Are you interested in doing a research fellowship in Ireland? If you’re doing any kind of education research and would like to study/work with me in Dublin for an individual fellowship, I’ll be happy to help with your application in the capacity of supervisor.
The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship call
The 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow MSCA European funding call is now open (closing 14 September 2022). This funding can support a postdoc for at least 2 years, with all salary and training costs covered. There will be a special MSCA call for researchers fleeing the Ukraine war launching later in the summer. There have been some changes to the call so I will need to consult the Guide carefully. You can find a recorded webinar here ……………..
The Irish Marie Skłodowska Curie Office delivered a webinar on the MSCA Doctoral Networks on 05 May 2022 where a representative from the EU Commission’s Research Executive Agency presented about the Doctoral Networks 2022 call and shared case studies from previously funded coordinators. The recording and slides are available on the IUA website: https://www.iua.ie/events/msca-doctoral-networks-webinar-5th-may-2022/
They have also created a shorter bitesize overview of the MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022 call which is available here: https://youtu.be/W_PfjTaqkVw
Ethics teaching and research are core to my work — teaching, researching, designing curricula, and editing. Here’s a two-day snippet of activities….
Yesterday, I attended a work session for the EthiCo project, led by TU Dublin but working in collaboration with many other technological universities. We’re considering multi-dimensional understandings of ethics. And, our group is developing tools for teaching students about ethics and teachers about how to incorporate ethics (social and environmental justice) into their classrooms. TU Dublin’s Professor Noel Fitzpatrick is leading the effort.
View toward the Dublin mountains from the brand new East Quad, second floor meeting room.Hybrid format EthiCo working session
Just before we met, my WhatsApp thread was alive as my colleagues and I determined the theme of our upcoming Dublin Maker (July 23) booth: Reboot Arcade. Short description: Games of all sorts and art installations relating to rebooting civilization in our own unique way.
We’ll inspire those who visit our booth to envision the world we’d create if we were doing things from scratch. I’ll contribute an activity for our booth at Dublin Maker about circular economy and regenerative design.
Throughout the day, I also wrote and uploaded feedback to my BIM students in the Research Methods module.
And, did quite a bit of editing on a manuscript with Inês Direito and Bill Williams using the Hero’s Journey framework. Here’s snapshot of my screen with a graphic I’ve made for that paper:
A snapshot of the graphic I’ve made for the Hero’s Journey paper. (Adapted from J. Campbell by Shannon Chance, 2022.)
Today started with a conference of the members of the European University of Technology (EUt+). I presented ideas as part of the morning’s panel on the role of Education in the EUt+. I talked about the importance of ethics in technical education. It’s strange but exciting to be in a room with over 100 educators discussing topics passionately in person once again!
Pics from the EUt+ kickoff session and my view from the Education panel.
After the panel, I chatted with colleagues over coffee, and later followed up with many via email about how they can connect to SEFI and SEFI’s Ethics working group, and also the upcoming Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE) conference where I’ll be delivering a keynote.
I really enjoyed hearing the speakers launch the conference (the secretary of the initiative, TU Dublin’s president, and the TU Dublin point person for the EUt+). Hearing them, I got a better idea of what’s in store for us as we join together as one big university offering more transferability of our students and of ideas and among our teachers. We’re building the future and creating our new reality.
But I couldn’t stay long. I hurried home to meet online with the editorial team for a new Handbook on Engineering Ethics Education. I zipped off emails to invite lead authors for Theme 4, on ethics accreditation.
I’ve got to get back to work now, but I’ll paste the handbook outline below, so you can see what kinds of things we’re exploring.
Outline for the Handbook on EEE
Theme 1: Foundations of engineering ethics education
Chapter 1.1: The purpose(s) of engineering ethics education
Chapter 1.2: How engineering ethics education makes use of normative ethical theories
Chapter 1.3: The individual and the collective in engineering ethics education
Chapter 1.4: Codes and professional organizations in engineering ethics education
Chapter 1.5: Reason and emotion play in engineering ethics education
Theme 2: Interdisciplinary contributions to engineering ethics education
Chapter 2.1: Philosophical and religious foundations in global perspective
Chapter 2.2: Sociological, Postcolonial and Critical Theory foundations
I’m finally coming out of laptop-induced hibernation. I’m ready to move between in-person and online realms, and hoping this will ensue rather seamlessly. It’s been hard to muster enthusiasm for blogging after working behind the laptop all day, every day. Maybe spending time outside will provide inspiration to blog, as it has today.
This morning, I delivered a seminar (7-8 AM) to the Center for Research on Engineering Education (CREE) at the University of Cape Town. The topic was writing research proposals for publication and securing grants and fellowships. I delivered a similar session earlier in the year as part of a workshop series conducted by the Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN), and CREE asked me to bring it to their group.
A really enthusiastic group attended and I received several follow-up emails. I really appreciate hearing what attendees valued and how we might connect more in the future. I met most of these folks in delivering Master Classes in South Africa when I was working at UCL, and also when attending the Research in Engineering Education Symposium in Cape Town in 2019. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them better through regular meetings, online during Covid. I’m currently developing a special focus journal issue with one of them, Anita Campbell. We had a meeting about that project yesterday that was so exciting I had trouble sleeping last night!?
Cover slide for the talk I gave today, virtually in Cape Town.
Logging off the Cape Town session, I headed over to Bolton Street TU Dublin to help lead a field trip for Transition Year (high school) students to visit sites in Dublin.
One-half of the students toured the “waste to energy” facility in Dublin (which they don’t call an incinerator, as that word seems politically incorrect here but is easy-to-envision thanks to Toy Story). The other half of the students came with Kevin Gaughan and me to see a construction site downtown. I included two photos of our site visit below, but you can see more about the visit, including a full gallery of images, at https://roboslam.wordpress.com/2022/05/12/engineering-your-future-at-tu-dublin-2022/.
A new office reception space.The Eir telecom center that runs my home broadband!
While I was busy on the tour, some of my colleagues were preparing for tomorrow’s activity for the same students, a BioSlam. You can view the instructions for making little blood flow monitors on our RoboSlam site, at https://roboslam.wordpress.com/bioslam-ppg/.
I’ll have to step out of the BioSlam for a while to attend an online Meeting on engineering ethics — I hope earbuds do the job and I can attend from the corridor outside the electronics lab.
At the moment, I am taking a breather, listening to an online talk by a leading expert in the history of Grangegorman. The speaker, Brian Donnely, Senior Archivist in the National Archives, is currently talking about Richmond Surgical Hospital (a block from my flat) and as well as TU Dublin’s campus site at Grangegorman, which was used as an “insane asylum” with a prison placed between the two in the past.
And, I’m multi-tasking (a rarity for me) and posting a blog (also very rare these days).
Online lecture by Brian Donnely, Senior Archivist in the National Archives.
In just over two hours, I’ll be teaching an online evening class on Research Methods for my BSc students in BIM/Digital Construction. Before then, I’ll read the peer reviews I’ve just received for the European Journal for Engineering Education, so that I can recommend tomorrow to the Editor in Cheif how to move forward toward publication of the manuscript.
Ireland by Chance 