/ Full archive

New Writing Academy to Develop Your Writing Skills

Post-award, Publishing, Training, writing

Tuesday 13th April – Thursday 15th April

The three-day Writing Academy will enable you to develop the skills required to improve the quantity and quality of your publications and to develop a publication strategy which best represents you as an academic.

The academy is a great opportunity for academics who are new to publishing or would benefit from some additional direction and coaching.

You’ll have access to an external consultant who will advise you on techniques and style. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your ideas and issues with your peers.

The program and objectives for Writing Academies are as follows:

  • Day 1. Planning and writing your research article
  • Day 2. Developing a Strategy for Getting Your Articles Published, Read and Cited
  • Day 3. Writing Day – to put into action everything discussed over the proceeding days

You will also have the opportunity to discuss your publishing goals and prepare a plan to accommodate writing within your day to day routines.

The trainer for the Writing Academy is Patrick Brindle.

Patrick divides his time between his training and consultancy business – Into Content – and his work for City, University of London. At City he is Programme Director on the Publishing MA and International Publishing MA. Patrick has a PhD in History from Cambridge University, and has worked in editorial positions across the social sciences at Pearson Education, Oxford University Press and SAGE Publications.  Patrick provides staff and PhD level training on book and research paper writing, and on general publishing strategy, to a range of universities, including Oxford, UCL, Leicester, Royal Holloway, the SRHE and the ESRC’s National Centre for Research Methods. He also has a specialism in helping academics in writing about methodology.

If you are interested in booking a place, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Early Career Conference Grants 2020 – applications are now open

Funding opportunities, international

Early Career Conference Grants fund emerging researchers who have not yet had the opportunity to travel internationally beyond their region to present at overseas conferences. Applications for the Early Career Conference Grants are now open. 25 grants of up to £2000 are available in 2020.

To apply, researchers must:

  • Be employed as a lecturer, research fellow/associate or post-doctoral researcher (or equivalent) at an ACU member university
  • Be within 7 years of the start of their academic career – applicants who have taken a career break and returned to work will also be considered
  • Not have previously travelled for work beyond their home region
  • Already have submitted a proposal to present at an overseas conference

How to apply

Full details and the application form can be found on the ACU website

Applicants are required to complete four short personal statements, upload their conference proposal, and attach a letter of reference from their line manager or head of department.

The closing date is 23:59 GMT on Wednesday 25 March.

If you have any queries, please contact RKEDF@Bournemouth.ac.uk

 

It is All About Fusion!Bournemouth University – Community Mapping

It is All About Fusion!

Bournemouth University – Community Mapping

A Huge Contribution Towards BU 2025 Strategy, SIAs & UN SDGs (1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 10 – 11 – 13- 17)

 

The Fusion concept has been guiding and providing us with a sound framework by fusing research, education and professional practice to produce research and education with impact. I am implementing a project that demonstrates how our students could benefit from this fusion concept. This project provides our students (MSc Marketing Management and MSc Marketing Management, digital) with a unique opportunity to learn and at the same time, become active contributors to their community and contribute to the above UN SDGs.

This is not the first time that I collaborate with Jaki King, founder of If Everyone Cares (a community interest company, with its Community Pledge and aDoddle.org which maps more than a 1000 charities). This year the collaboration takes a step further. Thanks to the support of Professor Marcjanna Augustyn, our students will be able to work on the Bournemouth Community Map (BCM)- a brand funded by the Department of Marketing, Strategy and Innovation-  design and implement a marketing communications plan for this brand.

The BCM will provide a resource which will significantly enhance and facilitate the relationship between BU and charities. It creates a virtual space for BU academics and students and more than a 1000 charities, where they can come together and share their needs for collaboration for research and teaching to achieve different objectives e.g. learning, inspiring, sharing, supporting the community, contributing to the society. Our PG students are pioneering this project and there have been some initial conversations regarding connections with other universities about this project in the future.

The BCM will be launched in March 2020 by the students as part of their seminars and ALAs sessions activities designed for the Marketing Communications and Brand Management unit. They will design and implement a marketing communications plan to the brand BCM. They will be in touch with you, so, could you please support them?

