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GoodBye JeS, Hello TFS

Funding opportunities, Research communication, Research news

 

 

 

UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Simpler and Better Funding (SBF) programme has been creating a funding service that is easy to use and supports everyone involved in research funding.

The new Funding Service is designed to be simpler and more intuitive to use. It will provide consistent information requirements and assessment criteria, making it simpler for applicants and assessors.

Guidance on the application process will be supplied within the service, reducing the need to look for additional information in multiple places.

UKRI will continue to operate the existing system (Je-S) system for application and award management. When applying for an opportunity on the UKRI funding finder, you will be taken directly to the correct application system.

Over time, opportunities will be transitioned to the new service. For the details of each council transitioning from JeS have a look at this page.

If you have projects in planning stage get in touch with RDS and we can help you with any queries about transitioning to the new service and calls affected by the move.

If you have not used the Funding Service before, the first step is to create an account. The process is straightforward and quick, so you can get started on your application as soon as possible.

RDS will continue to support you as before from your bid preparation stage and approvals before submissions to award management in the new service.

Book now – BU Research Conference 2023: Embracing Failure, Building Success

Uncategorized

We all shy away from using the ‘F’ word – failure. But whether it’s a funding bid not being successful, a journal article being rejected, or findings not being as hoped, problems and setbacks are a normal part of the research journey. Understanding how to overcome and learn from these moments of ‘failure’ is key to a successful academic career.

The BU Research Conference is back for 2023 and this year’s event will explore the concept of failure in academia and building the resilience to learn from setbacks and overcome obstacles that may be in your path.

The conference will take place in the Fusion Building (Talbot Campus) on Wednesday 14 June, with a mix of inspirational speakers and practical workshops.

The day will run from 10am – 4.30pm, with lunch and refreshments included. It will be followed by a drinks reception to network with colleagues and chat to your peers about your own experiences.

We’re finalising the schedule but already have an exciting mix of internal and external speakers confirmed.

Our first keynote speaker for the conference will be Dr Jan Peters MBE. Jan is an engineer, consultant and campaigner for diversity and inclusion in STEM. A former president of the Women’s Engineering Society, her background is in materials research and hi-tech manufacturing, before helping academics build relationships with industry partners. In 2017 she was awarded an MBE for services to women and engineering and an honorary doctorate from Bournemouth University.

Jan’s talk, Embracing failure my way, will explore the impact of failure and how we each respond differently. And how, by knowing what drives us, we can harness our energy to bounce forwards.

BU’s very own Professor Ann Hemingway and Professor Sam Goodman will give the second conference keynote, Reckoning with Reviewer 2: Experiencing (and overcoming) Academic Rejection.

Closing the day will be Robert Seaborne, who founded Inside Academia – an online platform dedicated to positively changing the culture of mental health, wellbeing and mindset within academia.

Robert is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Copenhagen whose own experiences struggling with pressures and stressors during his PhD and early post-doc years had a big impact on his wellbeing.

Robert’s talk will delve into his personal reflections, the mental health landscape in academia and what tools and strategies could help equip us to navigate this journey more positively.

We’ll also have a range of practical workshops, covering topics including building resilience, repurposing failed funding applications, and improving writing practices.

We’ll be sharing more details over the coming weeks and months but you can book your place for the conference now via Eventbrite to be kept up-to-date with all the latest information.

Book your place

Giving PGRs a voice…participate in a PhD study exploring research culture

BU research

I’m currently seeking PhD students in Science and Technology AND Arts and Humanities disciplines to participate in a research study exploring positive research cultures for PGRs.

I’m interested in PhD student experience, your thoughts on what makes a positive research culture and giving PGRs a voice. Participants must be PhD students, at BU, who started at least 6 months ago.

You will be invited to an online interview which will take approximately 45 minutes.

Participation is voluntary and any involvement will remain anonymous.

This work is part of my PhD and not my role in the Doctoral College.

Click the flyer for the Participant Information Sheet and if you are interested, please fill in this short demographics survey.

Any questions, please email Natalie Stewart at nstewart@bournemouth.ac.uk.

 

Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023

BU research, ECR Network, Funding opportunities, Guidance, PG research, policy, Postgraduate Research, pre-award, research opportunities, Research Training

Since the introduction of the new electronic ITB form on 24 January 2022, there have been incremental updates and the current e-ITB form is now available.

The e-ITB form continues to give a better user experience, creates a more efficient administrative control process for Research Development and Support (RDS) and provides accurate reporting outcomes for management.

