Yearly Archives / 2019

CEL Co-Creation Award- BSc Marketing Students

Following a competitive bidding process, Emma Keene and Julia Karol (BSc Marketing, final year students) have been successfully awarded this year ‘staff student co-creation award’. Emma is awarded for the project’ The contour generation’ which looks into the negative impact of social media on millennial’s mental health. Emma is mentored by Samreen Ashraf.
Whereas Julia’s project, “The snob effect” looks into the impact of Instagram influencers on the consumption of luxury fashion”. Julia has worked under the supervision of Dr. Elvira Bolat.
Congratulations to both the winners!

Health Research Authority #MakeItPublic Campaign

You will hopefully have seen numerous blog posts regarding the Health Research Authority’s (HRA) commitment to research transparency. This was prompted in response to the  House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report last year on clinical trials transparency, which showed that nearly half of clinical trials fail to publish their results. In their report, the committee made a number of recommendations to the Health Research Authority in order to rectify the situation.

The HRA have recently launched a consultation on their new draft strategy for research transparency – #MakeItPublic. You can find out more about the campaign here on their website where there are also pages outlining their plans and visions for this area of improvement.

If you would like to have your say and be a part of the consultation, you can book onto one of their face-to-face workshops, or via their online survey.

Dr. Ann Luce elected to National Suicide Prevention Alliance Steering Group

Dr. Ann Luce, Principal Academic in Journalism and Communication in FMC was elected to the National Suicide Prevention Alliance Steering Group for a three-year term, starting June 2019.

The NSPA is a national alliance of public, private, voluntary and community organisations in England who take action to prevent suicide. Evolving out of the 2012 Call to Action for Suicide Prevention in England, NSPA’s Steering Group strategically influences the Government’s national strategy on preventing suicide, working closely with the Department of Health on both the National Strategy Advisory Group and the National Strategy Delivery Group, chaired by MP for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, Jackie Doyle-Price.  

As part of her new role, Dr. Luce will be working on the steering group providing strategic direction and leadership, monitoring finances and allocation of resources, as well as overseeing governance for the organisation.  

Dr. Luce, who is research and media lead on the Pan-Dorset Suicide Prevention Strategy Plan through the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group looks forward to representing the interests of the South West and Bournemouth University at a national level. 

Dr. Luce has been researching and working in the area of suicide prevention for the last 15 years. She has written two sets of media reporting guidelines for the World Health Organisation through her work on the World Media Task Force for the Prevention of Suicide and has also written blogging guidelines for Save.org, the USA’s largest mental health charity. She has consulted with governments in Wales, Norway and Australia to reduce suicide rates and has served as an expert panel member and worked with Australian Government, under the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Program to create #chatsafe, a young person’s guide for communicating safely online about suicide. 

She can be contacted at: aluce@bournemouth.ac.uk or on Twitter: @stann2

 

‘Reaching out’: Exploring Interdisciplinary Approaches to Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention in Young People

To mark World Suicide Prevention Day 2019, the Institute for Mental Health warmly invites you to attend:

‘Reaching out’: Exploring Interdisciplinary Approaches to Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention in Young People

Date: Friday 13 September 2019

Time: 09:30-16:00

Venue: Michael Tippet Room, Staff House, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT

Register now

The programme will feature keynote talks from researchers in Suicide and Self-Harm, Dr Jo Robinson, Dr Maria Michail and Dr Anna Lavis. You will also hear the latest in interdisciplinary research at the University of Birmingham from our Early Career Researchers and current PhD students.

Keynote speakers:

Professor Jo Robinson leads Orygen’s suite of research programmes around suicide prevention. She currently coordinates several research projects in collaboration with Australian and overseas universities. Professor Robinson’s work focuses on improving our knowledge about the best approaches to reduce suicide risk among young people. This includes developing programs, testing novel approaches that specifically target at-risk youth, and translating the research evidence into practice and policy. She has also been involved in the development of several government-commissioned community resources and has contributed to numerous advisory panels and expert committees.

