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Congratulations to Dr. Pratik Adhikary

Congratulations to Dr. Pratik Adhikary on the fifth (and final paper) from his PhD in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences. This latest paper ‘Support networks in the Middle East & Malaysia: A qualitative study of Nepali returnee migrants’ experiences’ was recently published in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health [1].

This is one of the few studies focusing on the support networks of Nepali migrant worker in the Middle East and Malaysia.  The previous four papers have focused more on living conditions and working conditions of migrant workers as well as occupational health and safety abroad [2-5].

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E. (2019) Support networks in the Middle East & Malaysia: A qualitative study of Nepali returnee migrants’ experiences’ – International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health  9(2): 31-35.
  2. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2019) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health 21(5): 1115–1122. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
  3. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 14(1): 96-105.   https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  4. Adhikary, P., Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  5. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen, E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-175. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf

News from White Sands, New Mexico

Jet lagged and dazed Professor Bennett is just back from another session of fieldwork in New Mexico at the newly created White Sands National Park.  Previously a National Monument it was transformed into a Park by President Trump in December 2019 becoming the 62nd National Park in the USA.  Not only does the name change involve an exchange of various land parcels with its military neighbours (White Sands Missile Range), but it also adds the words palaeontology and archaeology into the founding legislation and mission.  This is in part a result of the research that we have been doing at White Sands since 2017.  This was my tenth trip since January 2017 which is a huge investment of time, with more to come in the future.  We have shown that fossil human footprints from the Late Pleistocene exist just below the surface at White Sands, how these humans may have hunted giant ground sloth, as well as pioneered the application of ground penetrating radar to the prospection of Ice Age footprints.  We are currently examining a potential mammoth kill site, the early use of transport-technology and also resolving some outstanding issues with respect to dating these tracks work we are doing in conjunction with the USGS.  Watch out for exciting updates in 2020.

The change in designation Monument to Park has huge implications for visitor numbers, federal resources and the local economy which will benefit annually by over $6 million dollars.  Last year our work was captured in a French/German documentary made by ARTE as part of the Terra X series.  Interest in the site remains high and this season we had a TV crew from PBS America and Nova with us in the field.  They are following our research team throughout the next nine months and will be filming here in Bournemouth at some point in the near future.  The Director of the Smithsonian Dr Kirk Johnson is leading this programme and is now a fan of the site.  The technological aspects of our work at White Sands are also due to feature on Ancient Mysteries Decoded available via the Discovery Science channel later this year.

You may also have read about White Sands just before Christmas since it is the landing site for the new NASA Starliner.  The missile range is also home to the Trinity Nuclear Test site. A few pictures ‘of my other office’ give you a flavour of the environment in which we are working.

New midwifery paper CMMPH

Congratulations to Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Prof. Sue Way in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication of their latest research article.  This new paper called ‘The experience of student midwives being taught newborn infant physical examination (NIPE) as an extracurricular activity at a university in the UK: A descriptive survey study’ has been accepted by Nurse Education in Practice [1].  The paper went online pre-publication earlier this week.

Congratulations

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

New article published Stamolampros, P., Korfiatis; N., Chalvatzis, K., Buhalis, D., 2020, Harnessing the “Wisdom of Employees” from Online Reviews,

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol.80, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.02.012

Download FREE Now https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1aSE6aZ3ER7Ql

The informational value of online employee reviews in tourism and hospitality research and practice. Online reviews can complement existing approaches offering access in a pool of opinion highly representative of the industry. The results of our analysis reveal that the unstructured form of reviews through topic analysis can efficiently capture important topics for employees and is in agreement with previous literature. As such it opens new avenues for researchers and practitioners since the intangible and heterogeneous nature of tourism and hospitality services can be measured with more direct data sources available to the decision makers, than cross-sectional questionnaires.
An interesting insight for managers in these industries is that the adaptation of management practices and improvement initiatives needs to be adjusted vertically (across business units) rather than horizontally (across the organization). The results of the analysis also provide an argument against the “one size fits all” approach (Hom, Lee, Shaw, & Hausknecht, 2017) in the management of service employees across tourism and hospitality industries and as such the incorporation of insights from satisfaction surveys in managerial practices need to be adjusted accordingly.

Staff Survey – An investigation into cyber crime threats against Universities

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Hello all, as part of my MSc in Cybercrime Investigation studies, I am conducting a staff survey regarding the perceptions of cybercrime amongst Bournemouth University staff.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. If you would like to take part in the survey, it will take around 15 minutes to complete. To be eligible, participants must be current Bournemouth University staff members. Your survey responses will be submitted anonymously.

You do not need to be an expert in cybercrime/cyber security to complete the survey. More information can be found on the survey, or by contacting Catherine Charles (Assistant TEL Developer, Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation & Excellence) – ccharles@bournemouth.ac.uk, 01202 961303.

Thank you,

The link to the survey is accessible here:

https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8nLLvIOdStkdLc9

REF 2021 Declaration of Staff Circumstances – Deadline Friday 17th January

The REF Guidance on Submissions sets out the measures that HEIs are required to put in place to support staff with individual circumstances, recognising that circumstances can have an impact on productivity. This includes creating safe and supportive structures for enabling staff to declare voluntarily any relevant circumstances, putting in place processes to adjust expectations of an individual’s contribution to the unit’s output pool (where the individual is entitled to a reduction), and ensuring staff are treated fairly.

BU’s REF Code of Practice (CoP) contains established procedures to ensure that individuals are able to voluntarily disclose their individual circumstances so that we can take account in preparing our submission. As a consequence we are contacting every REF eligible member of staff  to give them the opportunity to make a voluntary disclosure.

The Staff Disclosure Form for Individual Circumstances can also be downloaded here. We wish to encourage colleagues to submit a form if they believe individual circumstances have affected their ability to undertake research effectively during the period.

Completion and return of the form is voluntary; individuals will not be required to do so if they do not wish to. This form is the only means by which we will be gathering this information; we will not be consulting any hardcopy or electronic records held by Human Resources, contract start dates, etc. You should therefore complete and return the form if any of the circumstances apply and you are willing to provide the associated information.

The form provides guidance on the purpose for collecting the information, applicable individual circumstances, the steps we will take to ensure confidentiality and how to submit the form.

If you have any questions regarding individual circumstances you can email REFcirc@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Forms should be submitted to the REF circumstances mailbox at REFCirc@bournemouth.ac.uk no later than midnight Friday 17 January 2020. Alternatively the form may be posted, marked confidential and for my attention, to Human Resources, Melbury House, 1-3 Oxford Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8ES.

 If you wish to receive the form in an alternative format please email REFCirc@bournemouth.ac.uk or phone 01202 961133.

A second window for disclosing individual circumstances will open during 2020 and the dates for this will be confirmed in due course. This second window will be primarily aimed at capturing any disclosures from staff appointed between November 2019 and July 2020, and from staff whose circumstances have changed.

You can access information about BU’s REF preparation via the Research Blog and if you have any general enquiries regarding the REF you can email ref@bournemouth.ac.uk. For more information about the REF 2021 nationally please visit http://ref.ac.uk/.

 

Sally Driver, Human Resources / Chair of the REF Circumstances Board

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Staff Survey – An investigation into cybercrime threats against Universities

Hello all, as part of my MSc in Cybercrime Investigation studies, I am conducting a staff survey regarding the perceptions of cybercrime amongst Bournemouth University staff.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. If you would like to take part in the survey, it will take around 15 minutes to complete. To be eligible, participants must be current Bournemouth University staff members. Your survey responses will be submitted anonymously.

You do not need to be an expert in cybercrime/cyber security to complete the survey. More information can be found on the survey, or by contacting Catherine Charles (Assistant TEL Developer, Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation & Excellence) – ccharles@bournemouth.ac.uk, 01202 961303.

