Category / conferences

Audio Testimonies Symposium at BU (online)

Dr Panos Amelidis, Dr Tom Davis from Experimental Media Research Centre, BU and Dr Thomas Gardner from Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice, UAL, hosted the first Audio Testimonies Symposium at BU on 4-5th July 2020.

This symposium was an attempt to consider the role of Audio Testimony in artistic practice, and explored the ways in which artists use sound to enable new forms of testimony, and create new artistic configurations, which engage public consciousness. The event featured two keynotes and workshop sessions spread over two days.

Keynote 1:  The symposium was opened by a keynote presentation by John Young, Professor of Composition at De Montfort University, who reflected on recorded audio testimonies as agents of meaning through electroacoustic music. Professor Young started from the notion that sound recording is a significant act in itself, and discussed some of the ways in which he has used a range of audio testimonies to explore the experience of war.

Keynote 2: A second keynote presentation was by Amy Wlodarski, Professor of Music at Dickinson College, USA, who talked about her experiences of listening to audio Holocaust testimonies and how she have come to think about the relationship of listening to recorded traumatic memories, specifically the relationship between the witness and the interviewer.

Workshop sessions: Participants worked in small discussion groups of 4-5 people, in which they gave short presentations about how their work related to the theme of the symposium. Participants also brought material that connected their practice to audio testimony and presented this to the group in order to draw links between their own creative practice and emerging themes.

On day two participants attempted to collaborate creatively within their groups and explored ways of presenting their findings and experiences back to the main body of the symposium. The outcomes were amazing successful given that they were constructed in such a short time frame and included, poetry, reflective writing, performance, edited audio, pre-recorded testimonies and more.

The groups were coordinated by six group facilitators: John Young (keynote speaker) Salomé Voegelin (Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication), Cathy Lane Professor of Sound Arts at the London College of Communication and Director of CRiSAP), Dr Mark-Peter Wight (Post-Doctoral Research Arts at the London College of Communication), Dr Thomas Gardner, Dr Tom Davis and Dr Panos Amelidis.

Service Excellence Conference

In the current virtual world where we are trying to get used to of this ‘new normal’ life, it was encouraging to attend the virtual ‘Service Excellence Conference’ with award-winning public speaker, Nigel Risner, thanks to Susanne Clarke and Camila Devis-Rozentel for organising this. The conference was well attended and it was great to see colleagues from across the University on this platform. Apart from understanding your team members via a zoo analogy, it was interesting to hear Nigel’s take on ‘becoming a champion’ (if you are not one already). I can see its relevance to my role as an educator and a Programme Leader to make a positive impact. Following is my brief take away from the day which you may also find useful:

Character: Knowing who you are and what do you stand for, ultimately will help to be authentic.

Heart is the key. It is utmost important to be a good listener in order to help/advice/support others.

Attitude: Positive attitude goes a long way.

Mission: We are phenomenal people, teaching phenomenal people to produce phenomenal results.

Perseverance: Consistency is the key.

Integrity: Honesty is the best policy.

Organisation skills: Team work is the dream work.

Nerve: I will try again tomorrow.

Have a good weekend 🙂

 

Supporting the Global Society Restart Tourism

Supporting the Global Society Restart Tourism

Academia is not just about teaching students or writing papers. It is about engaging with the widest range of stakeholders, creating and disseminating knowledge and create solutions for the global society. It is all about RELEVANCE and IMPACT, especially at the time of CRISIS. JOIN US ON THESE WEBINARS in the next few days where ever you are and engage in the conversations towards #RestartTourism #ReigniteTourism

GREECE Thursday 18 June 14:15 LondonTime / 16:15 Greek EMEA.gr time IN GREEK

Η πανδημία του COVID-19 και ο ελληνικός τουρισμός

Dimitris Basiliou, Michalis Toanoglou, Dimitrios Buhalis

BRAZIL Thursday 18 June 16:00 Brazil time / 20:00 London time BRAZIL on LiveTur DATASHOW BRASIL IN PORTUGUESE

Impactos do uso das tecnologias de informação na atividade turística durante e pós pandemia

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis with Dr. Luiz Mendes Filho and Dr. Alexandre Augusto Biz

