SIG Ice-breaker thread: building a community

[Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta]

Dear SIG members,

Last summer we circulated an online survey to the SIG to get your views on how you’d like the group to develop, and what sort of community you’d like. One message that came through the responses was that SIG members are keen to get to know each other, particularly regionally across levels of seniority, and nationally at peer level, for networking, socialising. and knowledge exchange. The feedback also mentioned that this is a bit difficult to do via the JISC-MAIL email list, and although the ARMA annual conference is great for this, not everyone can attend every year.

We’d love to get to know more of you too! So we’ve created this online thread on ARMA’s new, more interactive website, to allow SIG members to introduce ourselves to each other and get to know who else is in the SIG. Please do chip in below having a go at some of our 6 ice-breaker questions (all optional, all fabulous). Feel free to also add your own ice-breaker questions for others…

Looking forward to it!
Milly and Mitchell

Ice-breaker questions: Tell us a bit about yourself-
1) What is your name, what is your role, and where are you based?
2) When you were little, who was your favourite super-hero and why?
3) Which recent achievement (personal or professional) are you most proud of and why?

Ice-breaker questions: Tell us a bit about your work-
4) What do you most enjoy or find interesting about Research Ethics, Governance and Best Practice?
5) What do you find most interesting or helpful about this SIG and its community, and what could make it more so?
6) How would your colleagues describe you? (three adjectives) Would they be right? (% out of 100)

[Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta]

Ok, here are my responses:

Ice-breaker questions: Tell us a bit about yourself-
1) What is your name, what is your role, and where are you based?
Name: Mahlet (“Milly”) Zimeta
Role: Programme Manager in our Partnerships team, managing our research collaborations with industry, governmnent, and charities
Based: the Alan Turing Institute in central London (the UK’s new national institute for data science and AI)

2) When you were little, who was your favourite super-hero and why?
Bananaman and Batman! I really enjoyed Bananaman’s sense of humour – he often caused as much mayhem as he solved, which made a refreshing change from typical super-heroes. I also liked Batman’s personal struggle with trying to do good when surrounded by corruption and when he actually has a lot in common with his nemeses. (NB please never mention the George Clooney Batman or the Val Kilmer Batman. Best to pretend they didn’t happen.)

3) Which recent achievement (personal or professional) are you most proud of and why?
Getting better at discussing conscious and unconscious bias – whether that is challenging others on theirs, or encountering my own and asking for help with it. Being able to acknowledge and explore disagreement or difference in perspective, with honesty and openness, and move forwards together, is a really rewarding experience.

Ice-breaker questions: Tell us a bit about your work-
4) What do you most enjoy or find interesting about Research Ethics, Governance and Best Practice?
I am fascinated by the way ethics itself is an evolving and unsettled space and always has been, and research by its very nature takes us to the edge of knowledge and so we have to re-examine our ethical assumptions. I see research ethics and governance as an opportunity to set the tone and influence norms in a way that also has a positive impact on society (eg culture of transparency, culture of respect, the impact of research and public trust in research, the purpose/beneficiaries of research, etc.)

5) What do you find most interesting or helpful about this SIG and its community, and what could make it more so?
It’d be great to find others with similar interests and outlook and maybe pilot some projects together, and to know people at other institutions nationally so that if I happen to be visiting their town/institution for work we can say Hello in person.

6) How would your colleagues describe you? (three adjectives) Would they be right? (% out of 100)
I think they would say I am friendly, cerebral/analytical, and enterprising.
Are they right? For the full picture one should factor in my super-hero alter ego…

[Author]

Posts