Category / Global engagement
Erasmus+ Staff Mobility (Training) experience at the Universitat Ramon Llull
Three weeks ago I had a pleasure and amazing opportunity to attend and engage with fantastic research training – the 4th European University Association (EUA) Funding Forum. The forum took place in one BU’s current and established Erasmus+ links – the Universitat Ramon Llull (Barcelona, Spain).
The 4th EUA Funding Forum, titled ‘Frameworks that empower, universities that deliver’ has primarily focused on macro-level changes that affect models and processes that EU universities traditionally apply.
The opening talk by Joseph Garrell I Guiu, Rector of Ramon Llull University (Spain); Jose Manuel Pingarron Carrazon, Secretary General of Universities (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) and Rolf Tarrach, President of the European University Association, highlighted the roles of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in a deeper engagement with social issues. This naturally can be done via education. However, research and business engagement would require different models of thinking in relation to funding. Investments should be attracted from elsewhere and with the purpose of HEIs being at forefront of sustainable living. BU with its new BU2025 vision and strategic plan puts a large emphasis on responsibility. However, to deliver an evidence-based impact would require reconsideration of processes and in many cases steeping out of the HE comfort zone and take risk by implementing different but importantly efficiency-based approaches.
Following the opening talk, Thomas Estermann, Director, Governance, Funding and Public Policy Development at EUA has presented astonishing statistics on how various HEIs within the EU operate in terms of attracting investment and students. Photo below show extract from the slides, presented by Thomas Estermann.
Thomas Estermann stated that the UK has a 20% decrease in attracting any sort of investment that supports HE sector. This is mainly driven by a lesser exposure to funding opportunities that the UK had access to but also nation-wide issues with decreasing student numbers. This left me wondering what can be done to minimise the gap.
The event took place over two days, 18-19th October, and was an amazing opportunity to meet a frontline of EU HEIs’ leadership. Combination of plenary sessions and masterclasses offered the participants, not only an opportunity to network, but hear stories of ‘brave’ approaches to leading and managing HEIs and to learn about i.e. new types of partnerships within the HE context that can generate funding to support HEIs’ missions or importance of integrating business intelligence systems and management structures to inform HEIs’ processes.
One of my favourite talks was a panel formed by Mikulas Bek, Rector of Masaryk University (Czech Republic); Francisco Jose Mora Mas, Rector of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) and Petra Wend, Vice-Chancellor of Queen Margaret University (United Kingdom).
The panel shared personal professional stories of their HEIs’ journeys in tackling financial uncertainty. It was quite refreshing to see how HEIs are moving, although I must admit this is a slow follow-up on some comprehensive business models, towards evidence-based decision-making via data mining and data-based intelligence. It is uplifting for me to witness the shift in HE leadership mindset, as my and Dr Gelareh Roushan’s PhD student, Claudia Vanzellotti, is exploring how for instance social media intelligence is embedded into small and medium sized enterprises’ (SMEs) strategic decision-making. In era of Big Data HEIs ought to observe trends around own sector but also other related and unrelated contexts which will spark ideas for efficient processes and funding models that will generate impact. Listening to students and open consented online conversations is also something educators should be doing in order to adapt pedagogical models and deliver effective and exciting education experiences.
Overall, attending the 4th Funding Forum had a number of immediate benefits for me:
- Expansion of networks with various organisations (i.e. HEIs, governments, other public organisations and businesses);
- A better understanding of the HE environment, challenges and future areas of consideration, critical for the UK HEIs operating in post-Brexit context;
- Knowledge around the latest thinking in the debate around sources of funding for HEIs – the programme covered sessions around leadership, evaluation of economic impact of research activities, on how to develop income-generating partnerships, on designing institutional efficiency strategy, university management and overview of next generation of EU funding;
- Feeding lessons learned on HE strategic directions into design of new UG and PG programmes across the Business School departments as well as within global engagement models we ought to consider.
Of course following BU’s Fusion I would like to reflect on some teaching and pedagogical lessons I gained from attending the 4th Funding Forum. In particular, I learnt about new TEL tool, Sli.do, that is alternative to Mentimeter and Kahoot and allows engaging large groups of students via Q&A feeders or group discussions to stimulate a better understanding and critical thinking around the content. I already experimented with the Sli.do during several talks in October/November 2018 period and found it easy to use, from both facilitator and audience perspectives. In addition I am planning to use the interviewing / conversational approach to Panel session discussions during the conference that Dr Kaouther Kooli, Dr Julie Robson and I are co-organising with the University of Manouba in Tunis this December.
