Events

Forthcoming events

Agentic AI for Research Data Management: workshop

Thursday, 15th October, 14:00 - 16:00

In person, Heartspace Boardroom

This session will be led by Dr Joe Heffer, Senior Research Data Engineer, Research & Innovation IT. More details to be announced soon.

Past Events

Data Stewards Networking BBQ

Thursday, 9th July 2026, 13:00 - 15:00

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

There’s nothing quite like a summer afternoon done right. With burgers on the grill, bytes in the conversation, great company, and a colourful garden in full bloom. Thanks to everyone who brought the energy and enthusiasm.

Tools for Data FAIRification - overcoming barriers in data discoverability and reuse

Tuesday 23rd June 2026, 2026, 13:00 - 15:00

Online

The seminar was organised with a view to outline some advanced tools developed to enable FAIRification of data and other digital outputs. The session was hosted as an initiative of the Data Stewards Network in collaboration with N8-CIR, and was attended by 70 attendees worldwide. The session opened with an introduction by Qwin Saikia (Research Data Steward, University of Sheffield Library), who outlined the background of the Data Stewards Network and introduced the FAIR Data and Software competition, held to mark the 10th anniversary of the FAIR Principles. Following this, Ric Campbell (Data Scientist/Manager at DataConnect, University of Sheffield, and N8-CIR RDM Theme Lead) provided an overview of N8-CIR's current activities and highlighted upcoming opportunities for audience engagement.

Talk 1 on Streamlining Data Management Planning with Data Stewardship Wizard by guest speaker Kryštof Komanec highlighted that proper Research Data Management (RDM) relies heavily on structured data management planning, where tools like the Data Stewardship Wizard are bridging the gap to facilitate efficient collaboration between these stewards and researchers.

View the slides and recording here.

Talk 2 on The File Check Assistant - a User-friendly Tool for improving Data Reusability by guest speaker Matthew Nichols was about the operational file-checking tool he has built, highlighting the benefits it provides regarding time savings, quality, and consistency.

View the slides and recording here.

Talk 3 on Automated README Generation with the URGE tool by guest speakers Dag‑Even Torsøe and Ali Abdurhman Kelil highlighted URGE, which is an open-access web tool designed to simplify and automate the creation of high-quality README files, directly advancing the "Reusability" principle of FAIR data.

View the slides and recording here.

Talk 4 on Electronic Notebooks by Zuzanna Zagrodzka emphasised the importance of the electronic lab notebook (ELN), which is a digital platform that replaces traditional paper notebooks to document research, provide a verifiable record of experiments, and connect documentation directly with data.

View the slides and recording here.

FAIR Data and Software Showcase session

Thursday, 14th May 2026, 13:00 - 15:00

In person, Alfred Denny Conference Room

In March this year, we launched the FAIR Data and Software Awards to recognise individuals demonstrating practical approaches toward making digital research outputs (quantitative or qualitative, creative practice, software, digital media, etc.) FAIR, as well as to help raise awareness about what FAIR looks like in practice across different disciplines and research contexts. The competition was open to academic, technical, and professional staff across all faculties. In addition to assessing applications by faculty, two extra categories - the PGR Category and the Panel’s Choice Category - ensured that best practices were recognised regardless of career stage or discipline popularity. Every entry was assessed on how it met each element of F, A, I, and R. Nine out of 24 entries were selected, and all the winning case studies are available here.

Winners included PGTs, PGRs, RSEs, and Technical Fellows, as well as academic staff.

On 14 May, the awardees and members of the Data Stewards Network came together, where the awardees presented their work in the form of lightning talks. All the slides from the showcase session are available here.

The winners also shared their reflections about the competition (click to expand):

“This recognition is also a source of motivation to continue promoting transparency in research while serving as a learning opportunity for me to better understand open science practices across different disciplines.” — Faizhal Arif Santosa

“As researchers, we often focus on solving technical challenges and publishing results, but the FAIR Awards highlighted the importance of ensuring that the tools and resources we develop can be understood, reused, and built upon by the wider community.” — Sanjeetha Pennada

“The most positive part about it for me was how accessible it was to me as someone with extremely limited time.” — Sylvia Whittle

“To have our work recognised by esteemed data experts is validating and valuable in promoting the use of the DCM toolkit for best data practice in advanced manufacturing.” — Lindsay Lee

“I am honoured that the panel selected our research for an award and hugely thankful to all AMRC colleagues who have supported us along the way, with their expert input, feedback and general advice.” — Tim Rooker

“The showcase provided us with a great deal of inspiration, and a rare opportunity to consider the breadth of research across the University.” — Joe Nockels

“Regarding the competition, I think it is really good that the University supports this and I will encourage my team to participate in it more. I actually think it should be bigger and more prominent.” — Romain Thomas

The winners of the FAIR Data and Software Awards 2026.

