by on 8 March 2023 with No Comments

Knowledge Transfer Partnership Team

As you may have seen already, Senso have partnered with none other than Birmingham City University.

With funding from Innovate UK, this Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) will enable Senso to extend our safeguarding capabilities, by linking expert academic linguists with industry to innovate technology used by UK schools to protect children whilst online. These new capabilities will also make the day-to-day workload of Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) more efficient.

We have a fantastic safeguarding team in place who are beginning to make the magic happen. After two years of work behind the scenes to get this show on the road, we are thrilled that this partnership is underway. Senso are so excited for you to get a little insight into the team we now have beavering away to ensure this partnership is everything we hope for and more.

Senso and Birmingham City University - Innovate UK

Meet The Team

Michael Payne | Business Lead | Senso

Michael is our very own Director of Operations at Renato Software Ltd. His role within this KTP is Business Lead. Michael and Mark (mentioned below) met through David Wright who is the CEO of SWGfL (another one of our fantastic partners) which led them to then develop the KTP project proposal which now brings us to where we are today!
Fun Fact: Mike once owned and ran a bar in the Colorado mountains.

 

Emma Franklin | Head of Safeguarding | Senso

Emma is our very own Head of Safeguarding here at Senso. Her role within the KTP is Business Supervisor, so she manages and supports the KTP work from a business perspective. Emma also holds a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University, and after her PhD Emma worked for a computational linguistics research group, did corpus linguistics for a non-profit organisation, and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the University of Sheffield. Finally, before joining Senso, Emma worked as a lecturer at University of Wolverhampton.
Fun fact: Emma has a penchant for crunchy snacks; she’s powered by crisps.

Senso's Partnership with Birmingham City University

Birmingham City University Team

Alexandra Krendel | KTP Associate | BCU

Alexandra is a KTP Associate at Birmingham City University. Her role within this KTP is also KTP Associate. Alexandra holds a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University; her specialist expertise is in Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. Over the next two-years, Alexandra will be working closely with Senso to help develop more accurate linguistic algorithms for Senso’s safeguarding module. This will improve Senso’s overall violation detection capabilities – extending our capabilities further than ever before.
Fun Fact: Alex is partial to a game of Dungeons and Dragons in her spare time.

 

Mark McGlashan | Knowledge Base Supervisor | BCU

Mark is a Senior Lecturer in English Language at Birmingham City University and is Knowledge Base Supervisor for the KTP. Mark holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Lancaster University and has carried out extensive research on the relationships between language and a range of social issues and online harms.
Fun fact: Mark loves Lego, death metal, and food... but not necessarily in that order!

Andrew Kehoe | Knowledge Base Lead | BCU

Andrew is Professor of Corpus Linguistics at Birmingham City University. His role within this KTP is Knowledge Base Lead, overseeing the management of the project from an academic perspective. Andrew holds a PhD in Corpus Linguistics from BCU and has worked on numerous externally funded research projects on web content analysis, topic modelling, and language change over time.
Fun fact: Andrew loves to post about the history of buildings on Instagram.

Expanding Our Safeguarding Capabilities

If you want to know more about our partnership with BCU, or what Senso can do for you and your school or business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

 

GET IN TOUCH SAFEGUARD CLOUD