News Story

Congratulations to our new Professors!

Jane Whild, Tuesday 27 Jul 2021

We are delighted that our colleagues Anna De Liddo and Miriam Fernandez have been awarded their chairs. The promotions, which take immediate effect, were announced by STEM Executive Dean, Professor Nick Braithwaite.

Anna De Liddo is promoted to Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, this reflects her excellent research portfolio and the societal impact of her technologies. Anna leads KMi’s IDea Group an interaction design research group which investigates theories, methods, and tools to enhance participatory discourse and deliberation in public engagement, urban informatics, e-democracy and social innovation contexts. Her work focuses on the socio-technical factors influencing the design and uptake of Collective Intelligence solutions. In the past 10 years, Anna has led the development of 8 different Collective Intelligence technologies (Cohere, The Evidence Hub, LiteMap, DebateHub, CIdashboard, Democratic Reflection, Democratic Replay, and Bcause.app), and launched the Collective Intelligence for The Common Good Open Research and Action Community Network (ci4cg.org). Anna is also taking up the role of KMi Director of Research in place of Professor Stefan Rueger.

Miriam Fernandez is promoted to Professor in Responsible Artificial Intelligence, reflecting her excellent leadership in research and technology development for tackling societal challenges. Miriam is a senior member of KMi’s Social Data Science and OUAnalyse Groups, conducting research into online grooming, radicalisation, misinformation, and misogyny; and investigating the large-scale application of Learning Analytics to address existing inequalities in Higher Education, particularly within the OU context. Miriam is our Athena SWAN champion, leading key initiatives to increase equality and diversity in KMi and across the University. She has led a refreshed commitment in KMi since 2017 (where the department successfully achieved a bronze Athena SWAN award) to put diversity, equality, and engagement in advancing careers transparently, in particular for women, at the forefront of our agenda.

KMi Deputy Director, Professor Harith Alani, said: “Massive CONGRATULATIONS to you, Miriam and Anna, for the very well-deserved titles and recognition of all your super hard work over the years. Your contributions to KMi are invaluable!”

Personal tributes to Anna and Miriam have been pouring in from KMi colleagues, students and mentees who all look forward to the time that we can celebrate in person, hopefully, that will be very soon.

To find out more about their work and projects, visit their profile pages:

Anna’s profile

Miriam’s profile