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Recruiting a PhD Studentship

PG research

The Doctoral College receive many queries from BU academics asking how to recruit a PhD studentship. They may have been successful in a bid that included costing for a PhD student, or believe they have a strong research project which would be suitable for a PhD student to undertake. They may even have been working with an external organisation who is excited to work with us and have offered the funding for a PhD student to undertake some research.

To assist academic colleagues in navigating the next steps for a studentship, we’ve created this helpful flow chart to show you the next steps. This flow chart will ask a few questions such as if you already have funding agreed (and where it is coming from), and even provides recommendations of what to do if you don’t have the full funding confirmed.

Your first point of contact will always be the PGR Admissions team or RDS Research Facilitator, who can provide further detail and assistance for you. We can advise on the studentship schemes BU runs internally, how to submit a proposal to the fees board if your project does not have full funding, and the additional steps such as the research contract that will need completing alongside colleagues in RDS and Legal Services.

If you have any further questions about PhD studentships at BU, please email us on PGRadmissions@bournemouth.ac.uk

Elsevier-UK Institutions Agreement

open access, Publishing, REF Subjects, writing

Elsevier and Jisc have established an agreement to enable continued reading access for UK researchers and to enable open access publishing. When publishing in eligible Elsevier journals, authors will be able to choose to publish open access at no additional cost to the author.

This agreement is effective until the end of December 2024.

This agreement supports corresponding authors affiliated with a Jisc participating institution (which BU is), regardless of the department in which they work.

Authors who publish under this agreement can:

  • Publish their peer-reviewed research open access in hybrid journals, at no charge to the author.
  • Publish their peer-reviewed research in fully gold open access journals at a discount on the list price APC.
  • Publish eligible articles in a wide variety of participating Elsevier journals across disciplines.
  • Rely on high-quality peer-review and experienced editorial support.

You can search for whether the intended journal falls under the agreement here.

Eligibility criteria

  • The author must be the submitting corresponding author affiliated with an eligible institution
  • Articles must have an acceptance date between 1.1.2022 and 31.12.2024

Instructions for corresponding authors

  • Once your article has been accepted for publication in a participating journal, you will receive an email containing a link to the “post-acceptance author journey”. Upon selecting your publishing options, your affiliation will be validated by your institution, and you will be informed if the APC will be covered by the agreement.
  • Upon publication, your final published open access article will be made freely available on ScienceDirect, the world’s largest publishing platform.

Other open access publishing options for authors

Authors can continue to choose to publish under the subscription model and self-archive their manuscript (Green Open Access) in line with Elsevier’s sharing policy.

Details of this agreement and others which BU holds with publishers such as Wiley and Springer, can be found here. Any queries, please contact openaccess@bournemouth.ac.uk

PGR Supervisory Lunchbites | Recruiting PGRs

PG research, Training

Hosted by the Doctoral College, these one hour online lunch bite sessions supplement the regular New and Established Supervisory Development Sessions and are aimed at all academic staff who are new to, or experienced at, supervising research degree students and are interested in expanding their knowledge of a specific aspect or process in research degree supervision.

Each session will be led by a senior academic who will introduce the topic, and staff will benefit from discussions aimed at sharing best practice from across BU. Bookings are arranged by Organisational Development.

This session is focused on identifying best practice in recruiting PGRs and exploring ways of ensuring you recruit the best candidates. This discussion will be led by Dr Sally Reynolds, FST.

Staff attending will: 

  • have gained additional knowledge of the best practice and challenges of recruiting PGRs
  • have gained additional knowledge of the relevant recruitment processes

Further details on the session as well as information on future lunchbite sessions can also be found on the staff intranet.

Date: Thursday 7 April 2022

Time: 13:00 – 14:00, Teams

To book a place on this session please complete the booking form.

Further details and future sessions can also be found on the Supervisory Development Lunchbite Sessions staff intranet page.

Rapid Response Research: Real-time Mass Grave Open Source Documenting in Ukraine

Awarded & submitted bids, BU Challenges, Fusion, student research

Reports of mass graves in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine, are emerging. Since the casualties are alleged to be civilians unlawfully killed as a result of armed conflict, international law demands protection to facilitate an effective investigation. Documenting and cataloguing mass graves is vital for protection and investigation measures to follow.

With the help of two BU LLM Public International Law students, over the next weeks, we will be conducting real-time open source documenting of mass graves. Our aim is to catalogue reporting on mass graves found in media outlets, civil society research, official statements. This will include gathering information on the recording of mass graves; the reporting on mass graves; information on victim numbers in mass graves; the protection of mass graves; alleged disturbances of mass graves and, where applicable, the investigation of mass graves.

