The United Kingdom Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS) arose from a meeting in 1993 of leading UK academics in Information Systems. Concerns were expressed at the meeting about the way IS teaching and research were funded. The concerns stemmed from a lack of recognition of IS as a growing and important academic discipline. UKAIS was established in 1994 to remedy this situation. It is a charity, whose aims are to provide a better knowledge of IS within the UK and to provide a forum for discussing issues in IS teaching and research. Since this first meeting in 1993, UKAIS has recognised the importance of including practitioners into its remit.

The UKAIS conference is the premiere academic event in the Information Systems calendar within the UK and attracts leading academics and researchers from the UK and overseas. There is no doubt that over the years UKAIS has provided a forum for discussing issues in IS and the aim of this conference is to debate the continuing evolution of IS.

The 2012 conference will, again, be held in the beautiful city of Oxford and will be situated in New College, one of Oxford's oldest and most beautiful colleges. New College was given exposure from the filming of Harry Potter and has since become one of Oxford's most famous colleges. This conference will bring together academics, researchers and practitioners of information systems for an exchange of ideas and experience around the subject of 'Innovating Information Systems'. In times of economic difficulty, innovative thinking is often the precursor of successful change. The adaption through IS to enable and encourage innovation is well documented. We are offering a forum at this conference to debate the contribution to change that may be heralded by IS and of how IS may be innovatively used. In terms of our own innovation, this conference will see the first opportunity to engage in a 'Pecha Kucha' session hosted by edutainer and societal innovator David Roberts.

This conference will also instigate a new conference theme regarding IS teaching cases. We invite you to submit your best teaching case and we seek to support this by providing a stream for the best cases to be presented, discussed and ideas exchanged. The focus is on the development, management and use of information technologies in business, government and non-profit contexts. We anticipate that cases will include the wider organisational, strategic and management issues, as well as the technical issues. The best cases will be considered for publication in the new Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases (JITTC), edited by Professor Leslie Willcocks, from the London School of Economics. Cases should be a maximum of 5,000 words and should include the case objectives, comments on its use, guidance for teachers, etc, as well as a summary of the case itself.

We are seeking to widen the community of engagement and would like to hear from systems thinkers, software engineers, as well as those already committed to the disciplinary area of Information Systems. To further encourage engagement with wider disciplines, we have secured the opportunity for the best conference papers submitted to be considered for a number of high quality journals which includes the European Journal of Information Systems


To hear more from the outgoing UKAIS President, watch our video below: