The University of Huddersfield recently hosted the 2nd annual meeting for theGlobal Consortium for Public Health Research (GCPHR), with the theme ‘Research Priority in Nepal’. A lovely write-up of the even just appeared online (click hereto read this). Among its invited international delegates were Dr. Pramod Regmi (Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health) and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health). GCPHR is led by Prof Padam Simkhada, Professor of Global Health and Associate Dean (International) of the School of Human & Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield as well as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. This interdisciplinary event was funded by funded by the University of Huddersfield’s PVC International’s International collaborative fund(ICF).
After the event BU’s Dr. Pramod Regmi reminded us that: “It is important to meet up in person, especially for larger international and interdisciplinary research projects. There is only so much you can do online in meeting.” There is a great advantage of online meetings by Zoom, Teams or Google Meet, especially when working with countries like Nepal. Not least of course in reducing our global carbon footprint. Of course, such meeting help academics to build and maintain research contacts across the globe, but it is not the same as sitting in the same room with someone and share ideas over coffee.
Mapping projects related to mass atrocities and human rights violations are prevalent across the globe. Despite their often well-intentioned origins, there has been minimal practical research and subsequent output focused on what constitutes effective mapping. Furthermore, there is a lack of guidance on how to balance the pursuit of justice with the need to protect victims and affected communities. This raised an essential question:where, when and under what circumstances should mapping of mass graves be avoided or kept secret so that protection is not jeopardised?
In 2022, Professor Melanie Klinkner and Dr Ellie Smith secured Leverhulme funding to address this critical question. As of August 30th, 2024, the project’s output has been completed and is now available as an open-access resource for global use. The output is accessible both online and in a physical format, consisting of a comprehensive workbook accompanied by a set of removable tools designed to guide practitioners through the mapping process. These tools include:
Mapping Process Flowchart: The flowchart illustrates the life cycle of a mass grave, highlighting the key stages and considerations at each step, all guided by the protection of rights.
Mapping Decision Tree: Accompanying the flowchart, the decision tree highlights concerns and necessary actions that must be addressed before progressing with mapping at each stage.
Risk Register: This element assists in decision-making processes by enabling logging and evaluations of risks and subsequent mitigation strategies.
Upon completion of the research Dr Ellie Smith outlines that:
“Mapping mass graves in an open-source format has the potential to provide longer-term protection of the site, as well as a means of countering revisionism, but is not without risks. The aim of our MaGMap tools is to enable anyone involved in mass grave mapping to do so in a way that is safe for survivors, witnesses and the families of victims, and preserves the integrity of the site as a crime scene”.
For Professor Melanie Klinkner the finalisation of these resources means that:
“Theoretical, transferable foundations have been laid to inform continued research and current mapping of atrocity practices. In fact, much of what we have learned during the course of the project now guides our own approach to building a regularised global mass grave map. This is significant: it will enable us to fully appraise the scale and magnitude of mass graves across the world in a rights-compliant and safe manner”.
In late August Heidi Singleton led the publication of a Cochrane Systematic Review under the title ‘Educational and psychological interventions for managing atopic dermatitis (eczema)’ [1]. The team conducting this review includes BU’s Prof. Steve Ersser, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust colleagues Dr. Andrew Hodder, former BU staff Prof. Vanessa Heaslip (currently at the University of Salford), and one of my co-authors on a previous project Dr. Dwayne Boyers from the Health Economics Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen.
In their review the authors conclude that in-person, individual education, as an adjunct to conventional topical therapy, may reduce short-term eczema signs compared to standard care, but there is no information on eczema symptoms, quality of life or long-term outcomes. Group education probably reduces eczema signs and symptoms in the long term and may also improve quality of life in the short term. Favourable effects were also reported for technology-mediated education, habit reversal treatment and arousal reduction therapy. All favourable effects are of uncertain clinical significance, since they may not exceed the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for the outcome measures used. Finally, they found no trials of self-help psychological interventions, psychological therapies or printed education. Future trials should include more diverse populations, address shared priorities, evaluate long-term outcomes and ensure patients are involved in trial design.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
Reference:
Singleton, H., Hodder, A., Almilaji, O., Ersser, S. J., Heaslip, V., O’Meara, S., Boyers, D., Roberts, A., Scott, H., Van Onselen, J., Doney, L., Boyle, R. J., & Thompson, A. R. (2024). Educational and psychological interventions for managing atopic dermatitis (eczema). The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 8(8), CD014932. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD014932.pub2
Professor Sine McDougall co-authors this article for The Conversation about whether beauty matters in housing policy and what makes a beautiful building…
Is there such a thing as an objectively beautiful building? Here’s the science
Some people assume that there’s a type of beauty that everyone can agree on. But did early humans really admire slender bodies the way we do today? After all, fashions come and go – there’s been plenty of fads throughout history that we find hard to understand today.
