Strange bedfellows to lead innovative collaborative research

Dr Dan Angus began his academic career looking at ants.

Now he’s a very busy bee buzzing between two Schools at The University of Queensland (UQ).

Unusual bedfellows, the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) and the School of Journalism and Communication (SJC), are hoping to generate innovative, cross-disciplinary research between faculties by conjointly appointing Dr Angus as an inter-school Research Fellow.

A Vice-Chancellor's Strategic Initiative grant will allow Dr Angus to spend half of his time with scientists and engineers at the ITEE, and half his time with the journalism and communication crowd at the SJC.

Dr Angus’ teaching and research is focused on information visualisation, text analytics and computational intelligence. He has recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with UQ’s Thinking Systems Navigation project, studying how conceptual navigation enables humans to make sense of the complex world of ideas.

Professor of Journalism and Head of the School of Journalism and Communication, Professor Michael Bromley, said the conjoint appointment demonstrates that UQ is a world-leader in investigating human communication.

“This conjoint appointment is a brave, foresighted initiative that has enormous, interdisciplinary application”, Professor Bromley said.

“From measuring group engagement through analysis of Twitter feeds, improving doctor/patient conversations, identifying childhood language learning difficulties, or better understanding dynamics in television interviews and airplane cockpits, analysis of human communication can provide hugely valuable insights.”

Professor Bromley says the future of journalism, especially investigative journalism, is data driven.

“The changes in freedom to information laws, and the nature of new wave technologies and Web 3.0 means that journalists are facing wholly unique challenges,” Professor Bromley said

“Tools that let researchers ‘see the conversation’ are ‘game-changers’”

Dr Angus’ research is about understanding communication.

“Taking inspiration from principles of physical navigation, I am exploring how conceptual information is processed and stored by mammals, and using these insights for the development of conceptual mapping tools,” Dr Angus said.

Dr Angus and his colleagues in the UQ Thinking Systems project developed the Discursis tool, which visually represents conversations and assists practitioners in understanding the structure, information content, and inter-speaker relationships of conversations.
Thinking Systems Director, Professor Janet Wiles, said this Strategic Initiative in Communication Technologies provides an exceptional opportunity for the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering to connect technology development with communications experts.

Conjoint appointments are not unusual in the University; however they usually exist between the University and an industry partner, or within a faculty.