GSLIS Professor Michael Twidale and doctoral candidates Karen Baker and Nic Weber participated in the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) Summer Research Institute, held on July 20-24 at The Nature Place near Colorado Springs, Colorado.
CSST is a community of scholars from academia and industry who apply concepts of socio-technical systems to tackle an array of current issues, from cybersecurity to personal health to disaster response. The consortium’s annual Summer Research Institute brings together students and researchers for a week of active engagement around select topics and discussion of ongoing projects, with opportunities for networking and mentoring.
The 2015 institute included thirty-three “campers”—doctoral students like Baker and Weber, as well as postdocs, and junior faculty—and thirteen more experienced “mentors,” including Twidale.
“The aim of this retreat is to build community around the notion of ‘socio-technical spaces’ where socio-technical is considered a perspective that crosses disciplines. The week gave us an opportunity to broaden our understanding of the socio-technical concept by considering how others—from a variety of backgrounds and interests such as policy, data, minority, and design studies—are addressing socio-technical gaps in many different situations,” said Baker.
Participants took part in small-group discussions of their research and mentors advised both students and early-career researchers on advancing professionally in the field of socio-technical systems research.
“This is an inherently multidisciplinary area where you are likely to be doing research in different ways, using different methods and theories than your colleagues. As such, it can require a lot of explaining to colleagues, hiring committees, and promotion committees exactly what it is that you do, what it means, and why it matters,” said Twidale.