Dr Maria Michail is a Senior Birmingham Fellow in the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. Dr Michail leads an established research programme on youth suicide prevention. She has significant experience working in primary care settings and collaborates closely with the UK Royal College of General Practitioners to develop and evaluate educational resources support GPs in the assessment and management of suicidality in primary care.

Dr Anna Lavis is a Lecturer in Medical Sociology and Qualitative Methods and a member of the Institute for Mental Health. Her work explores individuals’ and informal caregivers’ experiences and subjectivities of mental illness and distress across a range of social and cultural contexts, both offline and on social media. Her research to date has particularly focused on eating disorders, psychosis and self-harm, with theoretical emphases on gender, bodies and embodiment, concepts and ethics of care, and the intersections of mental health and material culture.

Full details to follow.

Please contact imh@contacts.bham.ac.uk for more information.

Opportunity to join the NERC Advisory Network

NERC is adapting its governance and advisory structures to provide increased agility and broader expertise. From September 2019, a new NERC Advisory Network will provide a retained, agile and flexible pool of expertise that can be drawn on for strategic or policy advice on specific issues. This new network will increase access to expertise across a wider remit, with the capacity to advise on interdisciplinary and cross-sector opportunities to support both sustained and agile action.

This is a great opportunity to develop your skills and experience in a new setting and work flexibly across discipline and industry to tackle the cross-sector challenges of the 21st century; and to support an excellent and sustainable UK environmental science community that seizes opportunities in UK Research & Innovation and international contexts.

NERC is now looking to appoint members to the NERC Advisory Network. The network will comprise a mix of researchers, from professors and early career researchers representing core environmental science disciplines with specific capabilities in training, capital / research infrastructure and business engagement, to users of research, including business and UK national government, and others including international partners and representative bodies (for further details, please see the person specification section in the application pack below).

The successful candidate will be appointed for a period of three years.

The closing date for the receipt of applications is 21 July 2019.

The member shortlisting is scheduled to take place in August 2019 and applicants will be informed of outcomes in August 2019.

Please note that they will not be holding interviews. The office will notify all candidates once the panel have made their selection.

Further information and details of how to apply can be found in the application pack below.

Application pack (PDF, 165KB)

Application form (Word, 77KB)

The total time commitment for NERC Advisory Network members is expected to be up to eight days per year; this will include meeting as a group annually at a network meeting / retreat, which members will be expected to attend.

NERC is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and welcomes applications from all. Applications from women, those with a disability, and members of minority ethnic groups who are currently under-represented, are especially encouraged.

Contact

If you are interested in applying and have any questions, please contact:

Gemma Davies
Science Committee Secretariat Officer
01793 411742

EPSRC are looking for new members for Early Career Forum in Engineering

EPSRC logoEPSRC is seeking applications from Early Career industrialists, academics and from individuals working in the third sector and government organisations to join their Early Career Forum in the Engineering theme.

The Engineering theme aims to identify and tackle fundamental engineering research challenges with the potential for lasting academic, social and economic benefit to the UK. These challenges are often inherently interdisciplinary, cutting both across EPSRC‘s portfolio and across the Research Councils more widely. Engaging with early career stakeholders from academia, industry and policymaking is a crucial part of achieving these aims, helping to set the direction for engineering research in the near future.

The Engineering Early Career Forum acts as an informal advisory stream to EPSRC. Members are advocates for EPSRC within the community, and provide a broad perspective of the needs and views of the engineering community, offering opinion across the breadth of the Theme.

They are looking to recruit around eight new members in this exercise, and they have a particular aspiration to improve the diversity of the Forum.

Further information on the Forum and its current membership is available on the Engineering Early Career Forum page.

Submitting an Application

The expression of interest form can be found at the bottom of this page.

Applicants should submit their form response by the deadline of 16:00 on 1 August 2019.

Please note: You will not receive a receipt of submission of the expression of interest.

Visit the EPSRC website for more information and the full call document.

BU Academic Targeted Research Scheme launch

BU2025 sets out ambitious plans and targets for research at BU. In support of these, an exciting new opportunity has been developed.

In recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to be launching the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. We will employ up to six new Senior Lecturers with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with one of six targeted research areas:

  • Technology for behavioural change
  • AI – with a focus on medical imaging
  • Evidence-based persuasive communication for public health
  • Immersive environments for disaster
  • Sustainability consumption and impact
  • Sport and Sustainability

We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.