The students will be assessed based on an individual assignment where they give account on what they have learned, how they engaged with marketing communications theory and other materials to make their decisions, their appreciation of what went wrong or wright, how they felt during all the process… and not on the success of the campaign.

This teaching delivery and assessment method is in line with BU 2025 core themes and the SIAs. This project aims to build an inclusive community where BU plays a significant role via this partnership with If Everyone Cares (aDoddle). It creates opportunities for collaboration on issues challenging the community. Therefore, BU is also contributing to the UN agenda 2030.

BCM: Forging Stronger Links & Facilitating Resilience within Our Community

Across the UK there are over 150,000 registered charities that provide critical support for those in crisis or need. This figure does not include many more locally run community projects and groups who also provide essential services, some of whom do not have an active web presence.

A sad fact is that even though the world has never been more connected by technology, no one has brought these vital organisations together in one place so they can be searched for based on location and need. Yet at the same time you can go to Google Maps, type in a town or city and within a fraction of a second have a list of hotels & restaurants allowing you to make an informed decision as to which one best meets your requirements.

A few years ago, Kaouther Kooli, a Principal Academic in marketing at BU, connected with If Everyone Cares CIC (IEC) after they were named on the UK’s Digital Leaders 100 list for aDoddle’s potential social impact. The small team of dedicated volunteers is working on creating an online map which aims to bring these vital community resources together in one place so they can be found with a few clicks of a button. (aDoddle.org)

IEC has been previously used as a live case study to deliver and assess learning for the Marketing Communications unit (MSc Marketing Management). The students worked on designing a marketing communications plan for IEC. The method proved to be engaging and motivating and supporting students’ learning. In addition, students ideas were used and acknowledged by IEC.

This year BU students, Jaki (IEC) myself, Kaouther,  are taking this connection one step further through a partnership to create and launch the ‘Bournemouth Community Map’. Developing a resource that will not only help to connect BU with local and national charities but also be the first step towards creating a resource for the benefit of the community as a whole.

The Bournemouth Community Map will be linked to the UK wide Map – aDoddle.org. When charities or local community groups are added to/updated on BCM they will also be added to/updated on aDoddle and vice-versa. Ensuring a flow of up-to-date & easily accessible information.

BCM will create significant Benefits/Opportunities for BU and charities:

  • Ability for faculty, academics & students to link with charities for research projects
  • Ability for charities to post research opportunities
  • Opportunities for faculty to set course work around real needs for charities within community – having real impact
  • Ability for charities to post volunteer needs for potential matching with students
  • Opportunities for students to locate charities to volunteer for while attending BU

Benefits For the whole community include:

  • Connecting people who need help with those who provide it
  • Sign-posting those who want to help (volunteer) to projects that need support
  • Help those who are experiencing isolation to find local groups to connect with others
  • Enable and encourage existing projects to connect, collaborate, avoid duplication, discover where there are gaps in support. Helping them to help more people – more effectively
  • Encourage businesses to support projects within their locality – forging stronger community links
  • And all of this will be FREE to use – 24/7/365.

More about aDoddle.org and Area Specific Community Maps:

The team at IEC’s original goal was to create a resource to help people, who were facing crisis, to find the support that was available to them locally. After putting the idea of creating a map of charities into the global Sir Richard Branson & Virgin Unite Challenge to ‘Screw Business As Usual’, and being voted 3rd by the public, the feedback solidified their belief that it was genuinely needed and a practical solution.

Extensive conversational research followed. From connecting with organisations who had tried community mapping and failed, to speaking with thousands of people from all walks of life, talking to charities of all sizes, and so much more.

It soon became apparent that the map would help to connect and have benefit for other areas within the community as well.

Every element has been developed from feedback. It has been built from the ground up, with ease of use and a ‘lean’ framework at its core.

  • Charities & organisations add their own profiles – telling the ‘story’ of who they help, how they help, the difference they make and the help they need.
  • There is a unique ‘Traffic Light’ system that shows the ‘freshness’ of profiles. If a pin-point is green then it has been updated in the last 6 months, amber 6-12 months and red over 12 months.
  • Profiles are all set up in the same format & layout, are like ‘mini websites’ and can be branded with colours and logos. This means that information can be easily found.
  • Organisations can use their profile as their online web presence.
  • Addresses can be set to hidden, just showing the organisation is in an area – but not the specific address (handy for some organisations such as Women’s Aid)

BU, as a partner organisation, is opening the doors to new elements of research and development. Already the ideas of creating two new pages on area specific community maps are being explored and will be piloted on the BCM.

