Yearly Archives / 2019

The second wave of UKRI Fund for International Collaboration launched

The second wave of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Fund for International Collaboration (FIC) has been announced on Friday 9 August 2019. The Fund for International Collaboration aims to enhance the UK’s excellence in research and innovation through global engagement, forging new bilateral and multilateral research and innovation programmes with global partners.

The thirteen partnerships, supported with £60 million from UKRI and at least £45 million in matched partner funding with additional in-kind support, will see UK researchers working with collaborators in ten countries, including the USA, Canada, Japan and India.

Announcement and summaries of programmes are available on UKRI web portal; research topics include:

  • The Changing North Atlantic Ocean and its Impact on Climate (partner country – USA; lead/partner UKRI council – NERC)
  • Understanding and adapting to a changing environment (Canada; NERC)
  • Next generation transdisciplinary international research collaborations in Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (USA, Israel, China; BBSRC)
  • Diabetes Partnership Initiative (Canada; MRC)
  • Healthy Ageing Flagship Challenge (China; ESRC, Innovate UK)
  • Built Environment and Prevention Research Scheme (Australia; MRC)
  • Joint Call on Artificial Intelligence and Society (Japan; ESRC, AHRC)
  • Collaboration on Artificial Intelligence: Building competitive, resilient economies and societies (Canada; ESRC, AHRC, EPSRC, MRC)
  • Globalink Doctoral Exchange Scheme (Canada; NERC on behalf of seven UKRI councils)
  • Digital transformation in humanities research (Ireland; AHRC)  and a few other topics

Specific calls are announced and more details provided by dedicated Research Councils. Announcement also contains summaries of the FIC Wave 1 projects funded through the UKRI-JSPS call.

For further support and assistance please refer to your RDS research facilitator.

AHRC Peer Review College call for nominations

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is seeking nominations for new members to be appointed to its Peer Review College (PRC).

Peer review lies at the heart of the AHRC’s operations, and they are fully committed to the principle of peer review for the assessment of applications to our schemes and programmes. PRC members provide expert quality reviews of applications within their areas of expertise, which inform the AHRC’s decision making processes. Members can also be called upon to sit on assessment or moderation panels. As well as making an important contribution to the AHRC’s peer review processes, the experience gained by membership of the College provides benefits to individuals, departments and higher education institutions.

This is an open call for membership to the AHRC Peer Review College; nominees can also apply for membership to any of our individual colleges in addition to the Academic College. The Call for Nominations is open to any organisation that has eligible staff (including organisations from the charitable, third and private sector) and who can supply eligible nominators.

The nomination process must be centrally managed and supported by the institution (not the nominee), with all nominations being submitted by institutions rather than individual nominees.

Please refer to the PRC Recruitment 2019 Call Document (PDF, 282KB) and the FAQ Document (PDF, 182KB) for further information and application guidance. Whilst the deadline for nominations is 16:00 on 15 October 2019, the internal BU deadline is 8th October 2019. Nominees must create a Je-S account to complete the process and nominators must complete their case for support via the nominee. Once this is completed, Jo Garrad, RDS Funding Development Manager, will submit all nominations via the SmartSurvey, uploading one PDF document comprising of the CV, publication list (from the nominee), and Case for Support (from the nominator).

If you are considering applying to the AHRC peer review college than please make me (Jo Garrad) aware of your intentions by 25th September 2019. I will be happy to discuss this further with anyone who is interested in applying. Being an external peer reviewer comes with many benefits, such as networking with peers, direct contact with a funder, and visibility of world-leading research applications to name but a few.

If successful, College members will be appointed for one term (4 years) commencing 1 January 2020 and ending 31 December 2023.

New PRC members are required to attend an induction session. Induction training will run from January-March 2020 and invitations will be sent to successful nominees during December.

RDS Residential Research Retreat 26-28 November 2019 – Deadline Friday 16th August

Do you have a great idea for a research project?

Are you planning to apply for research funding?

Do you need a dedicated period of quality time with support to develop your research project?

