Yearly Archives / 2022

Prof John Oliver appointed to Horizon & Foresight Scanning Board

Prof John Oliver has been appointed to the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology’s new Advisory Board responsible for Horizon & Foresight Scanning. The new board has been set up in response to an inquiry into the effectiveness and influence of the Select Committee system by the 2017–19 House of Commons Liaison Committee.

The advisory board aims to improve the efficacy of horizon and foresight scanning processes to inform the identification of Areas of Research Interest (ARI). ARIs are lists of policy issues or questions used by Select Committees, parliamentarians and by parliamentary staff to produce more research evidence in certain topics to scrutinize the government and to inform future policy work.

The advisory board will also be responsible for developing ‘futures thinking’ capabilities by developing training opportunities and resources for parliamentarians and staff to enable them to think more long-term and manage the uncertainty in policy-making.

Prof John Oliver commented that “the world is becoming more and more uncertain with Covid-19, Brexit, Russia-Ukraine War and global economic uncertainty. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund’s World Uncertainty Index recently reported that global uncertainty has reached “unprecedented levels” in recent years. This makes horizon and foresight scanning more of a priority for many policy-makers and organisations as it helps them manage the uncertainty around future dynamics”.

This new role builds on Prof Oliver’s previous scenario planning research and work with the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology and the House of Commons.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding two monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the second Tuesday of every other month. You can register here for your preferred date:

13th September 2022

8th November 2022

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you. Previous recordings can be found here if you can’t attend a session.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

How and why did TV’s retention crisis come to be framed as a recruitment problem?

There’s currently a talent crisis in the television industry. As I’ve previously described in this blog, media careers have a ‘shelf-life’ with more experienced talent tending to move on and up elsewhere. This has long been the case, but what’s new is that since 2015 there has been a massive increase in demand for content. It’s sometimes called ‘the Netflix effect’.  Suddenly the shortage of experienced skilled workers has been exposed as never before.

In the research we publish this week, Christa van Raalte and I have examined in depth the way in which a problem of attrition within the television industry came to be framed as a problem of recruitment. We explore how and why this came about, despite the implausibility of the idea that getting more young people to come and work in the film and television industries (however vast their numbers) could compensate for the attrition of experienced workers – an idea that has taken root and informed industry policy. Our aim is to help refocus the discussion on the reasons why people are leaving the industry, and the practical measures that need to be taken to nurture careers beyond entry-level.  We also highlight the dangers inherent in policy research where there is a gravitational pull for evidence-based policy to be overridden by policy-based evidence.

Richard Wallis and Christa van Raalte, C., 2022. Britain’s Got Talent? A Critique of the “Talent Pipeline” Crisis in the UK’s Film and Television Industries. Media Industries, 9(1).

 

Video abstract: Britain’s Got Talent? A Critique of the “Talent Pipeline” Crisis in the UK’s Film and Television Industries.

HRV and Traumatic Injury- systematic review protocol published in PloS One by MSPH researcher

Rabeea Maqsood is a first year PhD student within the department of Medical Sciences and Public Health. She is exploring the role of serious battlefield traumatic injury and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) in military veterans and personnel in a collaborative project between BU and the ADVANCE study, UK (For more: https://www.advancestudydmrc.org.uk/)

Recently, as a part of her PhD thesis, Rabeea’s study protocol on traumatic injuries and HRV has been published in PloS One with open access. The article has been downloaded and viewed hundreds of times since its publication. Here’s the link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0273688

Watch this space for the full systematic review which will address the evidence gap in the field of HRV and combat trauma research.

ProGRess is now live!

Following our recent ProGRess is imminent message, we are pleased to announce ProGRess is now live. The new improved online system replacing ResearchPAD is now available to postgraduate researchers (PGRs), supervisors, and administrators.

Accessing ProGRess for the first time

You can access ProGRess via: https://progress.bournemouth.ac.uk/ or by scrolling across and clicking on the ProGRess logo in the grey bar at the bottom of the intranet home page.

We recommend you save this page to your ‘favourites’ or ‘bookmarks’ for quick, easy access in future.

  • PGRs (including BU staff undertaking a research degree) please login using your student account (e.g. a1234567) and password.
  • BU staff who are supervisors or administrators of research degrees please use your normal staff login and password.
  • External Supervisors please use your personal email address to login. You will then be prompted to set a password.