Through this activity we will be producing an important repository with significant utility for BU’s ongoing research portfolio in the area of mass graves and missing persons but also in response to a call by the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Karim Khan. In a press release he stated that he is seeking

“the support of all States Parties and the international community as a whole as my Office sets about its investigations [into the alleged commission of crimes in Ukraine].  I will be calling for additional budgetary support, for voluntary contributions to support all our situations, and for the loan of gratis personnel. The importance and urgency of our mission is too serious to be held hostage to lack of means.” [Statement of 28 February 2022]

The project is funded through the Humanities & Law Department’s QR budget, and is led by Professor Melanie Klinkner, supported by Dr Jonathan Whittle.

 

 

 

Research process seminar. Dictionary-based computer-assisted text analysis. March 29th at 2pm on Zoom

You are warmly invited to this week’s research process seminar. Hosted by FMC but open to all staff and research students.

This week’s one captures the spirit of the seminar series in a nutshell: interdisciplinary, practical and accessible. Hopefully of interest to colleagues from across the university.

Dictionary-based computer-assisted text analysis – by Prof. Irene Pollach (Aarhus University)

Researchers often use all-purpose sentiment dictionaries compiled for other purposes to measure sentiment in their textual data. I will discuss the validity challenges associated with using all-purpose dictionaries to measure sentiment in texts, especially news texts. Further, I will present recommendations for applying all-purpose sentiment dictionaries with higher accuracy.

Tues 29th March 2-3pm on Zoom

https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/9292103478?pwd=UzJnNTNQWDdTNldXdjNWUnlTR1cxUT09

Meeting ID: 929 210 3478

Passcode: rps!4fmc

Hope to see you there

Dan and Sae

 

 

Second WAN Wellness Retreat

Women's Academic Network

Tired? Harassed? Stressed, sore and stiff? In need of a bit of TLC and revitalisation in a relaxing collegial environment? You are reading the right BU Blog!

Following from our first retreat on the 8th Sept 2021, here is another opportunity for WAN members to enjoy the second of our bespoke WAN Wellness Retreats with our former convenor and in-house SportsBU yoga expert, Dr Melsia Tomlin- Kräftner.

So, what’s in store?

Melsia specialises in rehabilitative ChiRestore and Yoga for many injuries and debilitating health conditions, including stress relief. So come and join us for 3 hours and leave feeling a new woman! For more information go to: www.zenohmsphere.com

To join us on this complementary retreat email: ahamidi@bournemouth.ac.uk

Please bring a mat, a towel and a bottle of water. Leave the rest to Melsia!

Date:               6 April 2022.

Time:               9.00-13.00

Location:         Student Hall, Talbot House

If you are not a WAN member but are interested in becoming one, please email Dr Jo Mayoh jmayoh@bournemouth.ac.uk or Abier Hamidi ahamidi@bournemouth.ac.uk

Free Person Performing Exercise Stock Photo

The Friday Prof-ile: Janice Denegri-Knott

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

This week, we’re chatting with Professor in Consumer Culture & Behaviour, Janice Denegri-Knott… 

Black and white profile image of Janice Denegri-Knott

Janice Denegri-Knott

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?

My main research focus is the intersection between digital media and everyday living – in particular consumption. I have studied the role of platforms in stimulating desire for digital and material goods, and the value that people derive from their ongoing interactions with digital media.  In particular, I have been very keen to understand why there should be demand for digital goods and why people would form attachments to them – something that when I first began my studies, was deemed unorthodox, and even foolish. Throughout my career I have been a keen observer of transformations (positive and negative) happening at the very porous, or leaky, points of that intersection, where people and digital media come together.

My initial interest in the area came about as a result of an animated seminar I held with C&J students back in the early 2000s where we avidly discussed why somebody would ever buy a virtual chair that they couldn’t physically sit on.  From there on the examples became more extreme. Today, we have grown more accustomed to the idea that under certain conditions (uniqueness and scarcity), a digital piece of art like Pak’s ‘The Merge’ could have a transactional value of $91.8 million, or why 30,000 people across the world would want to pitch in together to buy it. Evidence of this shift abounds. Today, we have a vibrant market for Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) which have become very desirable investments. Just in the first four months of 2021 NFTs had been traded over 2 billion times, an increase of ten-fold from 2020.

What has been your career highlight to date?  