Thank you,

The link to the survey is accessible here:

https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8nLLvIOdStkdLc9

Opportunity to Contribute to two new books :Smart Cities and Sharing Economy CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Contribute to two new books :

Smart Cities and Sharing Economy CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Published by Goodfellow Publishers

Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities |
Editors: Dimitrios Buhalis, Babak Taheri, and Roya Rahimi https://easychair.org/cfp/SC1

The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Editors: Babak Taheri, Roya Rahimi, and Dimitrios Buhalis https://easychair.org/cfp/SE1

Important dates:
Abstract Deadline: 15th Jan 2020
Chapter Submission Deadline: 12 June 2020
Feedback deadlines: 8 August 2020
Submitting revised chapters: 30 October 2020
Review by editors: October to December 2020
Submitting final chapters: 18 December 2020
Submitting to Publisher: 12 February 2021

Action required – Guidelines for proposal submissions:

  • A 500-1,000 word proposal
  • Title page: title of the paper, full name of the author(s), affiliation and contact information
  • One diagram describing your contribution to the topic.
  • A short bio (around 150-250 words) for each author
  • Soft copy as Word document attachment should be uploaded to the links

_____________________________________________________________________Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities
Editors: Dimitrios Buhalis, Babak Taheri, and Roya Rahimi
https://easychair.org/cfp/SC1

This book will provide a new insight for the current issues and opportunities on smart cities and related concepts in the next generation of urban evolution. It will provide a better understanding of city services but also the enhancement and evaluation of locals’ (and visitors) experience and city decision making processes by creating liveable environments and business solutions. The book will serve as a main reference point for smart cities researchers, scholars, students and practitioners state-of-art knowledge depository on marketing management (and related areas e.g., urban studies) from a new modern perspective within the smart cities.

PROVISIONAL AND INDICATIVE LIST OF CHAPTERS (SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!)
Ch 1. Introduction to Smart Cities: Co-creating experiences, challenges and opportunities
Ch 2. Co-creating smart experiences (defining co-creation of value and related concepts in contemporary age)
Ch 3. Current challenges for smart cities, tourism and urbanisation (challenges in cities which leads to need to smart cities opportunities)
Ch 4. Value co-creation in smart cities (defining smart cities and related concepts)
Ch 5. Digital transformation (in relation to smart cities and digital world)
Ch 6. Smart sustainable environment and cities (CSR and sustainability)
Ch 7. Smart people (Human capital: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 8. Smart economy (Investment: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 9. Smart mobility (Transportation: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 10. Smart living (Community engagement: issues and opportunities in smart cities)
Ch 11. Smart governance (Politics and government engagement)
Ch 12. Smart Business models, co-creation of experiences and smart cities
Ch 13. Smart trends in the tourism and hospitality industry
Ch 14. The Smart future: stakeholders, catalysts, opportunities and challenges
Ch 15. Case studies (this chapter will have a case study for each of 14 chapters)

_____________________________________________________________________The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Editors: Prof. Babak Taheri, Dr. Roya Rahimi, and Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=se1

This book will focus on the sharing economy from a marketing and managerial perspective and will explore implications area of tourism marketing and management, services marketing and urban studies. It will encourage new theoretical and empirical development on sharing economy studies in the service industries field and offers a new insight to indicate potential research opportunities and areas of interest different aspects of sharing economy. Target readership will be higher level undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG).

PROVISIONAL AND INDICATIVE LIST OF CHAPTERS (SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!)
Ch 1. Introduction The Sharing Economy: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
Ch 2. Exploration of service platforms and marketplaces (defining platform services, adventuristic start-ups)
Ch 3. Sharing economy (defining sharing economy and related concepts)
Ch 4. Application of co-creation of value: Two-sided markets (locals vs. visitors)
Ch 5. Gig economies (defining gig economy and related concepts)
Ch 6. National culture and sharing economy (matchmaking, and studies within other culture/context)
Ch 7. Overarching theories on sharing economy (e.g., social exchange theory, complexity theory, norm activation model, etc)
Ch 8. Models of platform-based sharing economy businesses (defining customer lifetime value (e.g., business to customer model; P2P: peer to peer model, etc.); plus for-fee models (e.g., Uber, Airbnb) or no-fee models (e.g., TripAdvisor, Instagram, Wikipedia)
Ch 9. Big data and digital marketing (the importance of digital marketing within the sharing economy)
Ch 10. Operations management in sharing economy (operations and process in sharing economy)
Ch 11. The law of sharing economy (regulations, licensing, roles of state governments etc)
Ch 12. Ethics and sustainability in sharing economy (CSR and sustainability issues)
Ch 13. Future of sharing economy
Ch 14. Case studies (this chapter will have a case study for each of 13 chapters)

BU staff member new Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Aging and Physical Activity

Dr Samuel Nyman, Department of Medical Science and Public Health, as of this month became the new Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Aging and Physical Activity (JAPA). JAPA is an international, multidisciplinary journal that publishes peer-reviewed original research reports, scholarly reviews, and professional-application articles on the relationship between physical activity and the aging process.