Dillington House, Somerset

26 – 28 November 2019

Deadline for Applications: FRIDAY 16 AUGUST

The Residential Research Retreat provides protected time with expert coaching and support for you to develop your research proposal to the standard required to be competitive in seeking high quality research funding.

Please apply by 16th August here

And don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

Newton and GCRF funding opportunities

The UUKi International Partnerships team have recently launched a new GCRF funding bulletin which sits alongside the existing Newton Funding bulletin.

If you haven’t already signed up to receive the GCRF funding bulletin, you can do so here: GCRF bulletin sign up.

Please also feel free to share the link to subscribe with your collaborators and partners in GCRF countries of focus too.

UUKi sub-Saharan Africa Policy Network update

UUKi sub-Saharan Africa Policy Network

The next UUKi sub-Saharan Policy Network will take place at Woburn House, London on Wednesday 18 September, 1400 – 1630. The meeting will include a focus upon student recruitment in the region and will also include an update from the HMG cross Whitehall Africa Strategy team. Other speakers will be confirmed over the next couple of weeks. If you haven’t already, please do sign up via Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/uuki-sub-saharan-africa-network-tickets-63104694841

 

RDS Research for Social Care Roadshow

The NIHR will be investing in future social care research with annual funding calls via the Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme.  The next call is planned to launch in September and will follow a similar format to the first call, however to give it a clearer social care identity it will be launched as Research for Social Care (RfSC). The RfSC call will have a budget of £3m and further information will be released shortly.

The Research Design Service (RDS) is running an event in Bristol on 30th September which offers an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of RfSC funding. Attendance at these events is FREE and refreshments will be provided.

More details can be found on the NIHR website or on our RDS South West website.

And don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

BU Research Showcase

Flourishing with Fusion is the theme for this year’s research showcase for Mid-Career Academics.

This event will explore how fusion works in practice, and how engaging with research at BU can enhance your career. It will showcase the exciting work of a number of BU academics, and there will be a panel for Q & A.

POSTPONED from Wednesday 4th September  – a new date will be announced shortly. Contact RKEDF for more information.

The Research Impact Fund is open for applications for 2019/20 – strand 3

Demonstrating impact is becoming an increasingly normal part of academic life, with changes in the external environment underpinning the need to show how research is making a difference beyond academia. As well as forming a significant part of a university’s REF submission, impact pathways are often included as a routine part of funding applications.

In order to support impact development at Bournemouth University, an impact fund was established in spring 2019, overseen by the Research Impact Funding Panel. The first call for applications was launched in March 2019 for the remainder of the 2018/19 academic year. This call is now closed.

For 2019/20, the Research Impact Fund has been split into three strands:

  1. To support the development of new research partnerships and networks, to lay the groundwork for future research projects (£17,500) – now closed.
  2. To provide support for emerging impact from existing underpinning research (£17,500) – now closed.
  3. For the development of impact case studies for REF2021 (£15,000) – open.

We are pleased to announce that the fund is now open for applications for strand 3.

Eligibility

 This strand is open only to those developing an impact case study for REF2021. It is expected that those who are applying for the fund will have previously submitted a draft case study for review through mock REF exercise. If you are yet to submit a draft case study, but believe you have a potential impact case study for REF2021, please speak to your Faculty Impact Officer in the first instance:

 Application process

To apply, please read the application form and policy document. To apply, please read the application form and guidance. Applications must be submitted by your Impact Champion or UoA Lead to researchimpact@bournemouth.ac.uk by Friday 20 September.

 If you have any questions about your application please email either Rachel Bowen (for HSS or FM queries) or Genna del Rosa (for FMC or SciTech queries).

You can also seek advice from the following RDS colleagues when developing your application:

BU’s Research Principles

Putting the Research Impact Fund into strategic context, under BU2025, the following funding panels operate to prioritise applications for funding and make recommendations to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC).

There are eight funding panels:

  1. HEIF Funding Panel
  2. GCRF Funding Panel
  3. Research Impact Funding Panel
  4. Doctoral Studentship Funding Panel
  5. ACORN Funding Panel
  6. Research Fellowships Funding Panel
  7. Charity Support Funding Panel
  8. SIA Funding panel

Please see further announcements regarding each initiative.

