A few brave souls from HSC spent the May 18-19^th weekend advertising Bournemouth University Festival of Learning Poole High Street. Bracing the sun and…Then the rain…All in the name of research, to hand out flyers and booklets and most importantly make a bouncing ball using Borax, corn-starch and white glue; also some sherbet with icing sugar, sodium bicarbonate/baking soda and powdered citric acid flavoured with strawberry fruit crystals!

All this to engage with the public, including talking about research in Nepal, the day felt a bit like Waiting for the Monsoon in Poole! Using photos to make the passer-byes guess why a sickle is used during childbirth. The day made for a good dry run for our events that will take place during the 3-14 June 2013 BU’s Festival of Learning; with a 100 events to choose from mastering social media, see if you are a super-recogniser or join in the debate about renewable energy sources. Also some of the ‘touch’ questions on culture and health in low-income countries help with the reflective part of the thesis. Teaching and research if done hand in hand; helps ideas get ordered and formulate answers to those questions you hadn’t previously thought about. Finally, thanks goes to Dr. Jen Leamon for helping me format my event!

Some of what HSC is up to in June:

• Waiting for the monsoon: Nepal stories & photos; Monday 3 June, 3pm-8pm, Sheetal Sharma
• Research Degrees @ BU Sheetal Sharma; Wednesday 5 June, 3pm-6pm
• Intervention in childbirth: What’s wrong with letting women choose? Tuesday 11 June, 10am-12.30pm, convened by Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen
• Faith-based health promotion: Opportunities and barriers; Tuesday 4 June, 10.30am-1.30pm, convened by Edwin van Teijlingen, Liz Norton and Bill Merrington

More FoL info: http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/fol/

If you have a short case study that you would like to be included in the Guide, or have any questions, or suggestions for other inputs, please contact Dawn Nicholson (d.nicholson@mmu.ac.uk) as soon as possible. The completed Guide will be compiled for the end of June and so there is a very short deadline for any contributions of Friday 14 June”

Dr Dawn Theresa Nicholson
Senior Learning and Teaching Fellow

School of Science and the Environment
Manchester Metropolitan University
Chester Street,
Manchester M1 5GD”

The Australian version was launched in March 2011 and generates 85k unique visitors per month;  it has 15 commissioning editors and 5k contributors from universities and research. The UK project has the backing of 13 UK uni’s as well as the Wellcome Trust, Nuffield, HEFCE and the editorial team will be based at City University London.  Content from the site will be provided on an open access basis under a creative commons license.

There is clearly a large appetite from the public for reading about research given the Australian readership statistics so this will be a great route to publicise and highlight your research. Prof Barry Richards has already had an article feature on this site which you can read here.

These are hands-on sessions being run on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses or one-to-one.  To register your interest, please email the BRIAN team (BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk).

For ApSci, congratulations are due to Pippa Gillingham for her award from the Royal Entomological society, to David Parham for his contract with English Heritage for SWASH post-excavation, to Emilie Hardouin for his award from The Fisheries Society of the British Isles, to Mark Maltby for his consultancy with Central Bedfordshire Council, to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy with Barbara Farquharson, to Richard Stillman for his consultancy with Natural Resources Wales, and to Miles Russell for his short course introducing Roman Britain.  Good luck to Luciana Esteves for her application to the Royal Society, to Paola Palma for her contract to English Heritage, to Anita Diaz and Demetra Andreou for their individual applications to the European Commission and also to Anita for her application to the EU Lifelong Learning Programme, to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy to the Forestry Commission, to Fiona Coward for a short course introducing World Prehistory, and to Kate Welham for a short course introducing Archaeology.

Congratulations to the Business School for Andy Mullineux’s AHRC award on responsibilities, ethics and the financial crisis.  Good luck to Yasmin Sekhon for her British Academy application, to Ruth Towse and Maurizio Borghi for their joint application to AHRC, as well as Maurizio’s second application to AHRC, to Hiroko Oe for an application to the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, to Fabian Homberg for his application to the SWIFT Institute on gender diversity in the finance industry, to Isaac Ngugi and Gordon Liu for their application to ESRC, and also to Juliet Memery, Dawn Birch, Chris Chapleo and Jeff Bray for their application to ESRC on the perceptions of the High Street retailing experience.

