As another academic year closes, we reflect on achievements and challenges. It has been a tough year navigating profound changes in an uncertain financial environment, but we have found strength in community and collaboration. We joyfully celebrated our 10th Anniversary with a series of special seminars, a stellar annual keynote, and the launch of our Public Report 2025. We put on a successful exhibition (dead tech lib_) during SHL week 2025 and delivered our first ever Digital Methods Accelerator (DMA) Summer Camp. You will find a gallery of selected photographs in this newsletter.
With a heavy heart we said goodbye to David Weir and the Text Analysis Group team (TAG team), Ben Jackson, and Alex Butterworth who are all moving to pastures new. We thank them for their invaluable contributions. You will be missed, please keep in touch!
The management team will miss Alice Eldridge who stands down from her director role at SHL Digital to take the lead of the Digital and Data Futures strand at the new School for Progressive Futures (SPF). Thank you Alice for your all your work. We will miss your phenomenal creativity, critical eye, and boundless energy but thankfully you are not going too far, and we look forward to enacting the many synergies between SPF and SHL Digital.
In September, long serving core member Kate Howland will start as joint-director from Informatics, and renewed greetings to Judith Townend whose pilot role as joint-director from Social Sciences has been confirmed for 2025-26. In the new academic year we will also welcome new researchers joining recent SHL flagged projects RURALEX and PromPrint, and will launch our new strategy 2025-2030. Lots to come, but for now, it is time to slow down.
Enjoy the newsletter and your summer!