 

Updated ITB form: The  Intention to Bid (ITB) form and the updated Research Costings Request Sheet are both available now in the Policies & Procedures/Research/Pre-award section of the intranet under Research > Pre-award. Please complete the Research Costings Request Sheet and attach it to the e-ITB form for completion. PDF copies of all submissions can be printed or saved but there are limitations to editing a form once it has been submitted.

Please send RDS the completed e-ITB form and Costing Request Sheet by the latest 4 weeks before the deadline.

 

Bid Enquiry Process: If you have more than 4 weeks to the submission deadline and need advice or support regarding a bid, please access the same form link and select ‘Enquiry/Advice on Bidding’. This ensures that the pre-award team will see your Enquiry, rather than emailing a sole officer who may not be available at the time.

 

As a service, RDS is committed to delivering service excellence to enable BU’s academic community to deliver and grow world-leading research for societal benefit. The program of work continues to look at processes to enhance the user experience.

 

Changes include improvements to the pre- and post-award support being offered. Building on the delivery of a new Principal Investigator report which is currently in the final stages of being rolled out, and continuing our collaboration with the Transformation Team.

Association between Traumatic Injuries and Heart Rate Variability- Systematic Review Published in PloS One by an MSPH PhD Student

BRIAN, BU research, Doctoral College, Knowledge Exchange, open access, student research

Rabeea is a 2nd year PhD student who is based in the Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health. As a part of her PhD, her systematic review on the association between traumatic Injuries and HRV has recently been published as an open access research in PloS One.

It is the first systematic review to provide evidence on the relationship between non-acute traumatic injuries and Heart Rate Variability  (RMSSD, SDNN and LF/HF) ratio. This also highlights paucity of evidence and calls for further research in the field, especially in the Military research- the focus of Rabeea’s PhD.

The co-authors on this paper are Rabeea’ supervisors: Prof. Ahmed Khattab (MSPH, BU), Prof. Christopher Boos (Department of Cardiology, UHD), and Prof. Alex N Bennett (DMRC, Stanford Hall).

Traveling with pets: designing hospitality services for pet owners/parents and hotel guests,

BU research

Are you a PET / DOG PARENT ?

New research paper on TRAVELING WITH PETS

Buhalis, D. and Chan, J. (2023), Traveling with pets: designing hospitality services for pet owners/parents and hotel guests, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol.34. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2022-1192

#pets #dogs #travel #tourism #hotel #hospitality #marketing #management #consumerbehaviour #service #HongKong

Pet-friendly hotels are growing rapidly. The prevalence of pet adoption has largely resulted from loneliness due to social distancing that happened during the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Many hotels around the world aim to become pet-friendly to satisfy the growing demand. Hoteliers believe that the popularity of pet-friendly hotels will continue, as pet owners often treat pets as their kids. This study aims to investigate how pet-friendly hotels need to design and manage pet-friendly services and policies. Using grounded theory methodology, this research conducts interviews with 25 pet-friendly hotel managers from Hong Kong (HK). The study includes hotels from different hotel categories and classifications. It examines the conceptualization of pet-friendly service design, drawing on a service blueprint. Building on the service marketing and service blueprint literature, this research provides a synthesis that reflects how pet-friendly hotels can serve both guests with and without pets.

The findings reveal that pet-owner’s service expectations are formed on anthropomorphism, that is, an inclination to attribute human features to non-human entities. Hotel managers and those with pets personally understand better how pet-friendly service can be adapted to meet the expectations and requirements of pet owners while accommodating guests without pets. The market for pet-friendly hospitality is growing, with high-profit potential from pet owners who are willing to spend generously. Data were collected from selected pet-friendly hotels in HK through interviews with pet-friendly service providers. The research is qualitative and exploratory in nature. It aims to explore and examine the multilevel pet-friendly hospitality service design from a managerial perspective. This research enriches the literature on anthropomorphism theory, the design of pet-friendly services and the application of service blueprint. The research offers explicit suggestions for the design of pet-friendly hospitality services. A pet-friendly hotel service blueprint is developed. This can help managers to develop essential pet-friendly policies and service collaborations between internal departments and with external specialist organizations, maximizing the value for all stakeholders. The study explores a rapidly emerging market and scrutinizes its specific design requirements. It extends theoretical insights by enriching the anthropomorphism theory and broadening the conceptualizations of service blueprint based on anthropomorphism theory.

https://www.academia.edu/98737451/

Anthropology Meets Criminology – special international guest lecture

Uncategorized

The Centre for Seldom Heard Voices – Marginalisation and Societal Integration at FHSS will be hosting a special, international guest lecture by Professor Thomas Bierschenk of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany), titled Anthropology Meets Criminology: Policing as Practice of Categorization on Thursday, 23rd March, 15:00 to 17:00 at Lansdowne Campus. To register, please drop me a mail at sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk. 