Last but not least the training, funded by Erasmus+, enabled me to meet and network with the host institution’s colleagues. BU’s Business School has a long lasting and successful relationships in terms of staff and student mobility with the Universitat Ramon Llull (URL). URL is located in fantastic location, Barcelona, and has amazing facilities which are combined by modern architecture and historical buildings.
Quite impressed by Ramon Llull University campus. It is our Business School’s @BUAACSB1 current Erasmus partner so I recommend all students to consider coming and spending a semester abroad here @GlobalBU pic.twitter.com/K6zcm7qY9G
— Dr Elvira Bolat👩🏻💻👩🏻🏫🤳🏻💡🏃🏼♀️🏖 (@Elvira_MLady) October 18, 2018
URL did truly amazing job with hosting the 4th Funding Forum, showcasing its facilities, professionalism of staff and students and warm hospitality of Catalonian capital.
Overall it has been an amazing experience, which will feed into many more exciting professional projects for me personally but also for the Department of Marketing, the Business School and BU. To conclude this post, I would like to leave you with this slide:
To survive, HEIs need to experiment, expand their external networks and defend their autonomy.
If you wish to experience something new, learn, network and enhance your knowledge in areas of research and/or education, and/or professional practice, I would highly recommend applying for the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Training funding.
Elvira Bolat, Principal Academic in Marketing (The Business School), e-mail: ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk
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ECREA’s 7th European Communication Conference ended on Saturday, 3rd November at Palazzo Dei Congressi in Lugano, Switzerland.
The conference was attended by over 1,400 participants from 51 countries in Europe and beyond. During the event more than 1,000 academic presentations were delivered in more than 100 themed sessions and two plenary sessions by Prof. Eszter Hargittai, Dr Lina Dencik as well as Prof. José Van Dijck and Dr Thomas Allmer. The plenaries focused on the central theme of the conference, ‘Centres and Peripheries: Communication, Research, Translation’ and addressed some of the most pressing pan-European issues in the field of media and communication. One of the sessions, delivered in the format of a critical intervention, focused on the issues surrounding the exploitation of academics in the field. Among the conference organising committee members was Dr Paweł Surowiec of the Faculty of Media of Communication, who also serves as the ECREA’s Treasurer. For more information about the conference follow #ECREA2018 or speak to the ECREA Coordinator in the Faculty, Dr Einar Thorsen (Ass. Prof.). The next biennial ECREA conference, 8th European Communication Conference, will take place between 2-5 October 2020. The event will be hosted by the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal.
CEMP’s Media Education Summit in Hong Kong
CEMP convened the 12th Media Education Summit in Hong Kong last week. It was the biggest MES so far, with 170 delegates from 27 countries attending at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Feedback from delegates has been overwhelmingly positive – see the MESHK18 twitter thread – including invitations from prospective hosts in Asia. North America and central Europe for future years and several CEMP Ed-Doc enquiries have already been made by delegates from Hong Kong, China and Japan. Here are two examples:
I would like to thank you once again for a wonderful time in Hong Kong. For me it was a learning experience like no other, an experience that i shall never forget. (Doctoral student, Malta).
Researchers who presented have been invited to submit their work to Media Practice and Education, the journal edited in CEMP and BU doctoral graduate Marketa Zezuokova teamed up with South Island School to run this year’s youth strand, concluding with the school students forming a ‘flipped panel’ to field questions from the academics.
All the keynotes, the Youth MES video and Karen Fowler-Watt’s film with Fergal Keane will be available on the CEMP site in due course.
MES is a big project and the team at the event (Karen Fowler-Watt, Mark Readman, Annamaria Neag and Julian McDougall) are grateful to the people who make it happen at BU – Laura Hampshaw and Lokesh Sivakumar.
Watch this space for an announcement soon about the next MES!!
BU Acorn Funding leading to a grant application
Dr Gloria Khamkar from BU’s Faculty of Media and Communication recently visited York University, Canada to meet Dr Anne F. MacLennan (Associate Professor) under the BU Acorn Funding scheme. The aim of this trip was to explore the possibility of developing a collaborative research project in the field of community radio for migrants in the UK and Canada. Gloria spent a week in Canada to work on this task. As an outcome of this trip, she is applying for the British Academy Small Research Grants 2018, which is due for the submission this week.
This proposed research project would examine the culture of radio catering to South Asian migrant communities in the UK and Canada. It will examine the changing culture of radio for the migrant communities by interrogating the surrounding questions of the existence, relevance and significance of this medium. The proposed research project focuses on ‘impact’ and is timely.
Gloria believes that it was a learning experience visiting Canada and working on this project proposal under the BU Acorn Funding scheme, and, that this support is very valuable for the early career researchers like her at BU.
We wish Gloria good luck!
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EURAXESS at BU / EURAXESS for you!
Are you a researcher at BU or thinking about moving to the UK?
Do you support researchers?
If so, EURAXESS can help you!
Watch this new video for a great overview of the EURAXESS portal and how it can be of benefit to you!
By registering on the international EURAXESS site, you can gain access to a wealth of resources:
- Career Development tools including progressing your career inside and beyond academia
- Study Tours
- Partnering and Collaboration Search, where you can update your own profile so that others can find and connect with you and your research
- Searching for and posting job opportunities
- Information and Assistance for living in Europe, working in Europe, or leaving Europe to live and work across the world
You can also visit the dedicated UK EURAXESS site for even more information, including their introductory leaflets for researchers and those supporting researchers, as well as signing up to receive their monthly newsletters.
EURAXESS is also one of the highlighted resources within the Research Toolkit > Research Staff pages on this blog.
Find out more, by contacting Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework Facilitator and BU’s EURAXESS Local Contact Point, if you are:
- Using EURAXESS as a BU researcher
- Using EUARXESS as an external researcher and want to know more about BU’s opportunities (where your email will be forwarded, if necessary, for further attention)
- Using EURAXESS as a member of the BU Team to make more use of EURAXESS services, in order to promote BU’s research activity, supporting incoming researchers to BU or other related purpose
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BA Media Production staff and student work presented at the Thessaloniki International Fair in Greece
In February 2018 I was invited by Artercitya on a (still on-going) residency as an audio artist in a very large international project called Freiraum, organised by the Goethe-Institut and funded, amongst other important funders, by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. In the project, 38 cities in Europe, are dealing with the question of freedom in Europe today and consider where or how this freedom might be in danger.
(You can find details on Freiraum here: http://www.artbox.gr/2017_freiraum.html).
Co-creation
My involvement in the project, engaged Artecitya and ArtBOX (a big Creative Arts Management company) with my work as an educator here at Bournemouth University. They became particularly interested in the Graduate Production work created by our Level 6 students in the BA Media Production Course and particularly in the Graduate Production Project Unit, which I lead.
During the unit, ArtBOX, who organise the 3rd Artecitya Art Science Technology Festival – THE NEW NEW, realised by the Thessaloniki International Fair – HELEXPO, with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, came to the university and students had a chance to present to them prototypes of their graduate production work.
As a result, two of our BAMP Level 6 graduating students and my own supervisees, Daniel Bell and George Fisher, whose work fulfilled the brief of this new media arts event, were selected and presented their work, along with mine, in this major international exhibition, THE NEW NEW, in Thessaloniki –Greece between September 8 -16 2018.
In the link below you can see video and pictures from the exhibition and read details of our artworks and involvement in this major international event: http://www.artbox.gr/AST-2018.html
The three artworks, Daniel Bell’s Spectra, George Fisher’s Echoes in Space and my own Air Free, were very warmly received by the visitors and first survey results from the even organisers suggest that the work was seen by over 10.000 people and that the exhibition was voted amongst the most popular events in this major international fair.
Echoes in Space – George Fisher
Echoes in Space consists of 8 unique soundscapes and visuals themed after each of the planets’ characteristics. These soundscapes are an artistic reimagining of the Voyager probes recordings, though scattered throughout are real excerpts from the original Voyager recordings. Echoes in Space is a blurring of reality and crafted content; it asks the viewer to consider the divide between reality and fiction. As well as to understand the difficulty in comprehending what is real and what is crafted when you find yourself confronted by the unknown, and to ask oneself if there truly is a difference?
Spectra – Daniel Bell
Spectra is an audio-visual installation focusing on the contrast and convergence between the human and natural worlds. Stemming from the artists philosophy that every new concept we face in life comes to us as a spectrum of information, and to fully comprehend new concepts we must appreciate each spectra in their entirety
Air Free Future
The first iteration of my artwork Air Free that was presented in Greece, is made up of interviews with members of local communities in Thessaloniki, responding to questions on isolation and freedom. As a response to the Freiraum brief, the artwork is now entering a second phase. During this phase, I will be visiting Carlisle (UK) in order to conduct further recordings with members of the local community there on the same themes, by bringing the recordings from Greece to them. These new recordings will then be used along with the recordings from Thessaloniki in a second iteration of the artwork, which will be presented in an exhibition organised by the Goethe-Institut in Berlin Germany, between 12-13 March 2019.