For PGRs and BU staff, if you need assistance logging in, please contact the IT Service Desk. For external supervisors, please contact ProGRess@bournemouth.ac.uk  

Helping you make the most of ProGRess

If you need help, there are lots of places to find it:

  • ProGRess User Guide – a guide which gives an overview of the system and provides you with support and assistance if you need it.
  • ProGRess Q&A Document – answers to common questions you may have about the new system.
  • Attend a drop-in session with a member of the Doctoral College designed to provide an overview of the system and help resolve any ProGRess queries you may have.
  • For technical support accessing or using ProGRess, you should contact the IT Service Desk.
  • For all other queries, contact ProGRess@bournemouth.ac.uk and a member of the Doctoral College team will be able to assist.

Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the ProGRess launch runs smoothly, if you experience a problem, please log it by emailing ProGRess@bournemouth.ac.uk. That way, any issues can be addressed which will help improve the user experience both now and in the future.

We hope you enjoy using the new system. Please email any feedback you may have to ProGRess@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Kind regards,

The Doctoral College

Upcoming Research Impact Workshops

There are three Research Impact training workshops coming up over the next few weeks:

Anatomy of a case study is a 2-hour in-person workshop in Fusion  – 8th September, 13:00-15:00.

In this workshop we will be examining REF impact case study examples from REF2021 and identifying what makes an excellent case study. There will also be an opportunity to start building your own impact case study.

Getting Started with Research Impact: what is it? is an online workshop – 16th September, 10:00-11:00.

We will look at the impact basics – what research impact is and why it matters in funding applications, for the REF and for your research career. You will find out how to turn your research into impact and how your research can benefit society/the economy.

Evidencing Impact is online – 12th October 14:00-15:00.

We will look at how to evidence your research impact – what counts as evidence, how to find creative ways of getting it, what qualitative and quantitative evidence is needed for a REF impact case study and how to gather and store it.

You can sign up for these sessions here: RKEDF – Workshop Booking Form (office.com)

 

 

 

 

ProGRess going live – Wednesday 31 August

Following our recent ProGRess launch imminent message we are pleased to announce ProGRess will go live on Wednesday 31 August. The new improved online system replacing ResearchPAD will be available to postgraduate researchers (PGRs), supervisors, and administrators.

When will the change from ResearchPAD to ProGRess happen?

IT Services will migrate all user data from ResearchPAD to ProGRess on Tuesday 30 August. This date has been selected to limit any potential impact and IT Services will work diligently to make the transition as smooth as possible. Once all migration and archive activities have been successfully completed, ResearchPAD will be permanently decommissioned.

What will happen during the migration?

  • ResearchPAD will be unavailable from 4pm on Friday 26 August.
  • All existing user data will be transferred to ProGRess.
  • ProGRess will go live on Wednesday 31 August and you will be able to access the system using your usual log-in credentials.

What do I need to do?

  • Prior to the migration we recommend you download and save any data you may need during the migration period, to your own device, so you can continue to access it while the migration is taking place.

What next?

Please keep an eye on your email. We will notify you once the migration has been completed and ProGRess is live. On launch day, we will provide you with important information including details on how to access the system, user guides and drop-in sessions.

In the interim, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Doctoral College.

 

Kind regards

Doctoral College Team

NERC Pushing the Frontiers (previously Standard Grants) – internal competition launched

NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. As the standard grant scheme has been superseded, demand management measures will be applied to the Pushing the Frontiers scheme only. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures available here.

BU has been capped at one application per Pushing the Frontiers round. An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.

BU process

BU has a process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Pushing the Frontiers round. This takes the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available round is estimated to be in January 2023. The deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 30 September 2022.  The EoI form, BU policy for NERC Demand Management Measures and process for selecting an application can be found here: I:\RDS\Public\NERC Demand Management.

Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RDS and will work closely with Research Facilitators and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Applicants will be expected to make use of External Application Reviewers.

RDS Contacts

Please contact Lisa Andrews, RDS Research Facilitator – andrewsl@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.

Online training opportunity: Writing for The Conversation

Would you like to build a media profile and take your research to a global audience?

Find out more about writing for The Conversation and have the chance to pitch your article ideas to one of their editors in an online training session on Thursday 15 September.

The Conversation is a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists.

The training session will run by one of The Conversation’s Editors and will take place from 2pm – 3pm over Zoom.

It is open to all BU academics and PhD candidates who are interested in finding out more about working with The Conversation.

Learn how to consider the news potential of your expertise, make your writing accessible and engaging to a diverse range of audiences, and pitch your ideas.

