Talk at the Computational Foundry, Swansea University, 24th April 2024. https://alandix.com/academic/talks/Swansea-song-April-2024/ This talk was my last formal act as Director of the Computational Foundry, before retiring from Swansea University at the end of April 2024. It was the last part in a research afternoon of the School of Mathematics and Computer Science, during which there were talks by other members of the school including a wonderful potted history of Maths and CS in the University and the Computational Foundry by John Tucker and Matt Jones. This talk is a summary (partial) of more personal research through my time at Swansea, some in collaboration with others across the university, some with those external to Swansea, and some more individual. The talk used a number of web-based prototypes and systems that I've developed, many as weekend projects, to look at areas including AI, digital humanities and heritage, qualitative-quantitative reasoning, statistics and maths education, physical prototyping and UX tools. The talk included work inspired by teaching, consultancy and other real-world problems, but almost always also including a strong theoretical dimension. This reflects my personal background, as the son of a carpenter, but where mathematics was my academic 'first love' -- always seeking out ways in which practical making and fundamental knowledge interact. A theme that runs through many of the examples is the way in which many if the things that were completed while at Swansea had roots before, and also things I started here will continue on the future. And now I look forward to the coming years; although my employment at Swansea has ended, I will continue to collaborate with many in the University, both those I have met since being in Swansea and those I know before.

1. Swan(sea) Song
personal research during
my six years at Swansea … and
beyond
Alan Dix
School Research Day – April 2024

2. pre-history ~ late 2017
consultancy →
long-term interaction paper @ AVI 2020
public understanding of
news and debate and seeds of
qualitative–quantitative
reasoning
teaching
UI prototyping

3. early days
deep digitality … alternative
→ digital thinking
final-year research
projects workshop

4. Covid
lots of angst …
but crazily productive

5. Steve Lawrance

6. getting physical
PhysPro
to

7. digital heritage and
humanities
Troedrhiwfuwch

8. difficult years …
Christmas
project
2021

9. AI
regret
… another 20 year
story

10. numbers and data

11. THANK YOU

12. next six years … 2030
?