Air Free Impact
My own work for Freiraum, due to its themes and very large scale international reach, lends itself rather strongly for an impact study, which I am now working on. Particularly looking at how the work brings forth issues of isolation in Europe today by bringing the voices of local communities, including the voices of minorities, in communication with each other as well as with international audiences.
George Fisher, Echoes in Space, 2018
Daniel Bell, Spectra, 2018
Evi Karathanasopoulou, Air Free, 2018, (audience member listening).
The New New festival at TIF- Helexpo, Thessaloniki
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From Where I Stand: Karen Fowler-Watt with Fergal Keane
Last week I spent a day up in London at the BBC’s News Centre working with former colleague and BU’s honorary Doctor of Letters Fergal Keane OBE on his keynote for the Media Education Summit.
The conference – co-hosted by BU’s research centre CEMP and Hong Kong Baptist University – takes place in Hong Kong on November 1st-2nd, 2018. We invited Fergal – now the BBC’s Africa Editor – to speak, not only because of his by-line (he reported on the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997), but also because he thinks deeply about journalism, the challenges it faces and its vital role in a free society. He is known for his empathic approach to re-telling others’ stories – and respected for it, as a recent survey of practicing journalists by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) highlights.
As well as covering the major conflicts and events of the last 30 years, including the end of apartheid in South Africa and most notably the genocide in Rwanda, for which he was awarded Amnesty’s television award – Fergal has written several books. These range from reportage to memoir to meticulously researched histories: ‘Season of Blood’(1995) – his account of his experiences of reporting in Rwanda won the Orwell Prize in 1995. In his most recent work, Wounds, A Memoir of Love and War (2017), he returns to Ireland to recount his family’s involvement in the civil war and war of independence following the uprisings of 1916. All of his writing focuses on human stories, often examining why people kill for a cause and seeking to understand the nature of conflict.
21 years on from reporting the Hong Kong handover, in his MES keynote, Fergal will reflect on the state of journalism, from the perspective of a foreign correspondent and through the lens of reporting conflict He reminds us that journalists are first and foremost storytellers, who are trying to show audiences ‘what it is like to stand where I do and see the things I see’. His keynote surveys the current media landscape to consider the importance of accountability and responsibility, of freedom and diversity, the need to avoid ‘othering’ and falling prey to stereotypes and the dangers of false narratives, or ‘fake news’. As well as seeking truth and holding power to account, journalists need to challenge themselves, to have a sense of self. Speaking ‘From where I stand’, Keane asserts that, above all else, journalists must show empathy and humanity – as they tell the stories of others. We are looking forward to hearing more in Hong Kong!
Dr Karen Fowler-Watt, Senior Principal Academic, School of Journalism, English and Communication
- Keane, Fergal (1996).Season of Blood: Rwandan Journey. London: Penguin
- Keane, Fergal (1996).Letter to Daniel: Despatches from the Heart. London: Penguin
- Keane, Fergal (1999).Letters Home. London: Penguin.
- Keane, Fergal (1999).Dispatches From The Heart. London: Penguin
- Keane, Fergal (2001).A Stranger’s Eye (BBC Radio Collection). BBC Audiobooks.
- Keane, Fergal (2006).All of These People – a memoir. HarperPerennial. .
- Keane, Fergal (2010).Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944. HarperPress.
- Keane, Fergal (2017). Wounds: A Memoir of Love and War. HarperPress
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Dr. Miguel Moital appointed as external international examiner for the Portuguese HE Accreditation Agency
Dr. Miguel Moital, Principal Academic in Events Management within the Department of Events & Leisure, has been appointed international expert and external examiner for the Portuguese Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education – A3ES. The agency validates and re-validates programmes at graduate, postgraduate and Doctoral level.
Every 6 years accredited programmes have to request re-validation, with the process including a visit to the University by a panel made up of two national academics, an international expert, a student and a representative of the agency. The day long visit includes meetings with the dean, the quality assurance manager, the programme leadership team, the teaching team, and student and alumni representatives. Each visit also includes a working lunch with employers and institutional partners. The ethos of the exercise is to evaluate whether the course meets minimum quality standards as well as to engage in discussions of possible measures that could contribute to improving the quality of the programme.
Dr. Moital has recently carried out two programme revalidations in Porto and will travel again in November to undertake a further two in Lisbon.