March 9, 2016
CoSSaR and ERCIS Join Forces
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CoSSaR is pleased to announce a collaboration between the University of Washington and the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) at the University of Münster in Germany.
HCDE PhD candidate Robin Mays, a humanitarian practitioner and ethnographic researcher, will travel to Germany under the Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union. Mays’ research explores the human and contextual factors of disaster and humanitarian response systems that lead to effective response.
The fellowship builds on a long relationship between HCDE’s humanitarian systems researchers within the Center for Collaborative Systems for Security, Safety, and Regional Resilience (CoSSaR), and Professor Bernd Hellingrath and PhD candidate Adam Widera of ERCIS. The two agencies have regularly co-hosted humanitarian challenges and practitioner research tracks for Information Systems in Crisis Response and Management, and recently collaborated on the Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, where Mays served as technical program chair.
Mays, CoSSar Director Mark Haselkorn, PhD student Meg Drouhard, and the ERCIS team have launched a six-month study leading a team of information system student researchers in the analysis and development of a tool for technology designers to use for assessing the impact—support or interruption—of proposed technology design on humanitarian practitioner’s successful work practices.
Supported by her fellowship, Mays will travel to Ethiopia in Spring 2016 to give two panel presentations at the World Conference on Humanitarian Studies. She will discuss her findings from the projects “Valuing What Works: Defining Success in Disaster Preparedness,” from her 2013-2015 collaboration with Professor Haselkorn; and “Translating Meaning Across Boundaries: The Articulation Work of Successful Humanitarian Practitioners,” from her research conducted with HCDE doctoral students Melissa Braxton, Andrew Berry, and John Robinson.
Mays’ research aims to uncover critical technology design components for supporting humanitarian work, and uncover areas for future technology research needed to support the human translation work between modes of technology. This partnership enables Mays to bring her research and experience in sociotechnical HCDE concepts to European information systems scientists—paving the way for future system designs that are designed with the human component at the forefront.