For DEC, congratulations to Hongnian Yu for his successful European Commission award for RABOT, and to Marcin Budka for his consultancy with Western Union Financial Services Inc.  Good luck to Sarah Bate and Nicola Gregory for their application to the British Academy on the role of eye movements in the recognition of moving faces, also to Jane Elsley and Andrew Johnson for their individual applications to the British Academy, to Christopher Richardson for his short course on Digital Economy and Assurance for UKUD International Education Consultants, to Simon Thompson and Biao Zeng for their contract to Chongqing University, to Katherine Appleton for her application to The Humane Research Trust, to Siamak Noroozi, Philip Sewell and Mihai Dupac for their application to Remedi.  There were a number of applications to the European Commission, and so good luck goes to Hongnian Yu for his two applications, as well as Zulfiqar Khan for his, and Abdelhamid Bouchachia and Hammadi Nait-Charif for theirs.

For HSC, congratulations are due to Keith Brown for his KTP with Dorset County Council, to Caroline Ellis-Hill for her short course Masterclass on action research, to Jane Murphy and Joanne Holmes for their short course on nutrition for older people living in the community, to Clive Andrewes for his short course from the Strategic Health Authority, to Edwin Van Teijlingen for his short course for a Masterclass in interviewing in semi-structured interviews, to Sarah Hean for her contract from Offender Health South West, and to Anthea Innes for her contract with the Alzheimer’s Society. Good luck to Jonathan Parker for his application to the British Academy, to Rosie Read for her application to NORFACE, to Vanora Hundley, Zoe Sheppard and Jennifer Leamon for their application to National Institute for Health Research, to Peter Thomas for his contract to Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, and to Les Todres and Caroline Ellis-Hill for their contract to the Burdett Trust for Nursing for a strategy for improving ‘what matters to people’ to enhance dignity in care.

Congratulations to the Media School for Liam Toms and Mike Molesworth for their individual consultancies with Work Research Limited, and to Janice Denegri-Knott for her two consultancy contracts with Work Research Limited, to Laura Hampshaw and Matt Northam for their short course with the RBCH on WordPress, to Sofronis Efstathiou for a conference with SKILLSET, to Stephanie Farmer for her consultancy contracts with the National Trust and Grapevine Telecom Ltd, and to Heather Savigny for an annual conference for Media and Politics Specialist Group.

For the School of Tourism, congratulations go to Nicky Pretty for her contract with Godolphin Company, to Crispin Farbrother for his short course in wines, to Lisa Stuchberry for her contracts with Bournemouth and Poole College, Borough of Poole, and Holburne Museum, to Jon Hibbert for his contract with Liz Lean PR Ltd, and to Richard Gordon for his conference on International Disaster Management.  Good luck to Keith Hayman and Simon Thomas for their short course to Hall & Woodhouse Ltd, to Nicole Ferdinand and Mary Beth Gouthro for their contract to King’s College London to research Carnival Futures: Notting Hill Carnival 2020, to Neelu Seetaram and Stephen Page for their application to the British Academy, to Miguel Moital for his application to the European Commission.

Finally, congratulations to Colleen Harding in HR for her award from the Leadership Foundation for HE for transformative approaches to career progression for academic staff aspiring to leadership roles, and good luck to Bogdan Gabrys, Hongnian Yu, Dimitrios Buhalis, Ross Hill, Keith Phalp, Ben Parris, Kate Welham, Alexander Pasko and Dean Patton for their EPSRC application for a Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Science.

BA168 landed in Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I was sponsored by Santander Fusion Investment Fund and would visit 4 top China Universities in five days.

In order to board a high-speed train to Beijing, I only had five hours to have a shower, unpack my luggage, eat a Chinese lunch and then drive through Shanghai, a metropolitan city with a population of 20- million. The distance is less than from Bournemouth to Brockenhurst. The traffic is as same as Oxford circus and Regent Street.

China High Speed Train

Mission nearly impossible. But I made it. With the help of a Chinese high-speed train, I travelled 914 miles in less than 6 hours and arrived in Beijing in time. Therefore I drank with my high school classmates who hosted me with rice wine from our hometown.

In the next morning, I visited Renmin University, a Chinese equivalent to LSE, and gave a talk in the psychology department. I showed them the photos of Bournemouth University with beach and sunshine. I briefly mentioned my research. The discussion was successful and fruitful. I met Prof Du Peng (surname first in Chinese way), the university research director, and Prof Hu Ping, the deputy head of psychology department. They hosted me a delicious lunch dinner, not sandwich and tea. It was a Jiangxi province cuisine, which is famous for its unique and contrastive spicy taste.