The session will be followed by a limited number of one-to-one slots from 3pm – 4pm where you can chat with the editor about working with The Conversation and share your research and article ideas.

Slots are 15 minutes and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. To request a slot, please email newsdesk@bournemouth.ac.uk

Why write for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a great way to share research and informed comment on topical issues. Academics work with editors to write pieces, which can then be republished via a creative commons license.

Since we first partnered with The Conversation, articles by BU authors have had over 8.5 million reads and been republished by the likes of The i, Metro, and the Washington Post.

Book your place via Eventbrite.

Funding Development Briefings schedule from September 2022

Funding Development Briefings are back from the 14th of September 2022.

What are Funding Development Briefings?

Each session will cover the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Sessions will also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU.   Sessions will be on Wednesdays, from 12 pm for half-an-hour. The same link can be used each week to join here.
Date Spotlight Funding Opportunity Briefing Research Facilitator Lead
14/09/2022 Innovate UK SMART Grants Innovation & Infrastructure
21/09/2022 NERC Standard Grants Life Sciences
28/09/2022 23/24 Horizon Europe Work Programmes EU & International
05/10/2022 ESRC Humanities & Social Sciences
12/10/2022 EPSRC Innovation & Infrastructure
19/10/2022 Wellcome Trust Life Sciences
26/10/2022 HALF TERM
02/11/2022 MSCA Overview of Actions EU & International
09/11/2022 AHRC Humanities & Social Sciences
16/11/2022 Regional Funding Innovation & Infrastructure
23/11/2022 NIHR Overview Life Sciences
30/11/2022 Horizon Europe Societal Challenges EU & International
07/12/2022 Leverhulme Trust Humanities & Social Sciences
14/12/2022 KTPs (Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Managers) Innovation & Infrastructure
Sessions will be recorded and made available after the session for those who cannot attend.

Interview participants needed for a PGR study: Sustainable rural tourism travel in Bali

Have you visited Bali, Indonesia? If so, we would like to invite you to participate in a Bournemouth University research study which aims to analyse how rural travel in Bali can be made more sustainable.

We are looking for adults who have visited Bali at least once in the last 5 years (2017 or after).

Whilst your answers will be kept anonymous, you will be asked about your own experience and opinion on rural travel in Bali.

For more information or to sign up, please contact Rama Permana on rpermana@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

Pokhara workshop on academic writing 2022

This week from Sunday till Tuesday (21-23 August) Hotel Mount Kailash Resort hosts a three-day writing and publishing workshop for academics and researchers.  The workshop is led by Dr. Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen all three from Bournemouth University in the south of England, Dr. Emma Pitchforth from the University of Exeter in the west of England, and Dr. Rashmee Rajkarnikar from the Central Department of Economics at Tribhuvan University.  Shovita highlighted: “As sociologist and a female researcher I think it is very important to address gender issues in all part of society, including academic writing and publishing.”

This workshop targeting young academics in and around Pokhara and it is funded by The British Academy.  The project builds research capacity of early career researchers researching gender in Nepal-based higher education institutions by improving their chances of getting published in international journals in English.   In Nepal the workshop is further supported by Social Science Baha and Green Tara Nepal.  The workshop centres around the 23 chapters of the textbook ‘Academic Writing and Publishing in Health and Social Sciences’ was published this year by Social Science Baha and Himal Books in Kathmandu. 

New cross faculty HEIF project underway: exploring the narratives of childbirth

A social marketing perspective on current narratives of childbirth choices and their influence on women’s views and maternity service use.

 

This cross-faculty HEIF-funded project aims to explore the current narratives of home birth choices found in social media and provide understanding of how knowledge exchange could influence them.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in the U.K recommend that pregnant women are offered choices regarding birth settings. This might be home, free-standing midwifery unit, alongside midwifery unit or an obstetric unit.  However, there is evidence that many women are only familiar with the obstetric unit as a birthing option. In the recent national survey only 47% of women had enough information to help them decide where to have their baby and 20% of women were not offered any choices. Although home birth has been described as positive and fulfilling, women are offered limited choices for a home birth.

Our study focuses on societal knowledge regarding place of birth. It is suggested that the negative portrayal and absence of other birth settings options apart from obstetric units in  the media and in society has framed childbirth as medical and has offered women limited choices Current research shows that pregnant women are increasingly relying on the media especially social media for pregnancy information needs and to find connections. Therefore, it is important to explore current social media content surrounding home birth narratives to understand what information is presented and to begin to explore the influence of these narratives on women’s decision making. The findings can subsequently be used to inform social marketing strategies to promote positive narratives surrounding homebirth.