IRAN Sunday 21 June London time 18:30 pm – 20:30pm / Tehran, Iran 10:00pm – 12:00am (GMT+430)

Mohammad Shirkavand discussion – Connecting Cultures & Preserving Heritage: Create Future by Connecting Minds

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis to talk about ”How eTourism could help the industry to survive after the crisis

NEW ZEALAND Wednesday 24th June 21:30-22:30 London Time / Thursday June 25th, 8.30-9.30AM NZ time

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis Smart Tourism in the New Era of Tourism

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington School of Business and Government | Ōrauariki

BU PhD student presenting at European Sigma Nursing Conference

Bournemouth University Ph.D. student Peter Wolfensberger presented today at the 5th Sigma European Conference in Coimbra, Portugal.  This is probably the first major global online conference in nursing!  The title of Peter’s presentation was Creating Meaning – People Living with Mental Illness in Switzerland. In true COVID-19 style he gave his presentation life online.  Consequently, this workshop session was well attended by nurses from across Europe, and it had the added benefit that all his Ph.D. supervisors could attend online too.  The World Health Organisations (WHO) has designated the year 2020 as the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife”, in honour of the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale.  This  Sigma European  Conference focused very much on importance of nurses and nursing in health care provision.

Peter has successfully defended his thesis and is currently writing up a few minor corrections.  He has been supervised by Dr. Sarah Thomas, Prof. Sabine Hahn and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

BU academics at Virtual International Day of the Midwife

Five FHSS academics have presentations and/or posters at this year’s Virtual International Day of the Midwife (IVDM) conference.  Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler  (Senior Midwifery Lecturer in  the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Dr. Humaira  Hussain have an online presentation ‘on the topic of Making discoveries through research: midwifery student’s perceptions of their role when caring for pregnant women who misuse substances: neonatal simulators as creative pedagogy’.

BU Midwifery Lecturer Denyse King also in CMMPH has been interviewed by the VIDM her poster on her PhD research around Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLE), which can be offered as a computer-generated virtual simulation of a clinical workspace.

Whilst Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler,  Dr. Jacqui Hewitt-Taylor and Prof. Ann Hemingway have a poster  ‘Powerless responsibility: A feminist study of women’s experiences of caring for their late preterm babies’ based on Luisa’s PhD research.  Last, but not least, FHSS Visiting Faculty and holder of a BU Honorary  Doctorate Sheena Byrom is key note speaker at the week’s IVDM conference!

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

PGR Poster Showcase

Over the next few months we were due to showcase postgraduate research posters from The 11th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference in the Lees Gallery on Talbot Campus however, due to the lockdown we can no longer highlight the incredible research our students are undertaking in this way.

So, like many other activities across the University, we are taking it virtual. Look out over the coming weeks for a showcase of posters from PGRs across all four Faculties.

I will be sharing on Twitter (@NatStewartBU), Facebook (@BUDoctoralCollege) & on here.

COVID-19 and the rise of Virtual Conferences

Yesterday we had a conference paper accepted by the EUPHA (European Public Health Association) International Conference.  When the paper was originally submitted to the EUPHA Health Workforce Research Section Mid-term Conference we had opted for an oral presentation in person at the conference in Romania this summer.  However, with the COVID-19 pandemic travelling to Romania to attend this conference is not an option for many (if not most) academics.  Therefore the organising committee took the initiative to re-arrange it as a virtual meeting.   Further good news for us is that participation will be free.

Of course, I am aware that some of the strengths of attending conferences include having unexpected discussions (often in the bar) with fellow academics and being away from the day job.  At the moment being forced to choose between postponing or cancelling a conference or changing to a virtual meeting conference organisers may want to reflect on  “… ask how conferences make a difference.”  This question was  originally raised in the book Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities by Donald Nicholson [1].