The UK’s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, recently suggested “beautiful” needs to be removed from the government’s housing policy on the grounds it is too subjective. She said in an interview that “beautiful means nothing really, it means one thing to one person and another thing to another”.
She isn’t alone. Many people support the notion, first stated by the Irish novellist Margeret Wolfe Hungerford, that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
But is this true? The current state of our knowledge on aesthetics, and specifically what we consider beautiful, is a mosaic of empirical discoveries. For over 150 years, psychologists have run carefully controlled experiments to determine whether an attribute, such as a particular colour, shape or melody is beautiful.
Some rules have emerged, but none are universal: for instance, the golden rectangle ratio in geometry, which denotes a rectangle with the height to width being 1:1.6. Although considered beautiful by some in objects such as buildings or windows, these dimensions are an uncommon choice for bathroom tiles or books.
Research has shown that our experiences of finding things visually appealing are an integral, and often unconscious, part of the way we perceive objects in the world around us. It takes approximately 50 milliseconds, the blink of an eye, to reliably decide whether or not we think an object is beautiful.
Familiarity is an important factor. When something is seen or heard often, it is easier for our nervous system (our vision and hearing) to process it. And this ease can be misattributed as beauty. This also explains how trends in beauty emerge – if we keep seeing and celebrating a certain type of face, it becomes familiar.
Beauty comes about in different ways, and whether something is considered beautiful can depend on attributes of the person doing the looking, such as their prior experiences, expertise and attitudes; whether it hangs in a museum or along a hospital corridor; as well as attributes of the object itself, such as its shape, colour, proportions or size.
Beauty can therefore arise from good design. When people deal with an easy-to-use object or interface, they like it more than hard-to-use counterparts. Easy-to-use objects often have visual characteristics such as clear balance, clarity and good contrast.
Does beauty matter in housing policy?
Discussions about beauty are a healthy state of affairs, until they start coming into discussions about housing policy.
A beautiful building can bring joy and contentment in everyday life. Beautiful, well-designed homes can significantly enhance the mental health of the inhabitants.
Attractive, well-built surroundings can reduce stress, increase feelings of happiness, and contribute to a sense of peace and contentment.
This may be why there’s increasing evidence that taking small doses of psychedelics in a controlled environment such as a clinic, which produce intense experiences of beauty, can help treat depression.
A beautiful building means that someone cared to do that little bit extra. This may be meaningful to the kid growing up in social housing, offering a sense of pride and belonging. Aesthetic appeal in housing and neighbourhoods may lead to civic pride, where residents take collective responsibility for maintaining and improving their environment.
Pride may lead to stronger, more vibrant communities, and idea that came to life in modern times by the “city beautiful movement” in the US (1890–1920). “Mean streets make mean people,” wrote the movement’s leading theorist, Charles Mulford Robinson.
Amsterdam Het Schip. Beautiful? harry_nl/Flickr, CC BY-SA
Beauty in housing is not just about aesthetics; it often coincides with functionality. Good design considers the usability and comfort of spaces, ensuring that they are both beautiful and practical. This balance can improve the quality of life for residents by making spaces more efficient and pleasant to live in.
Beauty can also boost perseverance. When searching for information on a website, perseverance – the amount of time users keep searching for difficult to find information – increases when the website is independently rated as aesthetically pleasing.
Similarly, when dealing with an electronic device, people try for longer to make it work if they find it aesthetically pleasing.
Beauty also demands copies of itself. Historically, in art and design, thought-to-be beautiful landscapes, faces, or vases have been copied in different forms. The act of drawing, sculpting, writing about, composing about a beautiful object is to make a copy of it.
Don’t dis-invest from beauty
The subjectivity of beauty does not necessitate disinvestment from it. Beauty does mean something, even if it isn’t totally objective. Attempting to bring beauty into our everyday lives, no matter that we each have a unique perspective, as in the case of housing, would mean investing in the human experience for all.
So while beauty is to some extent subjective, artful design can play a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, from psychological well-being to social cohesion and even economic value. Industry giants such as Ikea and Apple have been reaping the benefits of applying this knowledge to their business model for decades.