I am immensely proud of the many projects that I have carried out over the years in close collaboration with colleagues in the C&J Department in the Faculty of Media and Communication – Dr. Rebecca Jenkins, Dr. Chris Miles, Dr. Mel Gray, Dr. Sae Oshima and Stuart Armon.  We have delivered high impact research, supporting positive transformation in the promotion and media industries. In particular in areas to do with the monetisation of digital content (for ITV), and metrics to measure advertising effectiveness and rethinking recall and recognition as measures of attention. Of note is work undertaken for Exterion Media (now Global) and Transport for London (TfL) that helped Exterion Media secure a £2,000,000,000 contract to manage the TfL advertising estate, improved advertising effectiveness by format, location and time by 70%-80% and making advertising during travel journeys more relevant and enjoyable for 1,300,000,000 TfL users annually.

What are you working on at the moment?  

Right now I am working on two projects.  I am writing a couple of papers reporting findings from a British Academy/Leverhulme funded intergenerational study into the value parents, children and their grandparents ascribe to their digital possessions. Thanks to this study we have found that value is not wedded to meaning only – in terms of sentimental associations that remind people of loved ones or expresses aspects of their identity- as is the case for material possessions.  Value is also firmly rooted in affordances – what people anticipate their digital possession will enable them to achieve.  I am also working with a key player in the NFT market on a study of people’s desire for and attachment to NFTs across a diverse group of users.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

I would be working with food – possibly running a Peruvian restaurant with the help of my husband and daughters.

What do you do to unwind? 

Long walks, meditation, long distance calls with family and impromptu dances in my kitchen with my daughters.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?  

Tele-transportation, so that I could beam myself to Peru and back (where my parents and family live)

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you? 

My silk kaftan.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

To be less concerned in anticipating all that can be wrong with your research, and focus more on all that is good.

Reflections on Fieldwork in Nigeria: Celebrating World Down Syndrome Day, 21 March 2022

international, writing

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I travelled to Nigeria on 13 September 2021 for my data collection on adults (aged 18 years and above) with Down syndrome and their family members and caregivers. I had the opportunity to interact and build a long-lasting relationship with adults with Down syndrome as they are the main participants of my research. My trip was both exciting and challenging!

My research was meant to focus on South-West, Nigeria. Fortunately, I was able to cover the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria namely: South-West, South-East, South-South, North-East, North-West and North Central. I would say it was a blessing in disguise. 🙂

Interactions with adults with Down syndrome

On 28 September 2021, I visited my first recruitment centre – Down Syndrome Foundation Nigeria (DSFN), an organisation for people with Down syndrome located in Lagos State. During my visit, I was introduced to people with Down syndrome. The organisation followed global public health guidelines on COVID-19 such as wearing of face masks, washing of hands and use of hand sanitiser. There was no handshaking, they greeted me with their elbows. A male teenager aged 17 years and his classmates with Down syndrome prayed for me. It was a fascinating experience. I felt accepted by everyone and had fun all day.

Some adults with Down syndrome were friendly and willing to engage while some were shy. I observed them whilst they were learning in their classes and how they interact in the organisation. Many of them had smiles all over their faces confirming they were happy in their environment. On the same day, the DSFN President’s daughter, an adult with Down syndrome said she likes me and asked about my birthdate. I told her and she gifted me with a diary for my birthday. She was the first person to give me a gift for my birthday in 2021 which I truly cherish. She also offered me a canned drink and some cookies. She is very lovely and friendly. I went back the next day to start my data collection.

My first birthday gift in 2021 by a female adult with Down syndrome

Reports from adults with Down syndrome

My data collection was a combination of adults with Down syndrome in special schools, care homes and those living at home with their parents. For those in special schools, they go back home during the mid-term break (boarders and day students), while those living with parents did not go to school due to lack of funds. For boarders, most of them do not want to go home during mid-term break, they prefer to interact with their friends in school. The special schools and care homes have a better understanding of how to care for them. Most adults with Down syndrome reported they want to be independent, get married and have children, and have paid jobs. They reported they love singing and dancing.

Interactions with family members and caregivers

I had brief interviews with some family members and caregivers. The President & Founder of DSFN, Mrs Rose Mordi, was delighted that I am researching in this area. She added that there is low awareness of people with Down syndrome in Nigeria and some parents tend to hide their children/adults with Down syndrome as they feel ashamed, unaware of how to properly care for and support them.

