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Dr Alastair Renton

Alastair first joined the ITC in September 2004, having graduated from Napier that summer with an MSc in Software Engineering.

Alastair Renton

He originally studied philosophy; first at St Andrews, graduating with an MA (Hons.) in 1983, before going on to write a defence of Materialism for a PhD at Edinburgh University, graduating in 2000.

His Software Engineering MSc dissertation investigated the application of Argument Visualisation techniques to political debates, with a view to assessing the potential of such representations in improving the accessibility of political decision-making. The fruits of this research were employed in the paper 'Argument Visualisation to support democratic decision-making', delivered at the 'eChallenges e-2004' conference.

Initially, he researched the possibility that Argument Visualisation might be used to evaluate the cognitive content of comments in e-consultations; in particular, the UK government's consultation "In the service of democracy" (launched on 16th July 2002), and the online consultation project "Education for Citizenship in Scotland" (launched 15th December 2000) conducted by ITC working with Learning and Teaching Scotland. This led to research into the possibility of using groups of maps to inform policy creation, the results of which were fed into the DEMO_net Network of Excellence project, particularly with respect to investigating how CSAV could be used to analyse contributions to, and support moderation of, online discussions.

At present he assists with ITC's rôle in the administration of The Scottish Parliament e-petition system.

Aside from reading, climbing and gardening, Alastair habitually migrates southwards in June to go haymaking.

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