Dr Michael A. Fraser


Director, Infrastructure Services, IT Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN.
Email: mike.fraser@it.ox.ac.uk

Picture of Michael Fraser, 2016 (courtesy of my daughter, Anastasia)This is my personal page at Oxford University.

I have been employed at the University of Oxford since 1995. Since February 2013 I am the Director of Infrastructure Services within IT Services (formerly Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS)). I am also a Supernumerary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall (since Oct 2017).

After a major restructuring in September 2017 (and again in 2023), Infrastructure Services comprises:

  • Networks and Data Centres
    • Network and Data Centre Operations
    • Network Support and Development
    • Managed Network Services
  • Platform Services
    • Unix Platform Services
    • Microsoft Platform Services
    • Cloud and Storage Services
    • Communication & Collaboration Services
    • Endpoint Device Management Services
    • Identity and Access Management
  • Research Computing and Support Services
    • Advanced Research Computing
    • Research Support Services

All about IT Infrastructure Services: Everything from eduroam and Single Sign-On to research computing, data backup and much more (March 2023)

Until December 2012 I was also the Technical Coordinator for the Student Systems Programme (40%) and a member of the ICT Coordination Programme core project team.

I have played a leading role in a number of projects relating to the management of research data. From 2009-2010 I directed the JISC-funded Embedding Institutional Data Curation Services in research (EIDCSR) project. Eidcsr was succeeded by the Supporting Data Management Infrastructure for the Humanities (Sudamih) project, for which I was co-Director (2010-11), and the successor to Sudamih was the Virtual Infrastructure with Database-as-a-Service (VIDaaS), for which I was also co-Director (2011-12).

In 2010/11 Stuart Lee and I led a small-scale, JISC-funded project to develop a toolkit for the costing of IT Services.

From 2007-2009 I directed the e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models (eIUS) Project, including the production of a set of e-Infrastructure case study videos.

I was also Co-Director of the Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management project until it completed in March 2009.

I have participated in a number of virtual research environment (VRE) projects, most recently as Co-investigator for the VRE for the Study of Documents and Manuscripts Project.

Until August 2007 I was the Head of the Research Technologies Service at OUCS and Director of Intute Arts and Humanities, a service of Intute, the national resource discovery service. Until August 2008 I was also Director of OSS Watch, the JISC-funded open source software advisory service. For a short period of time I was Associate Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC).

From Sept 2005-March 2007 I contributed to Oxford University's ICT Strategy Programme as Technical Secretary and a leader of the work task charged with developing scenarios sketching out the near-future benefits of ICT for day to day working in the University.

I have a BA (Hons) and PhD in theology from the University of Durham.

My current IT interests include: models for the delivery of IT services within research-intensive universities; institutional ICT structures for supporting research, including the development of virtual research environments and development of services to support research data management; full economic costing of ICT services and ensuring sustainable ICT services within institutions. I still maintain a passing interest in digital humanities (formerly known as humanities computing). Outside IT my research interests include nineteenth century Oxford and the Isle of Man.

Previous publications include:

Some presentations include:

Professional service

I was external examiner for the MA/Diploma/Certificate in Electronic Communication and Publishing, University College London, 2003-2006. From 2002-2004 I was also external examiner for the Certificate in Humanities Computing for Languages, University of Cambridge.

I am, or was, a member of the following committees:

Past Activities

  • Durham: My PhD thesis was entitled, "The Feast of the Encaenia in the Fourth Century and in the Early Liturgical Sources of Jerusalem" (1995). I was one of the first theologians to make use of the Web and of course my first web documents were a (draft) abstract and material relating to my thesis. The full text of my thesis is now available online. During my time in Durham I ensured that Durham was amongst the first to have a web site for its Department of Theology and I also created a guide to internet resources for theology (not working since the migration of Humbul to Intute). I also made available online a section of the wandering pilgrim Egeria's journal dealing with the Jerusalem liturgy together with a translation.
  • Oxford: From 1995-1999 I was Research Officer, Manager, and finally Deputy Director of the CTI Centre for Textual Studies. During this time I edited, and contributed to, numerous issues of Computers & Texts, maintained most of the Web site, travelled the UK and beyond organising presentations and workshops, and undertook various other online/offline activities for the Computers in Teaching Initiative. I was also Oxford site manager for the ASTER Project (Assisting Small-group Teaching with Electronic Resources).

 

A handy little gizmo that shows the next 24 hours forecast for carbon in the UK power grid.

 

This document created: 3 November 1996
This document last modified: 27 February, 2025

The URL of this document is http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/index.html