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 the SCIP team has supported a broad range of digital research activities, from researcher consultations and workshops, through to partnering on local and national research projects. We support:
- Grant planning and support
- Consultations and face-to-face support
- Professional learning in Digital methods
- Collaborations with 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 | |
|---|---|---|
| Mr Greg D'Arcy | Research Data Analyst/Platform Administrator | gregory.darcy@unimelb.edu.au |
| 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
While our main office is based in the Digital Studio, Level 2 Arts West building (West Wing), we are currently working remotely and can be contacted for meetings and consultations by appointment.
Contact us to book a consultation, inquire about project/grant support or training requests.
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. |
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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 (August 14th 2020)
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 -
SCIP digital research methods program (Aug-Sept 2020)
A series of free online training events including data visualisation, digital mapping, data wrangling and Text Encoding.
Training, Research Essentials -
Managing your online presence as a researcher (August 27th 2020)
Part 1: 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
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Science Gallery's Youth Symposium (Dr Kathryn Coleman, Dr Niels Wouters, et al)
The Science Gallery's online conference brought together young people from around the globe for The Boredom Rebellion. Through the conference we ran a game of creativity and disruption to explore identity. SCIP worked with the Science Gallery and the team to design a data generating game with an interactive webpage.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
The International Classroom Lexicon Project (Mrs Carmel Mesiti, Prof David Clarke, et al)
Experienced teachers, researchers and mathematics community members, contributed to the documentation of the professional vocabulary of teachers to describe the pedagogical practice of the middle school mathematics classroom. SCIP worked with Carmel and the team to visualise the Australian Lexicon with an interactive webpage.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
The Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (A/Prof Wesley Imms, Prof John Hattie, et al)
ILETC is an ARC linkage project that explores how Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) have disrupted the traditional classroom setup with spaces that have the power to engage students in new ways. Eight chief investigators lead the project with three research fellows, six PhD students and a number of industry partners. SCIP provided advice in the early stages of the project in solutions for data collection, storage and sharing across the distributed project team.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Digitising Melbourne's History Books: Sands & McDougall Directories (Prof Andrew May)
The Sands & McDougall directories, published between 1857 and 1974, record the names, addresses and occupations of residents and businesses of Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs. Supporting the digitisation of 20,000 pages of the directories, SCIP has helped University of Melbourne Historians open new avenues for historical research.
Faculty of Arts -
Studies of Childhood, Education & Youth Research (Prof Julie McLeod, Dr Kate O’Connor)
The SOCEY project develops a new research platform for qualitative social science that enables creative, critical and careful engagement with open data agendas. SCIP is helping to develop a platform to connect researchers working in this interdisciplinary field, and develop a qualitative data archive, tailored specifically for studies of childhood, youth and education.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Representing Family Lives on Instagram (Dr Signe Ravn, Dr Ashley Barnwell)
This project explores the representation of family life on Instagram. We focus specifically on how different generations display family relationships through images and text online. Looking at trends such as #throwbackfathersday, we examine how Instagram works as a site to reimagine, construct, narrate, and discuss contemporary family lives.
Faculty of Arts -
Making Futures: Youth Identity, Generational Change & Education (Prof Julie McLeod)
Making Futures is a qualitative study of young people’s journeys through the senior years of secondary schooling. It explores how young people navigate their educational, social and familial worlds, and imagine and work toward their futures. The project seeks to gain insights into perceptions of gender relations and perspectives on diverse forms of social issues and differences.
Melbourne Graduate School of Education -
Blood Exhibition (Science Gallery)
Australia is home to hundreds of different Indigenous languages that have been spoken here for thousands of years. This research project led by Prof Rachel Nordlinger and Assoc Prof Nick Thieberger mapped words for 'blood' in more than 200 of these languages.
Faculty of Arts