May 18, 2018, by Katherine Beers
UoN Libraries host Research Data and GDPR event
On 25 April University of Nottingham Libraries hosted a special interest event on ‘Research Data and GDPR’, in association with the Mercian Collaboration Research Data Management Support Group (RDMSG).
The event was hosted by and brought together a range of people—including research data managers, librarians, research data support staff, and researchers—who support or are interested in finding out more about Research Data Managment (RDM) and the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) at their institutions.
The day kicked off with an introduction by Ben Veasey, Senior Research Librarian (Research Data Management) at the University of Nottingham, who set the scene by sharing some reflections on his work rolling out GDPR training at the University of Nottingham. Ben used an annotated Participant Information Sheet, or Privacy Notice, to show how new participant documentation must reflect GDPR’s demands for explicit consent.
Next, the keynote speaker, Dr Scott Summers from the UK Data Archive, provided a detailed overview of the legal implications of the GDPR as it relates to research and research data. Scott shared his thoughts on GDPR exemptions (‘derogations’) and how different UK Higher Education institutions may choose to prove the legal basis for their research endeavours using personal data.
Dr Gareth Cole, Research Data Manager at Loughborough University talked the audience through a GDPR training course he’d developed for academic staff and postgraduate researchers. Gareth led some interactive anonymization exercises, highlighting some of the perils and considerations of anonymising images and qualitative data.
In the last session, Dr Heather Lawler, Research Data Officer at the University of Warwick shared her work on engaging stakeholders and embedding RDM and GDPR into existing workflows at her institution.
The day provided an excellent opportunity to pool expertise and troubleshoot research data scenarios with colleagues and researchers from universities across the Mercian area (East and West Midlands)—with plenty of time provided for networking over coffee and lunch.
This post was authored by Holly Ranger from the Research Support Library team.
No comments yet, fill out a comment to be the first
Leave a Reply