PLATFORM: Social Analysis in Systems Engineering

This is a platform grant proposal to support long-term research in the area of social analysis and systems engineering. The Lancaster group has an international reputation for its work in this area and is unique in that a major focus of its work has been the evolution of ethnographic techniques to make these more usable in the systems engineering process.We will use this support, in conjunction with other funding, to explore new research areas and work that requires a longer-period of study than a normalresearch grant. We anticipate that some of these new research areas will emerge over the period of the grant but examples of research areas are the relationships between organisational culture and the introduction of new methods and tools, the evaluation of previous work on social analysis, the use of social analysis to inform areas of the systems engineering process apart from requirements and the use of social analysis on non-work settings.To stimulate longer-term research we plan an associated programme of visiting fellows and workshops.