We should have moved to more virtual meetings and  online conferences much sooner, but it is easy to say with hindsight!  The COVID-19 crisis has thought us that virtual classrooms, internet-based tutorials, Zoom meetings and online conferences can work, albeit with their limitations.  It is worth considering the return of investment of a conference [2] not just for the conference organisers (and funders) but also  individual academics as less travel will be saving time  and society as reducing  travel, especially international flights, will improve our carbon foot print.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

 

References

  1. Nicolson. D.J. (2017) Academic Conferences as Neoliberal CommoditiesPalgrave Macmillan.
  2. Nicolson. D.J. (2018) Guest post by Donald Nicolson: The problem of thinking about conferences and Return on Investment (ROI) 

 

Gender in Conflict Conference: WAN-funded event

On Wednesday 9 October 2019 Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and I hosted an international and intersectional conference involving staff, students and Erasmus colleagues to debate issues of gender, violence and conflict in contemporary societies. We were very fortunate to receive funding from the Women’s Academic Network for this event, and for additional guest speakers who will be visiting BU in the coming months to contribute to discussion on this theme.

The focus of our ‘Gender in Conflict’ conference was to provide a platform for discussion and reflection on conceptualisations of gender and violence that have heightened visibility in post-conflict environments. We asked contributors to consider what we can learn from questions of gendered violence in a fragile international context and whether international lessons can be applied to social environments in the UK.

The aims were:

  1. To de-colonise and de-exoticise knowledge about gendered violence in war and post-conflict contexts abroad by going beyond stereotypical assumptions and representations;
  2. To interpret contemporary UK conceptualisations of gendered violence through an alternative lens inspired by international experience.

We were fortunate to have the opportunity of the Erasmus-funded presence of two visiting Kosovar colleagues who presented at this event.  Dr Linda Gusia and Assoc. Prof. Nita Luci are the founders and directors of the Programme for Gender Studies and Research at University of Prishtina, Kosovo. They are highly visible women’s rights activists in Kosovo. The post-conflict situation in Kosovo poses unexpected challenges to equal rights not only arising from classic patriarchal cultural legacies but also from masculinity reiterations in the totalising field of international intervention.

We were also joined by two BU criminologists of our own Department for Social Sciences who are working in related fields: Jade Levell on gang crimes in the UK and Dr Shovita Dhakal Adhikari on agency and interventions within human trafficking in Nepal. This conference emerged from our own academic interests in questions of gendered hate crime in the UK (Dr Jane Healy) and on questions of social justice in transnational and post-conflict settings (Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers).

Stephanie welcomes participants

Stephanie opened the conference by encouraging contributors and audience members to reflect upon the transferability of interpreting phenomena we often consider in their specific contexts alone and the limitations arising from differences in our epistemological framings of analyses, contingent on such context and distinctions such as ‘the Global South’. Questions of cultural translation, power, language and positioning can be perceived or experienced as barriers to engagement, rather than opportunities to share best practice. The aims of the conference were to critically re-envisage our contemporary conceptualisations of such concepts on the basis of comparison and shared reflection.

Jade Levell was our first speaker, with a paper entitled:  “The competing masculinities of gang-involved men who experienced domestic violence/abuse in childhood”. Jade’s presentation, drawn from her PhD thesis, considers the conflicted and competing gender performances by marginalised men who have been drawn into gangs in the UK. She demonstrated how these men are performing hegemonic masculinity in an attempt to claim power where they have none. This is conveyed through a language and symbolic rhetoric of war and honour.

Jade Levell introduces her research

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nita Luci then spoke about “Researching Gender in the Balkans” as she traced the recent history of gender studies research in Kosovo. Her presentation began during a period where few academics were interested in looking at gendered experiences in the region to the emergence of the Programme for Gender Studies and Research in contemporary Kosovo. Through this timeframe, she highlighted the simultaneous re-framing and changing conceptualisations of masculinities in Kosovo.

 

 

Visiting scholar Nita Luci from University of Prishtina

 

 

 

Linda Gusia’s paper took this conceptualisation further. In “Recognition of Sexual Violence in Kosovo after the War” Linda highlighted the conflict between the hyper visibility of war-time sexual violence and a complete silencing of questions of gender and nationalism before the war. She considered how sexual violence against women was propagated by men, as an attack on the nation’s male gaze. Through a nationalist lens the concept of heroism was the prevailing public image and discourse. There was limited space for women’s own conceptualisation of the war as their stories were reframed through a narrative of sacrifice, martyrdom and atonement.

