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PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Jordan King

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Jordan King (MRes, FST) with this poster entitled: Exploring nostalgic experiences in video games.

Click the poster below to enlarge.

Video game players may experience emotional demands, such as nostalgia, when thinking of a memorable game which can increase levels of well-being and social connectedness (Wulf, Bowman, Velez & Breuer, 2020). Yet previous literature has asked participants to think about a nostalgic game, the current study aims to have participants play a memorable video game to see what may make a video game nostalgic, explore how is nostalgia experienced before and after playing a nostalgic video game and, explore whether nostalgia is a positive experience which relates to well-being. Using a mixed method approach, quantitative data will explore levels of nostalgia before and after playing a nostalgic video game, and levels of well-being. Qualitative data will be collected to explore what may make a video game nostalgic which will be analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This contributes to existing literature on video game nostalgia by having participants play video games.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Megan Jadzinski

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Megan Jadzinski (PhD, FHSS) with this poster entitled: How are Fitness to Practise processes applied in the Higher Education Institutions, in relation to Health and Care Profession Council or Nursing and Midwifery Council healthcare courses?

Click the poster below to enlarge.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are required to manage concerns raised regarding pre-registration healthcare students. All HEIs are required to have a Fitness to Practice (FTP) policy to manage concerns. Due to limited guidance from regulatory bodies, variations occur. The aim of this research is to understand how the FTP processes are applied. A qualitative methodology will be utilised. Two stages will occur. Firstly, a review of FTP documentation from multiple universities. Secondly, online interviews with HEI staff who manage the process within their organisation. Following a systematic review, limited evidence was found with recommendations that further exploration is required. Limited research has been conducted on the FTP process within HEIs in England. Multiple gaps, including, a need for a more consistent and fair approach has been identified. The output from this research could impact the way in which FTP cases are managed.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Mirte Korpershoek

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Mirte Korpershoek (PhD, FST) with this poster entitled: Rock art as an environmental archive.

Click the poster below to enlarge.

Rock art occurs worldwide, across societies and time-periods. Traditionally, rock art studies examine the intention behind the images: the symbolism and shamanistic ritual interpretations. In my research, I am investigating whether rock art depictions are useful to understanding the palaeoenvironmental context of the people who created the art. I will compare the images -focusing on depictions of humans, animals and activities/tools- to published archaeological assemblages, to establish to what extent rock art accurately depicts the way of living and environments of the artists. I will also compare themes in rock art from various locations to see whether there are any similarities and what this could mean. Machine learning will be applied to these themes to identify the most common figurative motifs per region. Here I will present the first results from South America: I discuss the prevalence of human and wild animal depictions from this region.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

Design and Engineering SWAN Application Success!

Following achievement of BU’s Department of Design & Engineering  the Athena SWAN bronze award, in recognition of commitment to working towards gender equality in higher education, we would like to share the journey, briefly.

We are very proud that the Athena SWAN  Panel from Advance HE commends the Department for its work to progress gender equality, including the development of an organisational structure to carry this work forward.

Athena SWAN was introduced in May 2019 by two members of the BU SWAN steering group to Design and Engineering Department. The Self-Assessment Team (SAT) leaders were appointed after an open call for expressions of interest by the HoD in October 2019.  A call for SAT membership was made in December 2019. The SAT was formally introduced by the SAT leaders in January 2020, and seven individuals with various backgrounds (academic, professional & support, and students (UG and PGR)) were appointed and contributed to the development of the application.

For the preparation of the application there had been several face to face and virtual Self-Assessment Team meetings and two focus groups conducted virtually to further explore the related topics. There has been a high level of interest from D&E SAT members who are from diverse backgrounds in addressing gender equality within the department during the pandemic. Although the lockdown caused cancellation of some outreach activities, virtual SAT activities enabled everyone to take pride in being part of a community that is contributing to engineering and technology advancements.

During this journey, Dr James Palfreman-Kay, BU Equality and Diversity Advisor, has acted as the advisor of the the teamwork leading to an action plan which was used as the basis for the Athena SWAN bronze award submission.

The Design & Engineering department is committed to a fully inclusive environment to work and study in addressing fusion, Research, Education and Professional Practice. This award gives us confidence that the actions we are undertaking will enable us to achieve this aim.

 

 

New Look Research Application Development Timeline

New Look Timeline!

The Research Development & Support RKE Application timeline is your ultimate guide to applying for external research and knowledge-exchange funding, and it’s been given a brand new look.

The timeline guides you through all the necessary steps, procedures and processes involved, including navigating through all the requirements of the internal quality approvals, costing preparations, legal and finances approvals, faculty approvals, etc.