To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.

To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.

Any enquiries about the scheme should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk. If your enquiry is about applying under one of the targeted research areas and you want to know more about this then please go to our website to find the academic contact for each area.

Loneliness

The government has announced the launch of a campaign to tackle the stigma of feeling alone. Loneliness Awareness Week began on Monday (17th June), led by Minister for Loneliness Mims Davies. The initiative is called “Let’s Talk Loneliness” and brings together The Marmalade Trust, the British Red Cross, the Co-op Foundation, the Campaign to End Loneliness, Mind, the Jo Cox Foundation and Public Health England.

The campaign hopes to end the stigma of feeling alone and create a culture of people feeling comfortable to talk about feeling alone. As part of Loneliness Awareness Week, the government has also announced it is partnering with the Co-op Foundation to match-fund a new £1.6 million initiative that supports activity in community spaces to promote social connections.

A new YouGov poll on loneliness was released on Monday, showing:

  • People in cities surveyed had a higher incidence of reporting feeling lonely than the UK overall (56% v. 44%).
  • 25% of adults have reported feeling lonely on weekends.
  • Over the weekend, the evenings are the most likely time for people to feel lonely (16%).

Minister for Loneliness Mims Davies said:

  • Loneliness is one of the biggest health challenges our country faces. It can affect anyone at any time and its impact is in line with smoking or obesity. But we can only begin to help one another if we feel able to understand, recognise and talk about it.
  • Let’s Talk Loneliness’ will encourage us all to engage with this issue, speak up without stigma, spot the signs of loneliness and help build more meaningful connections so people feel less isolated.

For the government press release, see here.

Find out more about the Government loneliness strategy, see here: Let’s Talk Loneliness campaign

Prestigious Visiting Professorship at Oxford

Congratulation to BU’s Prof. Tiantian Zhang who has been awarded at Visiting Professorship at the University of Oxford.  Her research area is cryopreservation of biological materials for medical applications.  Tiantian is now affiliated with the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research, which is the University of Oxford’s first overseas centre for advanced physical and engineering science research.

Well done!

Prof Edwin van Teijlingen

Photo of the week

The photo of the week series is a weekly series featuring photos taken by our academics and students for our Research Photography Competition, which provides a snapshot of some of the incredible research undertaken across the BU community.

This week’s photo of the week, ‘Digital Virtual, the Liminoid Space,’ is by Nurist Ulfa, who came second in this years research photography competition and is a PGR student in the faculty of Media and Communications.

Digital virtual space (Shields 2003) is a ‘liminoid’ zone (Turner 1982), the locale mediated by technology that combine aspects of materiality and imagination. This space is characterised by the removal of physical boundaries and the interwoven sociocultural norms, codes and rules, and thus offer freedom for individual to carry out various practices, adopt different subject positions and actualise fantasises and daydreams beyond what is possible in the materially real (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2010; 2012). In the context of Jilbab girl, the digital virtual space in video games has enabled them to move away from the physical, social, cultural and religious contexts of everyday life, facilitating experimentations of practices that are inconsistent with their Islamic beliefs, including wearing non-veiled fashions, consuming non-halal foods, performing excessive shopping and practicing non-Muslim lifestyles, including dating and flirting, etc.

Creative Research Methods

Tuesday 18th June 09:00 – 16:30 Talbot Campus

Let loose your inner creativity!

This workshop explores creative and arts-based research methods, research using technology, mixed methods, transformative research frameworks,  creative data analysis, and will involve designing research and preparing a presentation.

The aim of the workshop is to provide you with an increased awareness of the four pillars of creative research methods;  help you assess which methods may be most appropriate in your research practice; and give you increased confidence in the use of creative research methods .

More information and the link for bookings are on the staff intranet.

Dr. Helen Kara has been an independent research since 1999. She has a background of employment in the private, public, and voluntary sectors, and now undertakes commissioned research and evaluation, mainly for public and voluntary sector organisations and partnerships. Her research areas are social care, health, and the voluntary/third sector.