The journal encourages the submission of articles that can contribute to an understanding of (a) the impact of physical activity on physiological, psychological, and social aspects of older adults and (b) the effect of advancing age or the aging process on physical activity among older adults. JAPA publishes 6 issues per year.

Samuel invites BU colleagues and doctoral students conducting relevant research to submit their excellent work to JAPA!

Consultation – REF 2021 Codes of practice complaints and investigation process

This week Research England launched a consultation on the draft REF 2021 Code of Practice Complaints and Investigation process.

A summary document of the process being consulted on is accessible here, full documentation is available here.

If you would like to offer any feedback for potential inclusion in BU’s response. Please email  ref@bournemouth.ac.uk by noon 21st January 2020. 

REF Internal Review Panels – Recruiting Now!

Last year BU established a number of internal review panels to review and assess our research outputs and impact case studies to help us prepare for our upcoming submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.

The panels below would like to add to their membership. Expressions of interest are invited from academic staff who are interested in being a Panel Member for the following Units of Assessment (UOAs):

  • UOA 3 – Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy. UOA Leader – Prof Edwin van Teijlingen
  • UOA 11 – Computer Science and Informatics. UOA Leader – Prof. Hamid Bouchachia
  • UOA 12 – Engineering. UOA Leader – Prof. Zulfiqar Khan
  • UOA 14 – Geography and Environmental Studies. UOA Leader – Dr Philippa Gillingham
  • UOA 17 – Business and Management. UOA Leader – Dr Chris Chapleo
  • UOA 20 – Social Work and Social Policy. UOA Leader – Prof. Jonathan Parker
  • UOA 24 – Sport and Exercise Sciences, Leisure and Tourism. UOA Leaders – Prof. Tim Rees & Prof. Adam Blake

Those interested should identify which UOA Panel they would like to be considered for and put forward a short case (suggested length of one paragraph) as to why they are interested in the role and what they think they could bring to it. EoIs should be emailed to ref@bournemouth.ac.uk by close of play on 21st January 2020.

UOA Teams would particularly welcome EoIs from those who have:

  • Experience reviewing for previous REF stocktake exercises
  • Experience in editorship
  • Experience peer review

Full details of the role, the process of recruitment and terms of reference for the panels themselves can be found here.

Any queries regarding a specific panel should be directed to the UOA Leader. General enquiries should be directed to Shelly Anne Stringer, RDS.

The last Christmas present

“On the twelfth day of Christmas ….” the editor  of the Journal of Health Research Ms Sunanta Wongchalee informed us that our paper ‘Silicone use in Nepali transgender women: The hazards of beauty’ has been accepted for publication [1].  That is nice belated Christmas present to receive on January 6th and a good start of the New Year.  The paper is written by FHSS’s Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen with Sanjeev Raj Neupane in Nepal.  This is the second paper from this unique study on transgender women in Nepal, the first one was published last year in BMJ Open [2].

References:

  1. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E.,, Neupane, S. (2020) Silicone use in Nepali transgender women: The hazards of beauty, Journal of Health Research (accepted)
  2. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Neupane, S., Marahatta, S. (2019) Hormone use among Nepali transgender women: a qualitative study, BMJ Open 9: e030464. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-030464.