This talk will present selected results from research on how police officers and migrants, in a German context, translate between different languages and, further, between different normative ideas in these everyday interactions. By the act of translation, actors verbalize, negotiate, validate, and question such ideas and beliefs. While actors and media often understand ‘culture’ in these interactions as a pre-existing framework that determines or shapes interactional outcomes, the project asks how cultural difference in everyday police work is repeatedly produced, but also sometimes dissolved. Cultural difference is thus not examined as a determining factor of interaction, but as a possible, dynamic result of these interactions, alternatively to other categories of differentiation like gender and class. The focus is on innovative methodological approaches we used – role play, video recordings and team ethnography. The presentation will also briefly refer to the conflicts around a urban hot-spot which during summer 2021 was heavily frequented by young people, provoking neighbours to frequently call the police. It will end by pointing to a recent book publication (Policing race, ethnicity and culture. Perspectives across Europe, MUP 2023) which deals with these issues in more depth and breath.

Thomas Bierschenk is professor emeritus at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at the Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He has widely published on development, the state and bureaucracy in French-Speaking West Africa, and more recently on bureaucracy and policing in Germany. His many publications include, most prominently, the co-edited book States at Work. Dynamics of African Bureaucracies (2014) and the co-authored article How to study bureaucracies ethnographically (2019; see also video presentation). The co-edited book Policing Race, Ethnicity and Culture. Ethnographic Perspectives across Europe (Manchester University Press 2023) is just off the press.

Looking forward to seeing interested colleagues and PGR students there,

Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers

(Associate Professor in Applied Anthropology)

sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk

Bierschenk announcement

Conversation article: Bones like Aero chocolate – the evolution adaptation that helped dinosaurs to fly

BU research, Featured, Research communication, the conversation

Dr Sally Reynolds writes for The Conversation about new research into the structure of dinosaur bones…

Bones like Aero chocolate: the evolution adaptation that helped dinosaurs to fly

Dinosaurs once dominated Earth’s landscapes.
AmeliAU/Shutterstock

Sally Christine Reynolds, Bournemouth University

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how the planet we call home, with its megalopolis cities and serene farmlands, was once dominated by dinosaurs as big as buses and five-storey buildings. But recent research has helped deepen our understanding of why dinosaurs prevailed: the answer may lie in their special bones, structured like Aero chocolate.

Brazilian palaeontologist Tito Aureliano found that hollow bones filled with little air sacs were so important to dinosaur survival, they evolved independently several times in different lineages.

According to the study, aerated bones evolved in three separate lineages: pterosaurs, technically flying reptiles, and two dinosaur lineages theropods (ranging from the crow-sized Microraptor to the huge Tyrannosaurus rex) and sauropodomorphs (long-necked herbivores including Brachiosaurus). The researchers focused on the late Triassic period, roughly 233 million years ago, in south Brazil.

A macro close-up shot of an opened bar of Aero chocolate, with the corner broken off, exposing the unique bubble texture from which it gets it name.
Hollow dinosaur bones, structured a bit like this chocolate, proved to be a major advantage.
Kev Gregory/Shutterstock

Every time an animal reproduces, evolution throws up random variants in genetic code. Some of these variants are passed on to offspring and develop over time.

Charles Darwin believed evolution created “endless forms most beautiful”. But some adaptations emerge spontaneously time and time again, a bit like getting the same hand of cards on multiple occasions. When the same hand keeps cropping up, it’s a sign that evolution has hit upon an important and effective solution.

The variant the Brazilian team studied was aerated vertebrae bones, which would have enhanced the dinosaurs’ strength and reduced their body weight.

Light but mighty

Your regular deliveries from Amazon or other online retailers come packed in corrugated cardboard, which has the same advantages as aerated bones. It is light, yet tough.

Corrugated cardboard or as it was first known, pleated paper, was a man-made design experiment that was hugely successful and is now part of our everyday lives. It was patented in England in 1856 and was initially designed to support top hats which were popular in Victorian England and the US at the time.