Dr Romain Thomas presenting his winning work on STON: SofTware for petrOgraphic visualisatioN.

Developing career options for Data Stewards: creating personas to facilitate career progression: workshop

Tuesday 14th April, 2026, 10:30 - 12:30

Online

As the volume and complexity of research data continue to grow, so does the essential role of Data Stewards—professionals who ensure that data is appropriately and securely managed, stored, and documented, and shareable, reusable, and aligned with FAIR principles. Although many roles, including librarians, archivists, Research Software Engineers (RSEs), research managers, technicians, and researchers routinely perform data stewardship activities, the position of “Data Steward” remains under-defined and often under-recognised in many countries. Existing work largely focuses on defining the responsibilities of Data Stewards and the skills and training required to succeed in these roles. However, there is limited attention on establishing clear, sustainable career pathways for Data Stewards.

The University of Sheffield Data Stewards Network, in collaboration with the University Library’s Office for Open Research and Scholarship, the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Data Steward Career Tracks Working Group, CaSDaR, STEP-UP, and the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship hosted a participatory research event to address this gap and explore the future of data stewardship. The event brought together people currently working in, or closely connected to, data stewardship from across the sector and across the UK and Europe to co-create Data Steward personas and map potential career pathways for these roles. The event provided evidence to directly inform these groups' work to define the role(s) of Data Stewards, establish skills frameworks, and shape future career pathways.

Publications and outputs forthcoming (2027).

Data Stewards Network: co-creation workshop

Thursday, 5th February 2026, 12:30 - 14:00

In person, Seminar Room B08, School of Geography & Planning

This session welcomed members from the Data Stewards Network, where we touched base on the purpose and mission of the network and explored ideas to strengthen our goals with future event ideas in 2026. The session started with an informal icebreaker, during which participants described the roles they play within their departments and the ‘problems’ they are currently thinking about. Our audience represented a diverse range of research and professional backgrounds, including IT, marketing, research associates, and librarians. Attendees touched upon several issues they have faced in the data space, which broadly fell within the following areas: data security, data sustainability, capacity and infrastructure building, data quality and analytics, open research, and ethics.

In the second half of the session, participants were introduced to an activity titled “8 minutes: 8 ideas”, in which they were prompted to jot down eight ideas within an eight-minute timeframe, with a focus on suggesting theme-based sessions for the Data Stewards Network. Participants were then asked individually to share the idea they considered most important and impactful from their 8 ideas, before all participants subsequently voted on the ideas, using green and yellow stickers to indicate preferences for more and less favoured ideas (see Figure 1, below). The majority of participants voted for the idea of a session called ‘Data Clinic’, which would provide an open platform to discuss issues individuals face in the process of handling data and to share ideas for overcoming them.

Next steps: We’re going to design a programme of activities and events for the academic year ahead, as well as working with the N8 and CaSDaR Network+ on some cross-institutional events - so watch this space!

Read our full write-up of the event here.

Figure 1. Prospective theme-based sessions for DSN in 2026, with votes cast by participants (photo from the event)

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.

Photos from the event.

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

Wednesday 11 June 2025, 10:00 - 15:00

In person, Seminar Room B08, Geography Building

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.

Photo from the event.

TUoS Data Stewards Network: Workflows and Best Practices

Wednesday 26th March 2025, 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.

Dr Guliano Punzo talking about his work with the Urban Flows Observatory Data.

Dr Dan Olner talking about the pipelines he has been building for ONS economic data and Companies House data .

TUoS Data Stewards Network Launch Event

Wednesday 12th February 2025, 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

Interesting in contributing to a future event? Email us at data-stewardship-network@sheffield.ac.uk or complete this form.

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