I made three visits to Lady Atinuke Oyindamola Memorial Home in Badagry, Lagos State. I met with the Founder, Mrs Elsie Akerele, she welcomed me very well and was interested in my research. She pointed out that people with Down syndrome need to be respected for who they are. She added that the rights of people with Down syndrome need to be fought for, as she recalled how babies with Down syndrome can be killed by being thrown into the rivers to sacrifice to deities in Badagry and around the country. She reported she has requested the provision of a healthcare facility closer to the organisation from the Lagos State Government. The memorial home lost a child who was convulsing whilst travelling far to another location to get treatment. She indicated they urgently need an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine to check the brain conditions of people with Down syndrome in their care. She added that great attention should be placed on the dietary requirements of people with Down syndrome. Family members and caregivers reported that people with Down syndrome in Nigeria are often neglected, stigmatised and receive no financial support from the Nigerian government. Some raised concerns about who would take care of their adults with Down syndrome when they are dead as they are ageing.

Data collection and sample size

Over 90% of the data collection was done onsite and less than 10% was done online mainly for the Northern parts of Nigeria due to security issues.

It has been very difficult to collect data from adults with Down syndrome during the last year. As of 16 February 2022, I obtained self-reports from 166 adults with Down syndrome and proxy reports from 52 family members and caregivers covering the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Based on my visits to the recruitment centres, some caregivers (staff) informed me that COVID-19 impacted the finance of parents and were unable to provide resources for their adults with Down syndrome while some adults are locked at home. There was also confusion at times as to what I was trying to achieve, as many of the family members and caregivers are not well informed about the relevance of the survey. Despite providing information sheets and liaising with the organisations, a mother declined to participate in the survey as she said: “my child is not for an experiment.”

Engagement in my fieldwork

I was invited several times to participate in some events regarding people with Down syndrome in Nigeria such as seminars on Down syndrome awareness, a music session, and a birthday party.

I took a photo of myself during one of my visits to DSFN. As a Statistician, I am dedicated to applying robust statistical methods in advancing the quality of life of adults with Down syndrome and setting up databases on the demographics of people with Down syndrome to aid future research in Nigeria.

At DSFN, Lagos State during my data collection

Research progress

Researching adults with Down syndrome has provided me with valuable insights in several ways. First, it has made me understand who they are and how they feel. Second, they require early intervention in helping them to develop their skills particularly interpersonal and communication skills. Third, they love to learn, especially with the aid of visuals and music. Finally, they can achieve anything they want to.

I sincerely appreciate the adults with Down syndrome, family members and caregivers in Nigeria who participated in my research. Many thanks for their time, efforts, and valuable responses in ensuring this work was successful. I am grateful to my supervisors, Dr. Philip Davies, Dr. Emili Balaguer-Ballester and Dr. Jane Healy, for their guidance, consistent support and patience in my research progress. A special thanks to Dr. Vanessa Heaslip for her positive contributions to my work.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my journey in researching adults with Down syndrome has “just commenced.” I am glad I travelled to my country, Nigeria, for my research work. Based on the gaps identified in the literature and my research outcome, I am diving deeper into addressing them to improve the quality of life of adults with Down syndrome in Nigeria.

Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine translated into Greek

international, Publishing, writing

The popular medical textbook ‘Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine’ published by Elsevier has been translated into Greek.  This 2022 Greek addition was, published last month, was preceded by a Spanish translation last year.  Elsevier’s website call this fourth edition of the textbook, the “definitive and popular introduction to human behaviour in the context of health and illness includes three new chapters, many new contributors and a new co-editor. It is arranged in nine sections to cover the core concepts of psychology and sociology as they apply to medicine.”

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Sustainable Ocean Economy through Smart Technology

Industry collaboration, innovation

https://pixabay.com/images/search/port/

Come listen to innovators who aim to create a sustainable ocean economy through smart technology and even smarter ideas. Whether you are a student in supply chain management, ecology, artificial intelligence or (business) economics, we would love you to join us and discover the exciting world of smart port innovation at our virtual TomorrowPorts conference, taking place tomorrow, March 24th 2022!

Ports are becoming the worldwide frontline for the energy transition, sustainability transition and digital transition of industry. Discover how you can build a career that contributes to smarter ports with your technological or economic skills and expertise.

We organize a talent track during which you’ll have opportunities to connect with top international employers, such as MSC and CMA-CGM via virtual recruitment booths and a speed-dating carrousel.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Smart talent for smart ports track at the TomorrowPorts conference March 24 2022. Participation is free of charge for students!

https://www.smartportsecosystem.com/tomorrowports-conference-2022-24-march-smarter-ports/