Why build beautiful homes in the first place? Having the human experience in mind when building houses and neighbourhoods, remembering the immense impact that something well designed and decorated can have is a worthwhile investment in humanity.
If removing the term beautiful from housing policy helps build more homes, then that’s great. But, when it comes to actually building them – whether the term “beautiful” occurs in policy or not – it is certainly worth to consider investing in beauty.
Please be aware that there will be a planned upgrade to BRIAN taking place 4-6th September, during which time BRIAN will be unavailable for use. We are hoping for BRIAN to resume running again by 9th September 2024, if not earlier.
Please do plan your BRIAN usage accordingly to take this period of inaccessibility into account. For all BRIAN related queries, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk.
This afternoon the editorial office of Frontiers in Psychiatry informed us that our manuscript “Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison” [1] has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Psychiatry, section Perinatal Psychiatry. An interdisciplinary team from Germany, Canada and the UK designed and initiated a longitudinal pregnancy cohort in the United Kingdom titled Maternal mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effect of the Pandemic on Pregnancy Outcomes & Childhood Health (EPPOCH). In the second half of 2020, we recruited 3,600 pregnant individuals via self-enrollment through our website ‘www.eppoch-uk.org’. Our EPPOCH study has since collected a wealth of validated questionnaire data at multiple time points, from mothers (during pregnancy and postpartum) and their children (from birth to age 3), and we are currently distributing our 4-year childhood follow-up questionnaire. This is the first paper from the EPPOCH study.
The UK team is a collaboration between Bournemouth University and University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, the latter through Professor Minesh Khashu and Dr. Latha Vinayakarao based in Poole Maternity Hospital. The German team is led by Dr. Melanie Conrad, previously at Charité University Medicine Berlin, and now associated with the University of Augsburg, and includes Swarali Datye, PhD student at Charité University Medicine Berlin, whilst our Canadian collaborator, Alison MacRae-Miller, is based at the University of British Columbia, Victoria. This EPPOCH cohort is closely linked with a sister cohort in Canada called the Pregnancy During the Pandemic (PDP) study.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Reference:
Datye, S., Smiljanic, M., Shetti, R.H., MacRae-Miller, A., van Teijlingen, E., Vinayakarao, L., Peters, E.M.J., Lebel, C.A., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., Giesbrecht, G., Khashu, M., Conrad, M.L. (2024) Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison, Frontiers in Psychiatry, (accepted).
The poster paper is based on Vaya’s final year Research & Development Project unit project “An Exploration of the Optical Properties of Spider Web Fibres”, which resulted in the development of a physically inspired method for rendering CG spider webs that display the iridescent properties, observable in real-world spider webs.
The method achieves this in a manner that does not require a computationally expensive and bespoke/proprietary software solution, but instead works with industry standard, off-the-shelf, visual effects (VFX) software, meaning it can effortlessly be integrated into existing VFX production pipelines. The project was also one of five submissions featuredin theSIGGRAPH’24 “Posters Highlights” video.
After being accepted as one of the 70 posters presented at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference, the world’s Premier Conference & Exhibition on Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques, Vaya’s contribution (poster 32), was invited to the first round of the prestigious ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) sponsored by Microsoft, shortlisted as a semi-finalists, and presented to a panel of experts in the SRC Final Presentation. The jury, who enjoyed Vaya’s presentation and appreciated her demonstrated knowledge of prior research, were impressed by her execution of the work and its practicality, for which they awarded Vaya the Second Place in the ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Student Research Competition in the undergraduate category.
The paper ‘Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad’ [1], which was part of the PhD work of Dr. Pratik Adhikary has been cited forty times. This is one of the many recent Bournemouth University papers focusing on the health and well-being of migrant workers from Nepal. The purpose of this paper was to assess the health and mental well-being of Nepalese construction and factory workers employed in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We used a structured questionnaire administered, in and around Nepal’s international airport. In total 403 migrants who had worked for over six months in their host countries. Logistic regression was used to investigate factors associated with self-reported health status and mental health symptoms.
Pratik’s PhD was supervised by Dr. Zoe Sheppard, Dr. Steve Keen and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. This research has been financially supported by a PhD studentship at Bournemouth University and funding from the Open Society Foundation (OSF). BU supported Pratik to travel to Nepal, and the OSF provided subsistence funds. Pratik has written several further papers based on his PhD study [2-5].