The timeline also provides helpful guidance in the time needed in preparing and finalising external funding applications, taking you through initial planning, the submission preparation processes, legal and finance approval processes and to the submission to funder process.

You can also find useful links and information, as well as your Funding Development Team contacts on this timeline document.

Please click on this link to access this useful guidance document in its jazzy new format.

If you have any queries, please contact RDS.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Iram Bibi

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Iram Bibi (PhD, FST) with this poster entitled: Reliability, validity, and feasibility of a generic quality of life scale for use directly with community dwelling older people with dementia.

Click the poster below to enlarge.

Currently, measures of quality of life (QoL) used with people with dementia (PWD) are mainly health-related. Health is not an actual attribute of but a means to attain QoL. The ICECAP-O scale measures attributes of QoL. In this study, ICECAP-O was tested with community dwelling PWD for face validity (N = 5), feasibility to administer, internal, and test-retest reliability (N = 54). The ICECAP-O was found to have good face validity and feasibility to administer. It also had acceptable test-retest reliability (r = .68, p<.01, n = 54; r = .56, p<.01, n = 54; for ICECAP-O raw and tariff scores respectively) and moderate to good levels of Cronbach alpha (.68 for raw score of 1st administration and .70 for the raw and tariff scores of 2nd administration) (Cicchetti, 1994). Therefore, ICECAP-O appears to be a useful measure for future research to directly assess actual attributes of community-dwelling PWD’s QoL.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

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:

11th January 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.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Jack Wieland

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Jack Wieland (PhD, FST) with this poster entitled: Investigating the Role of Microsatellite Instability in Reproduction. 

Click the poster below to enlarge and you can listen to the accompanying audio.

Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive after 1 year without the use of birth control methods. Previous research has revealed that genetic analysis to date is strongly associated with different nucleotide pathogenic variants within different DNA repair systems. However, there is little understanding in how microsatellite instability and the role of the immune system contributing to infertility. The workflow presented shows how this conclusion was drawn using a self-designed MySQl database utilising the research published to date. The next step from this is to undertake laboratory and computational bioinformatic analysis to demonstrate how microsatellite instability contributes to infertility. Other future directions of this research may explore how other genomic abnormalities contribute to infertility that may have not been reported in research to date.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Hayden Scott-Pratt and Sigrid Osborne

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Hayden Scott-Pratt (PhD, FST) and Sigrid Osborne (MRes, FST) with this poster entitled: Unlikely allies: Combining archaeobotanical and metallurgical material in archaeological research. An example from the Iron Age settlement at Hengistbury Head.

Click the poster below to enlarge.

How can an investigation of plant material inclusions in metallurgical waste inform on the use of furnaces in the Iron Age at Hengistbury Head? This poster presents a novel approach to studying ancient metal production practices.  It focuses on a case study of material excavated from the Iron Age settlement at Hengistbury Head, Dorset. It shows how using the field of botany can support interpretations on a prehistoric metal production process. On investigating the metallurgical slag recovered at Hengistbury Head an unusual macroscopic inclusion deemed to be plant material was discovered. A sample of the slag with the plant inclusion was investigated looking for phytoliths, microscopic plant remains. Investigating smelting parameters and furnace construction in antiquity is fraught with difficulty. Previously the packing of a furnace with organic matter has been inferred from occasional plant imprints. The phytolith analysis proved that the slag contained microscopic and macroscopic plant remains. This is new evidence and alters the interpretation of how Iron Age furnaces on Hengistbury Head may have been constructed.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.

Call for EoIs: Impact Champions (x 2) for UOA 15 (Archaeology)

Research assessment

An opportunity has arisen for two impact Champions for Unit of Assessment (UOA) 15 (Archaeology) to help drive preparations for the next REF. These roles would initially be until summer 2022.

BU is making early preparations towards units of assessment (UOAs) for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise. Each UOA has a UOA Leader, supported by Impact and Outputs Champions.  The roles are recruited through an open and transparent process, which gives all academic staff the opportunity to put themselves forward for UOA Leader roles.

We are currently seeking expressions of interest (EoI) from academic staff interested in supporting impact development for UOA 15 (Archaeology). 

Impact Champions play a key role in shaping the impact element of their UOA’s submission, working closely with their Faculty’s Impact Advisor.

