The e-Horizons Institute had a very successful conference last week, focused on progressing our e-Horizons’ book, tentatively entitled ‘World Wide Science: Promises, Threats and Realities of the Digital Age’.

We started with three excellent talks from Professors Denis Noble, Martin Kemp and Jonathan Zittrain (http://www.e-horizons.ox.ac.uk/conference07/agenda.xml). The speakers provided three “e-Research case studies” covering very different areas of research. They illustrated how advances in information technology have enabled new approaches to research, ranging from the sciences (heart modeling), humanities (visualizing art), to policy research (using embedded ICTs to study Internet filtering worldwide). An edited Webcast will be available within a week.

On the second day, the authors of the e-Horizons book met to explore and develop the major themes arising from the draft chapters and essays. A major revision will be made over the summer.

The conference served to reinforce the importance of one key mission of our book — to broaden awareness of e-research. The editors (Paul Jeffreys and myself) are excited about bringing the work of the many contributors to the attention of a larger audience.

We are convinced that advances in ICTs like the Internet and Grid represent an important opportunity for
advancing research across all the areas of the School of the 21st Century, where the e-Horizons Institute is situated. That said, we know we will need to work harder to convince others that innovations in e-research are of value to the larger academic community.