 

Nepal’s migrant workers & risk at the workplace

For nearly a decade BU researchers have published widely about the hazards and risk of Nepali migrant workers in Asia and the Middle East [1-9].  Despite the fact that most migrant workers end up in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs in their host countries, only a minority report poor working environments.  For example, in Pratik Adhikary’s PhD study in FHSS only just over a fifth of migrant workers reported that their work environment in the Middle East or Malaysia was poor or very poor [4].  This relatively high level of satisfaction appears to seems contradict reports in local media on the risks associated with Nepali migrants working abroad, especially focusing on the football world cup in Qatar [7], official reports that many hundreds of bodies of dead Nepali migrants return home every year [10], and the fact that many of these Nepali migrant workers end up doing the jobs the local populations finds too dirty, dangerous and demeaning (colloquially referred to as 3D-jobs).  Why do so many who travel abroad take to do risky, dirty and otherwise undesirable jobs, but still assess their working environment as not too bad?

More theoretical papers on the drivers of migration have referred to many interconnected factors and links [11-12].  Local drivers in Nepal include poverty, lack of employment opportunities, having a history of work-related migration, a growing culture of migration (i.e. it becomes more or less an expectation) and many more.  One local element that is perhaps too easily ignored is that many Nepali migrant workers would have ended up in dirty, dangerous and demeaning jobs at home too.  And the risk, on for example building sites in Nepal might be even greater than that in Qatar or elsewhere in the Middle East as some of the photos below illustrate.  These photos of an accident involving an external building lift were taken today on a building site in Kathmandu.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-75. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf
  2. Adhikary, P, Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar & Saudi Arabia, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  3. Simkhada, P.P., Regmi, P.R.van Teijlingen, E., Aryal, N. (2017) Identifying the gaps in Nepalese migrant workers’ health and well-being: A review of the literature. Journal of Travel Medicine, 24 (4). https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v9i3.25805
  4. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care 14(1): 96-105 https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  5. Regmi, P.van Teijlingen, E.Mahato, P.Aryal, N., Jadhav, N., Simkhada, P., Zahiruddin, Q.S., Gaidhane, A. (2019) The Health of Nepali Migrants in India: A Qualitative Study of Lifestyles and Risks. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16 (19). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193655
  6. Aryal, N., Regmi, P.R., Faller, E.M., van Teijlingen, E., Khoon, C.C., Pereira, A., Simkhada, P. (2019) Sudden cardiac death and kidney health related problems among Nepali migrant workers in Malaysia. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, 9 (3), 788-791. https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v9i3.25805
  7. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2019) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health 21(5): 1115–1122. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
  8. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Mahato, P., Aryal, N., Jadhav, N., Simkhada, P., Syed Zahiruddin, Q., Gaidhane, A., (2019) The health of Nepali migrants in India: A qualitative study of lifestyles and risks, Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health 16(19), 3655; doi:10.3390/ijerph16193655.
  9. Regmi, P., Aryal, N., van Teijlingen, E., Adhikary, P. (2019) Nepali migrant workers and the need for pre-departure training on mental health: a qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10903-019-00960-z.pdf
  10. Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of Nepal. (2018) Labour migration for employment: a status report for Nepal: 2015/2016 – 2016/2017. In. Kathmandu, Nepal: Ministry of Labour and Employment.
  11. Van Hear, N., Bakewell, O., Long. K. (2018) Push-pull plus: reconsidering the drivers of migration, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, 44:6, 927-944, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2017.1384135
  12. Iqbal, M., Gusman, Y. (2015) Pull and Push Factors of Indonesian women migrant workers from Indramayu (West Java) to work abroad. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(5): 167   https://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/7893

New Year’s Eve Celebrations Without the Fizz? New Publication in BULR by Martine Hardwick

Martine Hardwick, Lecturer in Law and PhD Candidate in the Department of Humanities and Law, has published a timely commentary in the Bournemouth University Law Review looking ahead to a change in the law on 31 December 2019. On this date, opposite sex couples will finally be able to register their civil partnerships – which until now has been reserved for same sex couples.

However, this change in the law raises important questions for cohabiting couples. Despite longing for more protection and fairness from the law, co-habiting couples will not be presented with the opportunity as heterosexual couples to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. Instead, they will still be bound by the strict rules of formation and dissolution which mirror those of marriage.

Questioning whether the UK has missed an opportunity to provide more rights for cohabiting couples and highlighting a solution drawn from France in the form of Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PACS), Martine argues that learning lessons from the French legal system has to be the way forward in giving cohabitants protection while respecting their autonomy.

You can read Martine Hardwick’s full article here.