The first, to share opportunities for research between BU academics/students and charities and also to share requests for research directly from charities with the hope of matching them with BU students.

The second based on volunteering opportunities: Having a section where students can post the type of volunteering opportunity that they are looking for and the second where local charities can share roles for which they are seeking volunteers.

 

My students will be in touch to promote the BCM. Please support them.

I would like to thank Professor Marcjanna Augustyn, Head of the Marketing, Strategy and Innovation Department, and Dr Ian Jones, Head of External Engagement for their support.

Please email me on kkooli@bournemouth.ac.uk if you need further information about this project.

 

Dr Kaouther Kooli

Principal Academic in Marketing

Faculty of Management

EB401

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New study published comparing high-scoring and low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014

REF Subjects

A paper titled: Writing impact case studies: a comparative study of high-scoring and low-scoring case studies from REF2014 was published in Nature this week.

The authors have analysed the content and language of the impact case studies submitted to REF2014 and concluded that: “implicit rules linked to written style may have contributed to scores alongside the published criteria on the significance, reach and attribution of impact”. The article is enlightening, with many useful tables comparing high and low-scoring impact case studies which show a clear difference in content and language between them.

From the abstract: “The paper provides the first empirical evidence across disciplinary main panels of statistically significant linguistic differences between high- versus low-scoring case studies, suggesting that implicit rules linked to written style may have contributed to scores alongside the published criteria on the significance, reach and attribution of impact. High-scoring case studies were more likely to provide specific and high-magnitude articulations of significance and reach than low-scoring cases. High-scoring case studies contained attributional phrases which were more likely to attribute research and/or pathways to impact, and they were written more coherently (containing more explicit causal connections between ideas and more logical connectives) than low-scoring cases. High-scoring case studies appear to have conformed to a distinctive new genre of writing, which was clear and direct, and often simplified in its representation of causality between research and impact, and less likely to contain expressions of uncertainty than typically associated with academic writing.”

The authors analyse each section of impact case studies and find differences in language and content in the research, impact and evidence sections of high and low scoring case studies. As they say: “The findings of our work enable impact case study authors to better understand the genre and make content and language choices that communicate their impact as effectively as possible”.

Latest NIHR-CRN podcast

Knowledge Exchange, NHS, Research Ethics

The latest podcast in the Health Research Futures series comes from Professor Julie Lovegrove. Professor Lovegrove is from the University of Reading and talks about the challenges of conducting nutritional research and overcoming them.

 

Informed Consent training opportunities

Guidance, NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Before agreeing to participate in your study, your participants should receive all the information they require in order to make an informed decision. Once they wish to participate, then an informed consent form should be completed and filed appropriately.
Although the process sounds complex, there are currently a great training opportunities to help familiarise yourself with the background to, and process of informed consent in clinical research.

The Wessex Clinical Research Network are hosting the following training sessions at University Hospital Southampton and at Wessex CRN’s office –

  • NIHR CRN Informed Consent training, Thursday 26th March, 08:45am – 1:00pm, CRN Wessex, Unit 7, Berrywood Business Village, Hedge End, Southampton, SO30 2UN;
  • NIHR CRN Informed Consent training, Thursday 7th May, 8:30am – 12:30pm, University Hospital Southampton, Level C, West Wing, NIHR WTCRF, Southampton, SO16 6YD;
  • NIHR CRN Informed Consent training, Thursday 7th May, 1:00pm – 5:00pm, University Hospital Southampton, Level C, West Wing, NIHR WTCRF, Southampton, SO16 6YD;
  • NIHR CRN Informed Consent training, Friday 26th June, 08:45am – 1:00pm, CRN Wessex, Unit 7, Berrywood Business Village, Hedge End, Southampton, SO30 2UN

If you’re interested in attending, get in touch with the Wessex CRN to book your place.

