Building better research software workshop

Software is fundamental to modern research. Many researchers are interested in writing software to analyse data, automate repetitive data collection or cleaning tasks, or communicate their results in a more impactful way. This workshop introduces good practices for ensuring research software is reproducible and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). These principles apply to any programming language, but we'll use Python in our examples. This workshop is aimed at researchers who have attended the Introduction to version control with Git workshop and have some experience with programming in any language.

This workshop is a collaboration between the University of Auckland, University of Otago, and Research Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ).

Dates for 2026:

• Wednesday 5 - Thursday 6 November, 10am-3pm

Sign up to the Centre for eResearch mailing list below to hear when registration is open.

Attendees will be able to:

• Explain key principles of open and reproducible research and their implications for research software development.
• Analyse software for maintainability, reproducibility and reuse, identifying risks and opportunities for improvement.
• Apply professional software development workflows for version control, reproducible environment management and collaboration.
• Design modular and extensible software to support reuse and scalable
  development.
• Design and implement testing, documentation and quality assurance
  practices to support correct and reusable research software.

• See the online workshop curriculum.
• Researchers and postdoctoral students are encouraged to engage with their peers by joining Hacky Hour to post questions and exchange ideas.

Research Data Support Services
Email: researchdata@auckland.ac.nz

Laura Armstrong
eResearch Engagement Lead
Email: Laura Armstrong