Visiting scholar Linda Gusia

In her paper entitled “Exploring Child Vulnerabilities: pre- and post-disaster in Nepal”, Shovita Dhakal Adhikari demonstrated similar patterns of silencing of women’s and girl’s experiences of human trafficking in Nepal. Shovita critiqued the application of Westernised concepts and labels to Nepalese society, particularly in regard to discourses of vulnerable victims in need of ‘rescue and protect’. Here again, women’s bodies are being controlled as a method of protection.

BU’s Shovita Dhakal Adhikari shares her research on child trafficking narratives in Nepal

 

Lastly, Stephanie chaired a panel discussion of all of the speakers, entitled “Inverting the gaze: Juxtaposing gender and conflict in transitional societies abroad and the UK”. This produced a lively debate around concepts of competing masculinities, vulnerabilities and visibilities of marginalised voices that could be drawn from all case studies presented. The conference drew to a close with contributors and audience members agreeing that this was an energising and engaging series of papers that showcased similarities in constructions of gender and gendered violence, both in the UK and abroad.

Participant contributions

Two further speakers who were unable to attend this conference at short notice were re-scheduled to visit BU this academic year:

  • Dr Emma Milne from Plymouth presented on Criminal Justice Responses to Maternal Filicide: Judging the failed mother on 13 February 2020.
  • Dr Hannah Mason-Bish will visit on 23 March 2020 to discuss Gender and Hate Crime.

For further details or discussion please contact: jhealy@bournemouth.ac.uk or sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk

The 11th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference

Wednesday 4 December played host to The 11th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference which took place in the Fusion Building. To view highlights of the day visit #BUPGRConf19 on twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live Research Exhibition

The day commenced with the live research exhibition where delegates had the opportunity to learn and practice infant CPR using a modified infant manikin and received novel real-time feedback via a monitor being used as part of Debora Almeida’s PhD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Denyse King offered visitors to her live research exhibition the opportunity to immerse themselves in demos of virtual reality learning environments being developed as part of her cross-faculty EdD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen Slater shared with delegates a visualisation and sound installation of forest biodiversity and wildlife she is monitoring as part of her PhD.

Poster Presentations

The event saw nearly 30 posters on display with PGRs presenting and discussing their research with peers and colleagues from across the university. The live research exhibition and poster presentation room had a wonderful energy all morning and we also had the pleasure of being visited by the Vice-Chancellor Professor John Vinney.

 

Oral Presentations

Create Lecture Theatre was the venue of choice for our oral presentation session this year. The variety of research being presented was fascinating and inspiring and the room was alight with discussion, there was a real buzz for all sessions. What really stood out was how PGRs engaged with the audience, getting us all involved, making us laugh and the discussions that followed demonstrated the engagement from the audience. I can confidently say that each presenter showed immense passion for their research which shone through in all presentation styles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would like to take this opportunity to also thank our fantastic session chairs Samreen Ashraf and Duncan Ki-Aries who made presenters feel comfortable and helped with the very smooth running of the four oral presentation sessions.

 

Keynote Speaker

Following lunch, we were joined by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Tim McIntyre-Bhatty who came along to introduce the conference keynote speaker Professor Genoveva Esteban. Genoveva shared with us her experience of engaging the public (of all ages) in her field of research, microbial ecology. Genoveva was passionate and motivating, highlighting the benefits of public engagement for research and the wide range of opportunities that PGRs could get involved in, while sharing some tricks of the trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This interdisciplinary conference truly highlights the variety of research being undertaken by PGRs at BU, it is a fantastic opportunity for networking and enhancing postgraduate research community and culture.

Congratulations to all presenters, and thank you to all attendees and those that showed support in many other ways. If you would like to leave some feedback, the feedback form will be open until Sunday 15 December.

Sustainability@BU

This year we made steps to improve the sustainability of the conference by reducing the brochure printing through making use of QR codes to access abstracts; encouraging delegates to bring their [Doctoral College] reusable bottles; provided free UniBus travel between campuses on the day of the conference and will re-display printed posters throughout the year to showcase PGR researcher wider.

 

If you have any questions, or would like to be involved in The 12th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference please get in touch.