Key responsibilities of the Impact Champion role include:

  • Early detection of potential impact case studies
  • Review the development of impact case studies being prepared within the UOA
  • Provide guidance on how impact case studies can be accelerated and evidenced
  • Advise colleagues on the REF impact guidelines
  • Review impact strategies related to the UOA and assess progress made against them
  • Review and implement recommendations from external research users to strengthen research impact
  • Ensure that colleagues are updating institutional systems for impact tracking
  • Promote relevant training and development opportunities
  • Review impact arising from major programmes of research and knowledge exchange to make recommendations as to how these can contribute to impact case studies
  • Advise on the use of appropriate metrics specific to the subject area
  • To help embed a culture of research impact
  • To undertake any other duties as requested by the relevant Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice (DDR&PP) and/or Unit of Assessment leader.

Application process:

To apply for one of the Impact Champion roles, please submit a short statement (suggested length 300 words) explaining your interest in the role and what you could bring to it. This should be sent by email to Professor Kate Welham by 21st December 2021.  The EoIs will be reviewed by the UOA Leader and DDR&PP.

The selection criteria used at EoI are outlined below. Each criterion carries a total possible score of 5. The role will be offered to the highest scoring applicant. A member of the panel will provide feedback to all applicants.

  • Knowledge of the REF and research impact (scored out of 5): Applicants should have the appropriate level of skill and knowledge to help them support the development of impact in their UOA. It is expected that Impact Champions will predominantly be practising researchers and will have a breadth of understanding of research across their Faculty.  They are also expected to have an understanding of the REF assessment process and of research impact.
  • Experience of external engagement and / or impact development (scored out of 5): Impact Champions are expected to be able to provide advice and direction to colleagues who want to develop their research impact. Experience of engaging with external organisations or developing your own research impact would be of benefit in this role.
  • Commitment, motivation and enthusiasm (scored out of 5): Being an Impact Champion is a big commitment and the role has the scope to help shape impact development at BU. Applicants need to be committed to the role, as well as showing the enthusiasm and motivation needed to support their UOA.

A  role description is available here: UOA Impact Champion Role Descriptor-Nov 2021.

Impact through enterprise: The Ingenuity Summit

innovation

BU has partnered with The Ingenuity Programme, which exists to tackle the UK’s major social and environmental challenges through the creation of innovative start-ups. The programme aims to help people turn their ideas for change into a business that creates impact.

This year’s programme has three key areas of focus – building stronger communities, improving health, and tackling climate change.

Staff, students and alumni are eligible to take part in the programme, with the opportunity to hear from industry experts and gain support from specialist mentors to develop ideas into a business plan. Participants can also submit their idea to a competition and be in with a chance of winning significant investment and support.

The Ingenuity Summit

The Ingenuity Summit will explore the three areas of focus from local, national, and lived experience perspectives.

Held on 6 – 8 December 2021, the event brings together industry experts, regional panellists, and local community members to share their insights on how to build stronger communities, improve health, and tackle climate change.

The summit takes place online and is free to attend. To find out more and book your place visit: https://ingenuityimpact.org/ingenuity-summit/

PGR Supervisory Lunchbites | Clinical Governance and the role of the PGR Supervisor

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 expanding individuals’ knowledge on the research governance processes and supervisory responsibilities for supporting their PGRs. This discussion will be led by Suzy Wignall, RDS.

Staff attending this session will: 

  • have gained additional knowledge of the research governance approval process
  • have gained an understanding of the role of the Supervisor in supporting PGRs

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

Date: Tuesday 7 December 2021

Time: 12:00 – 13:00

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.

PGR Virtual Poster Exhibition | Elie Charabieh

conferences, PG research, student research

The 13th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, hosted by the Doctoral College.

Elie Charabieh (PhD, FST) with this poster entitled: Recidivism risk factors in Lebanese prisoners.

Click the poster below to enlarge.

Given the high cost of reoffending (e.g., direct cost of imprisonment, cost of crime victimisation, exacerbating overcrowding in prisons) this novel research aims to answer the following:  What are the risk/protective factors for recidivism in prisoners in Lebanon? To answer this research question, I use a mix of quantitative (dataset of over 45,000 individuals released from Lebanese prisons between 2013-2018) and qualitative research (in-depth video-recorded interviews with 10-15 notorious prisoners). As seen in Western studies, preliminary findings suggest that males, younger age (18-29), being divorced, not completing any schooling, having been previously imprisoned, having 3 or more criminal cases, and being charged with a drug/theft related crime, significantly increase the reimprisonment risk. Notable differences in reimprisonment rates were also found across nationalities and crime types. Knowledge of these factors will help the Lebanese government target high-risk offenders and improve their chances of leading crime-free lives upon their release.

You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.

If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.