Three years later, Darwin published his On the Origin of Species which outlined how evolutionary traits that create advantages are more likely to be passed on to future generations than variants which don’t.

Close up of stacked brown recycled carton
Cardboard is strong and light.
Shawn Hempel/Shutterstock

CT scan technology allowed Aureliano and his colleagues to peer inside the rock-hard fossils they studied. Without the modern technology, it would have been impossible to look inside the fossils and detect the air sacs in the spinal columns.

The study found no common ancestor had this trait. All three groups must have developed air sacs independently, and each time in slightly different ways.

The air sacs probably enhanced oxygen levels in the dinosaurs’ blood. The Triassic period had a scorching hot and dry climate. So more oxygen circulating in the blood would cool dinosaur bodies more efficiently. It would also allow them to mover faster.

The air sacs would have buttressed and reinforced the internal structure of the dinosaurs’ bones while creating a greater surface area of attachments for large, powerful muscles. This would have enabled the bones to grow to a far larger size without weighing the animal down.

In living birds aerated bones reduce overall mass and volume, while enhancing bone strength and stiffness – essential features for flight.

Palaeontology not only tells the story of what might have been for Earth, had it not been for that infamous asteroid, but also helps us learn about the evolution of still living creatures.

Prehistoric connections

Echoes of this dinosaur legacy lie in many animals alive today. It is not only long-dead animals which found this type of adaptation useful. Many bird species living today rely on hollow bones to fly. Others animals use the air sacs to buttress and strengthen their large bones and skulls, without weighing them down.

An excellent example of this is the elephant skull. Inside elephant skulls are large air sacs which allow the animal to move its massive head and heavy tusks without straining the neck muscles.

Anatomy of a flat bone.
OpenStax College, CC BY

The human brain is also protected by two layers of hard, compact, bone (inner and outer tables) which sandwich a layer of softer, spongey and aerated bone in between, known as the diploe. This allows our skulls to be light, but strong and able to absorb shocks to cranium.

These are examples of convergent evolution in which animals are faced repeatedly with the same problem, evolving similar – but not always identical – solutions each time. Animals today are playing by the same evolutionary playbook as the dinosaurs.The Conversation

Sally Christine Reynolds, Principal Academic in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BU CEDARS SURVEY 2023

BU research, Research news

BU CEDARS SURVEY 2023

Culture, Employment and Development in
Academic Research Survey

BU CEDARS survey 2023

We are delighted to inform you that BU is launching the Bournemouth University Culture, Employment, and Development in Academic Research survey (CEDARS). It runs from today Monday 20th March 2023 to Friday 21st April 2023 and is open to all staff who are research active.

What is it? – a UK survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting them across UK higher education institutes.

Who can complete it? Anyone who is research active at BU (especially researchers/principal investigators).

Why is it important? Because this is an opportunity to share your experiences and idea- and to influence the research culture, BU policies, and initiatives.

When it is running? March 20th – April 21st 2023

Learn more on how BU supports the careers of researchers

 

Please, help us to get a realistic picture, and fill out our survey here: BU CEDARS survey 2023

 

Help to develop BU policies and initiatives relating to research at BU: complete the CEDARS survey now

BU research

The BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023 (Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research survey) is now live! 

 CEDARS is a national survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting researchers across the UK. It is based on the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, which aims to create the best culture for researchers to thrive. This survey replaces the previous CROS and PIRLS surveys.

This is an important survey as it benchmarks BU against the rest of the sector. It will, therefore, help us to identify where we are excelling and where there is room for improvement.

Participating in this study will also influence policy. Your input will help us to understand where to focus our efforts and resources – it will give us the data to make the argument for you. The results of the previous PIRLS and CROS surveys (that CEDARS has replaced) were used to develop new policies and initiatives, as well as training and development opportunities.

The survey will run from 20 March to 21 April. Your responses will be anonymous; you will not be identified or identifiable in any published results. It will take about 15 – 20 minutes to complete the survey. BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023

Please complete the CEDARS survey if you are research-active (whether on a full-time, part-time or part-time hourly paid contract). This includes researchers at all stages in your career, those who manage researchers, or are Principal Investigators, or contribute to research by providing professional services for researchers, (i.e. researcher developers, research officers or technical staff).

If you have any questions regarding the survey, please email Rachel Arnold: rarnold@bournemouth.ac.uk

Thank you, the Research Development and Support Team

Please find more information here on the ‘Concordat to Support the Careers of Researchers’ and what BU is doing to support researchers.