advice on reserch data collection and storage.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Digitising Sands & McDougall Directories: 1857 and 1974 (Prof Andrew May)
SCIP supported the digitisation of 20,000 pages of the directories.
Faculty of Arts -
Studies of Childhood, Education & Youth Research (Prof Julie McLeod, Dr Kate O’Connor)
SCIP helped develop a new research platform for qualitative social science data.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Making Futures: Youth Identity, Generational Change & Education (Prof Julie McLeod)
SCIP helped develop a website for a qualitative study of young people’s journeys through the senior years of secondary schooling.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Blood Exhibition (Science Gallery)
An interactive map of the word 'blood' in more than 200 Indigenous languages.
Faculty of Arts
-
Digital Mapping for Non-Programmers
A basic introduction to common geospatial terms and techniques for mapping in the humanities.
Digital maps -
Data Storage/Systems @ UniMelb
Research Data Storage and Management Systems available to University staff and graduate researchers (Staff Only).
Workshop, Research Essentials -
Data Visualisation Tools
An interactive workshop with hands-on and off-zoom activities to create images for social media posts for your research project.
Workshop, Research Essentials -
Introduction to Text Encoding
Nick Thieberger introduces the principles and applications of using text encoding for archival materials.
Video, Research Essentials -
Data Visualisation Workshop Resources
An interactive workshop with hands-on and off-zoom activities to create information visualisation designs for your research topic using an iterative approach.
Workshop, Research Essentials -
Managing your online presence as a researcher
How an academic website can help propel your research and teaching career.
Webinar, Research Essentials -
Becoming a digital researcher in 2020
Can you develop skills in digital and computational methods without a background in coding? Join this one hour webinar to lean how.
Research Essentials, Video -
Regular expressions for Humanities researchers
Recorded workshop on using regular expressions to convert texts and search for patterns within your data.
Regular expressions, Video -
Research data visualisations as invitation: A Case Study
An informal chat with researcher, Carmel Mesiti, about visualising their research data and advice for other researchers wanting their data to be seen.
Research data visualisation, Case study -
Build an interactive map using Leaflet and Shiny
A tutorial on how to build an interactive Covid-19 transmission map.
Digital Mapping, Tutorial -
Linguistic Data Management workshop
Recorded videos from Linguistic Data Management workshop run by Nick Thieberger at the University of Melbourne on March 26th 2020.
Linguistics, Videos -
Let’s talk about tidy data.
This video explains how tidy data is data that is easy to model, visualise and aggregate.
Research Essentials, Video -
Using APIs in humanities and social science research.
This video provides a gentle introduction to APIs - the building blocks of the web.
Data collection, Video -
Tools for collecting twitter data
TAGS is a free tool to extract and build a twitter archive for analysis.
Social media. Tutorial