Past Events

Data Stewards Networking BBQ

Thursday, 19th June 2025, 14:00 - 17:00 

In person, University Arms, 197 Brook Hill, S3 7HG

We had an informal BBQ on a beautiful, sunny day. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect, build networks with other members, and enjoy great conversation!

Data management with SQL: a workshop for data stewards

Tuesday 17th June 2025, 9:00 - 13:00

In person, Hicks Building, Computer Room G29

This was a practical, in-person workshop that taught the basics of SQL databases for handling research data. The workshop was facilitated by Dr Joe Heffer and Dr Frederick Sonnenwald, Research Data Engineers in the Research & Innovation IT team within IT Services.

Databases were presented as useful tools for storing and using data effectively. Using relational databases serve several purposes:

• It helps to organise your data. Keeping your data separate from your analysis reduces the  risk of accidentally changing data when you process it

• If we get new data we can rerun a query to find all the data that meets certain criteria.

• It’s faster than spreadsheets, even for relatively large amounts of data.

• It improves data quality and integrity.

The workshop introduced relational databases, demonstrated how to load data into them, and taught participants how to query databases to extract the information they needed.

Recognising the contributions of Research Technical Professionals at the University of Sheffield

We invited Research Technical Professionals (Technicians, Data Stewards, etc.) to take part in a workshop aimed at shaping how contributions to research are recognised. This pilot project supported the University of Sheffield’s Research Culture Action Plan and Technicians’ Commitment Action Plan and focused on implementing the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) to ensure Research Technical Professionals were acknowledged appropriately in research outputs.

The workshop explored the diverse roles Research Technical Professionals played in research, identified how these mapped to CRediT roles, and highlighted any gaps. Participants helped co-create examples of contributions and discussed models of recognition aligned with both journal policies and personal and institutional aspirations to recognise research-enabling staff.

Outputs from the workshop supplemented the university's recently published guidance on using the Contributor Role Taxonomy and informed ongoing work to recognise the contributions of Research Technical Professionals at Sheffield: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/openresearch/home/contributor-role-taxonomy-credit 

Tidying and manipulating data using the tidyverse in R: a workshop for data stewards

Friday 6th June 2025, 10:00 - 15:30

In person, Alfred Denny Building, Conference Room

This one-day course, run by Dr Calum Webb from the School of Education, covered essential data wrangling skills in R using the tidyverse (dplyr, tidyr, stringr, etc.). The focus was on solidifying foundational best practices for programmatically shaping ‘messy’ data into tidy data fit for analysis. Participants learned how to read and tidy data from STATA, SPSS, and Excel files in R using the haven, readxl, and labelled packages; created transformations, recoded, and aggregated variables using mutate and group_by functions; reshaped data from long to wide formats; used basic regular expressions to tidy and manipulate character strings; joined relational datasets; and conditionally selected columns and filtered rows, all using clear and readable tidyverse-style code. These skills were distinct from statistical modelling, but were often overlooked. Yet, in real-world data analysis, they often constituted the majority of the work.

The GitHub repository containing the practical exercises and data that were be used throughout the training in advance can be found here.

TUoS Data Stewards Network: Workflows and Best Practices

Wednesday 26th March, 14.00-15.00

Hybrid - Seminar Room CO2 A, Portobello Centre, 1 Mappin Street and online

The event "Workflows and Best Practices – Challenges and Lessons Learned" took place on Wednesday 26th March, 14.00-15.00.

The slides from the event can be found here.

Dr Dan Olner, Research Fellow, PERN Network, Management School

A lot of publicly available data is 'open but opaque' - in various random formats, mushed together in single excel sheets, changes over time, arbitrary alterations etc etc. There are also - as Centre for Cities notes in its "LA evidential" report - big capacity gaps in policymaking bodies that work with this data. I'll look at some early-stage efforts I've worked on to create better open data pipelines that try to help build capacity, make insights easier and encourage open collaboration, looking at common ONS data (e.g. growth/jobs and an intro to using it; business dynamism data) as well as extracting from Companies House accounts (for example in this South Yorkshire shiny dashboard).

Dr Giuliano Punzo, Lecturer, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Dr Patricio Ortiz, Research Software Engineer, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Giuliano and Patricio will share their experiences working with the Urban Flows Observatory Data. Giuliano leads the transportation theme, investigating how urban infrastructure influences mobility, resilience, and city development in both developed and developing regions. Patricio, a Research Software Engineer, focuses on data curation, ensuring the quality, visualization, and interdisciplinary use of air quality data, particularly in relation to human health. Together, their work contributes to understanding how cities function through data-driven analysis of engineering, natural, and social systems. This session will highlight key challenges and lessons learned in managing complex urban datasets.

TUoS Data Stewards Network Launch Event

Wednesday 12th February, 14.00-15.30

Hybrid - The Wave, Workroom 2 and online

The Network’s launch event took place on Wednesday 12th February. The event provided an opportunity to learn more about the Network and share thoughts and preferences about how the initiative unfolds, and the forms of training, support and other activities members would find beneficial. The event also offered an opportunity to meet with colleagues engaged in data steward activities and roles across the University and to hear short talks from a few of these colleagues about their experiences.

The slides from the Launch can be found here.

The following DSN members spoke at the event: 

• Sarah Waite, Senior Technician, School of Medicine and Population Health

• Tim Rooker, Data Scientist, AMRC and Dr Lindsay Lee, Technical Fellow for Data Science, AMRC

• Martin Brook, Senior Technical Specialist in Image Computing, School of Clinical Medicine