This mixed method study will explore home birth narratives in social media and its influence on women’s decision-making using social media data scraping and qualitative interviews. The team will use PPI (patient and public involvement) to shape the development of the research tools and ensure stakeholders are actively involved throughout the project.

 

The research team:

Dr Julia Hibbert (BUBS), Assoc. Professor Chris Chapleo (BUBS), Aniebiet Ekong (HSS), Professor Vanora Hundley (HSS), Professor Edwin van Teijlingen (HSS), Assoc. Professor Ann Luce (FMC) and Anna Marsh (HSS) partnering with service users and women’s groups.

 

Some useful references:

Coxon, K., Chisholm, A., Malouf, R., Rowe, R. and Hollowell, J., 2017. What influences birth place preferences, choices and decision-making amongst healthy women with straightforward pregnancies in the UK? A qualitative evidence synthesis using a ‘best fit’framework approach. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 17 (1), 1-15.

Coxon, K., Sandall, J. and Fulop, N. J., 2014. To what extent are women free to choose where to give birth? How discourses of risk, blame and responsibility influence birth place decisions. Health, risk & society, 16 (1), 51-67.

Fletcher, B. R., Rowe, R., Hollowell, J., Scanlon, M., Hinton, L. and Rivero-Arias, O., 2019. Exploring women’s preferences for birth settings in England: A discrete choice experiment. Plos one, 14 (4), e0215098.

Naylor Smith, J., Taylor, B., Shaw, K., Hewison, A. and Kenyon, S., 2018. ‘I didn’t think you were allowed that, they didn’t mention that.’A qualitative study exploring women’s perceptions of home birth. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 18 (1), 1-11.

NICE, N. I. f. H. a. C. E., 2017. Intrapartum care United Kingdom

Sperlich, M. and Gabriel, C., 2022. “I got to catch my own baby”: a qualitative study of out of hospital birth. Reproductive Health, 19 (1), 1-13.

Vickery, M., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Smith, G. B., Way, S. and Westwood, G., 2020. Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature. European journal of midwifery, 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Tiantian Zhang awarded Fellow of Society of Cryobiology

Professor Tiantian Zhang has been awarded Fellow of Society of Cryobiology (the highest honour in the Cryobiology field internationally) and received the prestigious Basile J Luyet medal at the Society’s award ceremony during the Cryo2022 Annual Meeting in August 2022. The Fellowship recognises Professor Zhang’s ‘Outstanding Contributions to the Science and Practice of Cryobiology’. Past awardees also included James E Lovelock and Peter Mazur.

Congratulations to Professor Zhang!

IMSET publishes position paper on long-term sustainability

Fabio Silva of the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, together with a group of co-authors from 32 other institutions, has led the publication of a landmark position paper in the journal Sustainability entitled Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée.

Stemming from a transdisciplinary workshop held online during 2020, the paper argues that current crises – in land use, biodiversity, novel pathogens, water management – can only be fully understood by doing research over timescales that greatly exceed the lifespan of any individual human. This so-called longue durée is the key to fully understanding the full extent of socio-environmental processes and their implications.

 

The spatial and temporal scales of key social and environmental processes of interest

 

As well as identifying key processes and challenges, IMSET and colleagues set out how key issues may be addressed by fully integrating humans into environmental modelling and planning. By including ancient human activity and future outcomes in our mission statement, we aim to provide a manifesto for developing an integrated approach towards socio-ecological systems in the long term.

Silva, Fabio, Fiona Coward, Kimberley Davies, Sarah Elliott, Emma Jenkins, Adrian C. Newton, Philip Riris, Marc Vander Linden, Jennifer Bates, Elena Cantarello, Daniel A. Contreras, Stefani A. Crabtree, Enrico R. Crema, Mary Edwards, Tatiana Filatova, Ben Fitzhugh, Hannah Fluck, Jacob Freeman, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Marta Krzyzanska, Daniel Lawrence, Helen Mackay, Marco Madella, Shira Yoshi Maezumi, Rob Marchant, Sophie Monsarrat, Kathleen D. Morrison, Ryan Rabett, Patrick Roberts, Mehdi Saqalli, Rick Stafford, Jens-Christian Svenning, Nicki J. Whithouse, and Alice Williams. 2022. “Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée Sustainability 14: 10234. DOI: 10.3390/su14161023