Research in Information Systems

The Department of Information Systems is engaged in a wide range of research in topics ranging from the experiences of individuals as they use information technology to the management of large organisational systems, and national and worldwide policies, trends and standards. Research is located in small and medium sized companies, in some of the largest companies in the world, in banks and manufacturing firms, in government departments and political organisations. The approaches also range widely, from surveys and evaluation techniques to case studies, participant-observation methods and action research. Some research is focused on providing new techniques and methods to support the practitioner, other research on elucidating explanations of IS phenomena and some with understanding the underlying philosophical issues.

The department describes its research foci as the five petals and the centre of a flower.

The department hosts a range of research projects, funded from both Government research funding and from industry sponsorship and is involved in many others:

Current projects

• Digital Business Ecosystem
• The Identity Project
• Information Systems Integrity Group (ISIG)
  • ARION
  • FIDIS
  • FIDUCIA
  • FORESIGHT
  • inTrust
  • TERRA2000
• META—Medication Errors and Technologies Analysis Network
• Penceil—How People Encounter E-Illiteracy and how they can Take Action to Overcome It
• Plagiarism, Computers and Values
• The Role of ICT in Building Trust in Governance

Completed projects

• B-Hive—Building a Higher Value Construction Environment
• C-SanD—Creating Sustaining and Disseminating Knowledge for Sustainable Construction
• Integration and Data Management - the Duality of Risk
• Moving Markets

Research is carried out in mainstream areas of information systems development and management; in addition special areas of strength including:

Members of staff publish in a wide range of academic journals, in trade, policy and professional magazines and in books aimed at a variety of audiences. In addition to the other common forms of dissemination through academic conferences and scholarly workshops, the staff of our department have used policy forums, professional meetings, and the popular media to present the products of their research.

The department is committed to a series of events to present its view of research to an informed and critical audience, including the Social Study of Information Technology Workshops, the i-Studio5 seminars and an ESRC funded seminar series on ICTs in the contemporary world.

• Details of forthcoming events
• Archive of on-line material frome previous events - videos, papers and presentations
  
  
• Videos, papers and presentations from the first Social Study of IT Workshop, LSE 19/20 March 2001
• Videos, papers and presentations from the second SSIT workshop: ICT and Globalization, LSE 22/23 April 2002

The department and its members undertake research projects with industrial and commercial firms and organisations which frequently attract the interest of national and international media.

The productivity of our doctoral students contributes a great deal to the overall reach of the department. Coming, as they do, from countries all over the world, both their experiences and the audiences for their work range widely. Largely as a result of their efforts, the work of our department has been presented in dozens of languages and reached academic, policy and professional audiences far beyond those accessible through the mainstream of scholarly output.

Doctoral students present their work at a regular series of research seminars.

• Abstracts of completed PhD theses (from 1995) (A-L)
• Abstracts of completed PhD theses (from 1995) (M-Z)
• Abstracts of completed PhD theses (pre 1995)
• Selected theses on-line
• Details of research in progress by current PhD students
• Recent books by department members

 

Page last updated 22 March, 2005