The President Office in Peking University

After saying blesses and goodbye to my kind hosts, I walked back to Peking University. Before moving to England I had spent eight years in Peking University. This was the second time I came back in the last ten years. I wandered in its campus which was crowded with classical Chinese architectures and modern cars. There was no meeting arranged for me.

I ate with eight friends in a Japanese restaurant that night. All of them have studied or worked in the UK before. Namely they are haigui in Chinese, which means coming back from overseas. We talked about our life in England and I listened to their stories in Beijing.
On the third day in Beijing, I met a university friend in another glamorous restaurant. I met her boss. All three graduated from the same department in Peking University. She was keen to discuss potential academic projects with me. I was sure Heston had reported this restaurant in his TV chef programme for its famous roasted Peking duck. However I did not eat up all fascinating food and jumped in a taxi as I was rushing to catch my second high-speed train to Xian.

However I immediately dropped the taxi, as I saw the traffic jam ahead and chose the underground. For the sake of my wise judgment, I boarded in time again and travelled about 750 miles in 6 hours.

The destination was Xian, the ancient Chinese capital in Han and Tang

View from my window: Beijing Fusion

dynasties. My friends picked me up in its grand station; triple the size of Paddington station. They u-turned on the motorway and changed the lanes without signal. They also invited me to smoke in the BMW. I rejected with a smile but enjoyed such nostalgic feeling and manner which has been missing in my life for so long. Finally they sent me to eat at a street full of BBQ stalls and drink unlimited beer until midnight.

I was fine and sobered up the next morning. We had time to eat at a local noodle restaurant. We ordered oil-pouring noodle, a famous local cuisine. My friends asked a waitress for a favour to replace pepper sauce with soy sauce. Unexceptionally they were snubbed by the waitress. Poor southern Chinese we are. I am different. I am a spicy eater because of living in North China for a long time. The waitress appreciated my bravery and taste indeed.

Then my friends drove me to Shaanxi Normal University, a prestigious national university. I was welcome by Prof Wang Yong Hui. Prof Wang is the deputy head of psychology school.

To be continued…..

The awards recognise outstanding outreach work carried out by both young scientists and established researchers to inform, enthuse and engage the public. The competition is open to bioscience researchers from UK universities and institutes and there are two categories of award:

New Researcher – Prize £750

Established Researcher – Prize £1,500

Further details are available on the website and the deadline is midnight 31 May 2013

www.societyofbiology.org/scicomm

Contact Karen Patel karenpatel@societyofbiology.org directly with any questions.

Celia Beckett, is a HSc – KTP Associate based in Five Rivers Child Care Ltd.  The subject of the paper is her pilot study that is identifying ways of improving the assessment of the psychological needs of children who are looked after in residential care. Working with other leading experts in this area, she is hoping that the scheme will result in improved interventions and outcomes for looked after children. If successful with future funding, Dr Beckett is hoping to roll this scheme out further for children in foster placements and to evaluate its effectiveness. This project is addressing the standards identified in the NICE guidelines for improving outcomes for this group of children, who are at very high risk of emotional and behavioural difficulties.

We wish Celia the best of luck with her presentation at the conference!

The conference will be held at the University of Brighton on Thursday 13th June – if you would like to attend, please book your place via the University of Brighton’s website.

His keynote paper was entitled ‘The Retrospective Stage: late career fiction and autobiography.’ In it, he opened up the concept of ‘contemporaneity’ in literary and cultural studies to critical interrogation, arguing that many of the most canonical figures in contemporary cultural production are chiefly associated with work produced years, or even decades, earlier. The effect of this is a recurring pattern whereby cultural figures often receive less critical acclaim for work produced late in their career than earlier on. Perhaps this is by definition true: we are prone to think of contemporary culture as something current rather than something coming to an end.

Using the examples of A.S. Byatt’s Children’s Book and Graham Swift’s Wish You Were Here Dix used the keynote to argue that a number of prominent contemporary British writers have reached a kind of retrospective stage in their careers, symbolically returning to the styles, themes, and techniques of their earlier work. He further argued that the process of having earlier become identified with particular characteristics gives rise to a conflict between originality and habit beyond which the individual writer or cultural producer cannot travel. As a result of this conflict, the kind of fiction produced at the late career stage becomes profoundly meta-fictive and self-referential so that in effect throughout this stage the writers are always returning to and remaking the same work for which they had become celebrated at the earlier stages as if for the first time.

It is anticipated that this paper will be the start of a broader project on the idea of lateness, the belated and contemporaneity in contemporary cultural studies.