These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles.  Specifically, but not exclusively, regarding the Research Impact Funding Panel, please refer to:

  • Principle 5 – which sets of the context for such funding panels,
  • Principle 6 and Outcome 9 – which recognises the need for interdisciplinarity and the importance of social science and humanities (SSH).

 

Open Access stories – Open Access in developing countries

Sometimes Open Access is viewed as an administrative requirement for the REF, but it is more than that: it is a way to ensure that research outputs are available to the wider world, even in developing countries, where universities cannot always afford  prohibitively-expensive subscription costs.

For example, Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, alongside other BU academics, has built close research links with Nepal. This has resulted in his collaboration on several papers and projects with Nepalese academics and health professionals. He gives an insight into access to research in Nepal in this article. This blog post is an excellent glimpse into the world of academic publishing and Open Access in Nepal.

Organisations such as INASP or AmeliCA are providing a platform for scholarly publishing and Open Access in Africa, Oceania, Asia and Latin America, to ensure that research from those regions is available.

This shows the wider implication of Open Access to the world-wide community.

More information about Open Access can be found in this library guide.

Remember that your faculty library team is always happy to help you with any enquiries about Open Access.

Jose

HSS Faculty Librarian

Emerald Literati Highly Commended award for BU paper

Former PhD student, Dr Andy Harding, now at Lancaster University, and BU Professors Jonathan Parker, Sarah Head and Ann Hemingway have been highly commended for their paper Supply-side review of the UK specialist housing market and why it is failing older people published in Housing, Care and Support.

As a result, this paper has been made available on OpenAccess on the Emerald website for the next six months.

ECREA Doctoral Summer School 2019 | Report by FMC PGR Daniel Hills

Daniel Hills (FMC PGR) has recently returned from the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School. This year it was held at Tartu University, Estonia between 9th to 16th July. 


Taken from the ECREA website, the summer school brings together members of the European research community to this summer school in order to debate contemporary issues in media, communication and cultural studies. The summer school aims to provide a supportive international setting where doctoral students can present their ongoing work, receive feedback on their PhD-projects from international experts and meet students and academics from other countries, establishing valuable contacts for the future.

It is a full on conference including a variety of back-to-back workshops, lectures, group feedback sessions and consultation every day for 8 days, and is extremely intense. To qualify for this conference, I had to supply an initial 500 word abstract of my PhD, and following being successfully shortlisted for the next round, produce an expanded 3,000 word introduction and summary of my research project, as well as a 10 minute presentation summarising my research plans as they were prior to the summer school.

There were 40 delegates selected and I was lucky enough to be one of them. The conference commenced at 09:30 on the 8th with a half day meet and greet so we could all get to know one another and our personal areas of research. This was followed by lunch and then into an afternoon of interactive workshops taking us to 6PM. This was followed by a welcome drinks party where we could discuss our first day over a glass of wine and provided a great opportunity to bond with my new peers. Over the following days, we would cover a further 16 workshops, 5 lectures and most importantly for me, individual feedback sessions. Our large group was broken into 2 groups or 14 and 1 or 13, and over the course of the work were give an hour dedicated to presenting our research (10 minutes) maximum and then to receive a structured feedback from lecturers and peers whom had already read my 3,000 word paper. This delivered invaluable feedback for me and gave me a plethora of new perspectives which I had hitherto not considered.

I gained a great deal of insights, useful techniques and a re-ignition of enthusiasm towards my research throughout the 8 days, and would encourage anybody whom is more than a year into their research to apply for the 2020 version. I graduated with 10 ECTS points on the final day, but more importantly new-found knowledge and a new direction to progress with my PhD, and a whole lot of new friends and peers. I am planning on writing a paper with one of my new friends whom is interested in a similar field to my own. All in all, the ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School has been one of the most useful academic experiences of my career to date.


Daniel Hills is a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, and is focusing his research in advertising planning and practice theory, aiming to complete in 2020.