References:
Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care14(1): 96-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
Adhikary, P., Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi, Health Prospect16(2): 3-10.
Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2019) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant & Minority Health 21(5): 1115–1122. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E. (2019) Support networks in the Middle East & Malaysia: A qualitative study of Nepali returnee migrants’ experiences’ – International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health 9(2): 31-35.
Adhikary P, Keen S and van Teijlingen E (2011). Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East. Health Science Journal.5(3):169-i75 DOI: 2-s2.0-79960420128.
Adigwe GA, Alloh F, Smith P, Tribe R, Regmi P. Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life of Stroke Survivors in Southeast Communities in Nigeria. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2024; 21(9):1116. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21091116
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Joanne Rack on the publication today of her paper ‘Understanding perceptions and communication of risk in advanced maternal age: a scoping review (protocol) on women’s engagement with health care services’ [1]. Joanne doing a Clinical Doctorate in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH) focusing on personalised care for women of advanced maternal age. Her doctoral study is matched-funded by University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust and Bournemouth University [BU]. Her PhD is supervised and supported by Profs. Vanora Hundley, Ann Luce and Edwin van Teijlingen at BU and Dr. Latha Vinayakarao in Poole Maternity Hospital.
Well done!
Reference:
Rack, J., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E., Luce, A., Vinayakarao. L. (2024) Understanding perceptions and communication of risk in advanced maternal age: a scoping review (protocol) on women’s engagement with health care services, MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, 34(3): 201-204.
The BU Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) offered funding of up to £500 to support members to organise an event to facilitate collaboration, community engagement, networking or knowledge exchange.
In this blog post, Lecturer in Psychology Dr Sarah Hambidge shares how the funding supported an event with crime agencies and police forces to discuss cyber signatures in human trafficking.
“BU ECRN Research Network Funding was awarded to Sarah Hambidge to organise and host the event “Unveiling the Digital Trail: A Tabletop Discussion on Cyber Signatures in Human Trafficking.” In partnership with Paul Wells (National Police Chiefs’ Council), Kari Davies (BU) and Terri Cole (BU), the event featured participation from The Home Office, The National Crime Agency, The College of Policing, Chief of Staff to the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, NGOs, a number of UK police forces and academics.
The event hosted two pivotal tabletop discussions. The first discussion delved into the current landscape of cyber signatures in human trafficking, highlighting the need for enhanced collaboration and data sharing. The second session focused on setting a research agenda, with each organisation committing to support ongoing and future initiatives.
Following the discussions, Sarah, Kari, and Terri announced the formation of a new Human Trafficking Research Group with Bournemouth University as the gatekeeper to create a cross-functional network that leverages each member’s expertise and resources.
In the longer term, the group will develop a comprehensive research agenda, create a resource repository, and advocate for public awareness and policy changes. Several additional organisations and police forces have requested to join the research group since the event.
Paul Wells expressed his optimism, stating: “I am excited about the potential difference that this diverse group can make, with a shared goal to reduce harm, prevent criminal exploitation, keep more victims safe, and bring offenders to justice.”
This event marked a significant step forward in developing impact against human trafficking, laying a strong foundation for future collaboration and research.”
Today BMJ Global Health posted a blog (read it here!) about our recently publish paper ‘Socio-economic experiences of female community health volunteers matter: insights from Nepal’ which appeared last month in the Open Access journal PLOS Global Public Health [1]. In Nepal, about 50,000 Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) are a vital human resource for both government and non-government agencies delivering primary healthcare at community level. Their contribution to maternal and child health is recognised globally. Being an active volunteer brought some interesting issues for the FCHCs. For example, the social experience of working in one’s own village was not the same for all. While community recognition of volunteers’ work was seen as a motivator, most volunteers thought they were not given due respect by fellow community members. Too often community members mistook volunteers as paid health workers often due to their involvement in medicine distribution, a rare bi-annual activity.
Our recent paper in BMJ Global Health was highlighted in an earlier BU Research Blog (to read this click here!). This latest paper is the third one based on Dr. Sarita Panday’s PhD research conducted at the University of Sheffield [2-3]. It is the fourth Bournemouth University paper on FCHVs with last weeks publication in the Journal ofManmohan memorial Institute of Health Sciences [4]
Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2017) The contribution of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) to maternity care in Nepal: a qualitative study, BMC Health Services Research17:623 be/vz9C
Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2019) Perceived barriers to accessing female community health volunteers’ services amongst ethnic minority women in Nepal: a qualitative study, PLoS ONE14(6): e0217070 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217070
Bhattarai, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2024). Nepal Needs A Two-Pronged Approach to Secure Future of Its Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 9(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v9i1.68640
The BU Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) offered funding of up to £500 to support members to organise an event to facilitate collaboration, community engagement, networking or knowledge exchange.
In this blog post, Lecturer in Sustainability Fern Baker shares how the funding supported their event to investigate the farming community’s perceptions of voluntary carbon markets (VCMs).
“After conducting a PhD during the pandemic, which limited possible involvement with those with lived experience in my research area, namely farmers, I wanted to co-produce more research with farmers, to gain insight into the areas of importance in a real-life setting. Unfortunately, rural areas and farmers are often not included in the research development process and this workshop was an opportunity to bridge the gap and aid inclusivity. It is important to co-produce research to facilitate knowledge exchange from those at the forefront of the sector to ensure the output will have real-world impact to those involved.
Attendees at the workshop
The BU Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) Research Networking Funding provided with the opportunity to organise, lead and facilitate my own workshop. The aim of the workshop was to investigate the farming community’s perceptions of voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). Currently, engagement with VCMs from the farming community is quite low. However, carbon offsetting is imperative for the agriculture industry to reach the National Farmers Union 2040 Net Zero objective. The aim of the workshop was to discuss and identify the main challenges, barriers and research priorities of VCMs to enhance accessibility and engagement.
Eleven farmers in Dorset attended the event and contributed their perception and experience of voluntary carbon markets. Most of the farmers had not entered the system but had negative perceptions and those with experience with VCMs felt discouraged. Huge trust issues were prevalent, as well as those involving land use conflicts and succession.
We aim to further our research into feasible VCMs for the farming community by applying for the “UKRI cross research council responsive mode pilot scheme: round 2” for up to £1.2 million in project funding to begin July 2025. Dr Rounaq Nayak and I will be working with Associate Professor Pippa Gillingham and Professor Rick Stafford on this project as biodiversity specialists, to also investigate biodiversity net gain and whether both carbon and biodiversity credits can be improved and supported for the farming community. We are also applying the information obtained from the discussions to inform a prospective PhD studentship funding application to the Perry Foundation to improve viable access to the voluntary carbon market system for the farming community. We will continue to work with farmers as a steering group during our application and research. If you would like to be involved, then please get in touch with Fern Baker at bakerf@bournemouth.ac.uk.
I would like to thank all attendees for attending and contributing to the workshop and pivotal research area. Dr Rounaq Nayak (Senior Lecturer, LES) for helping to plan and run the workshop and the activities, as well as Dr Kate Jupp as part of the BU Public Involvement in Education and Research (PIER) partnership for offering guidance on how to design and host an effective workshop. Additionally, Ellie Jones for their assistance with advertising and running of the workshop and the BU ECRN fund for making the workshop possible.”
Congratulations to Professor Carol Clark, Dr Sujan Marahatta and Professor Vanora Hundley for their new interdisciplinary paper exploring the prevalence of pain catastrophising among women of reproductive age in Nepal.
It is well-acknowledged that there are multiple factors that contribute to constructing perceptions of pain – this paper explores previous pain experiences and the prevalence of pain catastrophising. The team found a high prevalence of pain catastrophising in Nepal, which could contribute rising obstetric intervention, particularly caesarean births, in Nepal.
The work is part of a programme of work looking at how best to support women during the latent phase of labour (early labour). You can hear more about this work by listening to a recent vodcast from Carol and Vanora:
Please be aware that there will be a planned upgrade to BRIAN taking place 4-6th September, during which time BRIAN will be unavailable for use. We are hoping for BRIAN to resume running again by 9th September 2024, if not earlier.
Please do plan your BRIAN usage accordingly to take this period of inaccessibility into account. For all BRIAN related queries, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk.
As part of the interdisciplinary Sonamoni project our collaborator Mirza Shibat Rowshan will be presenting at Safety 2024. The 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (Safety 2024) will be held between in the first week of September in New Delhi, India. The conference is hosted by The George Institute for Global Health and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Sonamoni is being coordinated by Bournemouth University and CIPRB (The Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) in collaboration with the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and Design Withour Borders in Uganada. This project, with Prof. Dr. Aminur Rahman as Bangladesh lead, includes a BU-based PhD project Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossain. The interdisciplinary team at Bournemouth University covers three faculties through: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
Shibat works at CIPRB, which is a world leading injury prevention organisation based in Bangladesh. This presentation focuses on a needs assessment of the risk of very young children drowning in rural Bangladesh.All conference abstracts will be published in a pre-conference supplement of the scientific journal BMJ- Injury Prevention.
Barcelona residents marched against tourists in July after similar protests in Venice earlier in 2024. Recently, residents of Santorini in Greece were in uproar after a Facebook post reportedly asked them to stay home and make room for the thousands of tourists expected to arrive during the peak holiday season.
These are symptoms of overtourism: a situation where visits exceed a destination’s capacity, making residents angry and tourists miserable. Local governments have proposed tourism levies or entry fees to make visits more expensive and thereby limit how many people show up. Some tourism researchers have encouraged people to holiday in rural areas or poorer countries instead, to give a boost to their economies.
However, overtourism exists in the developing world too. Here’s what it looks like.
Travel on a tourist-swamped island
Bali is a major tourist destination in the Indonesian archipelago that accounts for nearly half of international arrivals in the country. Air travel is the most reliable way to get there, although a big source of carbon emissions, which inflame a climate crisis that is expected to disproportionately harm poorer countries like Indonesia. Roughly 15 million visitors arrived in 2023 – close to their level in 2019, before the pandemic.
Bali’s tourism-dependent economy (providing 61% of regional GDP in 2019) was more or less frozen by COVID-19. Yet, for tourists who spent lockdown in cities, the pandemic also left Bali, and particularly the island’s rural parts, with a renewed lustre. Penglipuran, a traditional Balinese village in the central highlands, was attracting thousands of visitors every day in July.
Encouraging people to visit poorer areas can disadvantage residents, but in a different way to how people in Venice or Barcelona experience it. After all, roads and public transport in richer European cities are better maintained.
For all its problems, vehicle rental offers a roaring trade in Bali. Swuerfel/Shutterstock
In rural Bali, the hilly terrain, tropical weather and poorer public transport mean residents must rely on cars and motorbikes. The resulting noise and pollution degrades the rural experience. Converting these vehicles to run on electricity would not solve the problem entirely if most power in Bali remains fossil-sourced. Nor would it cut road congestion.
Tourists want to visit lots of places in rural Bali with a reliable source of transport. The limited options have prompted many to rent cars or motorbikes, but weak traffic enforcement has allowed misbehaviour: tourists driving without shirts or helmets – or even licenses. The regional government temporarily banned motorbike rentals for foreigners in March 2023.
Despite chaotic traffic on the island, residents have found work transporting tourists informally for decades. That’s why efforts to ease congestion and travel chaos, by designing public transport for tour groups or free shuttle bus services, have met with local protests and the ire of vehicle rental businesses.
To travel or not to travel
Unbridled development squanders the mutual benefits that tourism can have for residents and visitors. Likewise, neither residents nor tourists should be prohibited from travelling, but should instead travel responsibly.
A railway transport plan that promises to connect Bali’s airport with Seminyak and Nusa Dua, the most popular areas in urban Bali, could help ease road traffic around the city centre. Local vehicle rental businesses could continue to operate in rural areas, but restrict their riders to less busy roads.
Poor destinations should be cautious about depending on tourism in the long term. The Balinese government is exploring its options in other sectors at least, such as agriculture and the digital economy.
Poorer destinations such as Bali are less well equipped than richer countries to manage the socioeconomic and environmental costs of overtourism. And ultimately, a swollen tourism sector contains the seeds of its own demise: declining environmental quality, unhappy residents and eventually, fewer tourists.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
The University of Huddersfield recently hosted the 2nd annual meeting for the Global Consortium for Public Health Research (GCPHR), with the theme ‘Research Priority in Nepal’. A lovely write-up of the even just appeared online (click here to read this). Among its invited international delegates were Dr. Pramod Regmi (Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health) and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health). GCPHR is led by Prof Padam Simkhada, Professor of Global Health and Associate Dean (International) of the School of Human & Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield as well as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. This interdisciplinary event was funded by funded by the University of Huddersfield’s PVC International’s International collaborative fund (ICF). 
Race Equity Month: Disparities in maternity care
MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline
Applications are now open for 2025 ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships!
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.
An Interview of BU-lead EU H2020 FIRST project published in “Horizon”, the EU Research & Innovation Magazine
Update on Horizon Europe Guarantee