PBS America, Ichnology and Poole Harbour

Fusion

Yesterday a film crew from Windfall Films spent the afternoon in Poole Harbour filming some experimental ichnology.  Ichnology is the study of trace fossils and is something that Bournemouth has an international reputation for.  The production company are working on a documentary for Nova and are currently following our research team as they bring forward new research at White Sands National Park.  As part of this they filmed a sequence yesterday involving the use of primitive transport technology.  Think of a wheel-less wheel barrow used to transport butchered mammoths and giant ground sloth remains and you have the idea.  We were experimenting with different designs and trying to work out what the trace fossil record looks like for each.

The Bournemouth team consisted of Hannah Larsen a PhD student who braved the bitter cold to go shoe less on the mudflats and a first year undergraduate student Gary Packwood who volunteered to help.  It was a nice example of fusion in action.

Introduction to Good Clinical Practice – Tuesday 17th March at Dorset County Hospital

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Are you interested in running your own research project within the NHS or healthcare? Good Clinical Practice, or ‘GCP’, is a requirement for those wishing to work on clinical research projects in a healthcare setting.

GCP is the international ethical, scientific and practical standard to which all clinical research is conducted. By undertaking GCP, you’re able to demonstrate the rights, safety and wellbeing of your research participants are protected, and that the data collected are reliable.

The next GCP full day session is scheduled for Tuesday 17th March, at Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester – 8:45am – 4:30pm.

The day will comprise of the following sessions:

  • Introduction to research and the GCP standards;
  • Preparing to deliver your study;
  • Identifying and recruiting participants – eligibility and informed consent;
  • Data collection and ongoing study delivery;
  • Safety reporting;
  • Study closure.

If you’re interested in booking a place, please contact Research Ethics.

Remember that support is on offer at BU if you are thinking of introducing your research ideas into the NHS – email the Research Ethics mailbox, and take a look at the Clinical Governance blog.

A three-day Sandpit focused on Digital Technologies for Health and Care

Funding opportunities

UKRI have announced an opportunity to apply to attend a sandpit on Digital technologies for Health and Care.

This is the first sandpit in a series of three which will be advertised over the next three years.

The theme for this sandpit is novel digital technologies for improved self-monitoring and health management. The sandpit will run over three days starting mid-morning on Tuesday 30 June 2020 and finishing mid-afternoon on Thursday 02 July 2020.

Key dates:

  • Call announced: February 2020
  • Call close (expressions of interest): 04 May 2020
  • Participant Selection panel: May 2020
  • Sandpit: 30 June-02 July 2020
  • Funding Application Deadline: w/c 14 September 2020
  • Funding Announcement: Before 30 September 2020

For more details please visit EPSRC web page or contact your RDS Research Facilitator for further assistance.

BRIAN Training

BRIAN, Publishing, Training

Nominating your outputs for the REF mock exercise

Thursday 27th February 14:00 -15:00 Talbot

BRIAN (Bournemouth Research Information And Networking) is BU’s publication management system.

BRIAN is also used to capture information regarding outputs to be submitted to the REF2021, and to the mock exercises related to REF2021.

This usage of BRIAN is the focus of this training session.

See here to book. Contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any queries.

 

Panel member recruitment: shaping the future of knowledge exchange at BU

Knowledge Exchange

In 2020, universities across England will be submitting to the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) for the first time.  The KEF will measure performance in seven different areas, including working with businesses, local growth and regeneration and skills, enterprise and entrepreneurship.  Research England (who will administer the KEF) intends for it to be a tool that will increase effectiveness in the use of public funding for KE, create a culture of continuous improvement in universities and increase awareness of the types of support universities can provide.

During the course of this year, universities will also be considering their responses to the new Knowledge Exchange Concordat; a joint initiative by Universities UK and GuildHE to help guide universities in making informed decisions in shaping their KE strategies.  The Concordat sets out eight guiding principles of themes for institutions to consider when creating/shaping/changing their KE provision.

To help BU prepare for these changes and to develop its knowledge exchange activities, a Knowledge Exchange Working Group is being established.  The group is being led by Ian Jones, Head of External Engagement and Professor Wen Tang, in her capacity as Chair of the HEIF Funding Panel.  We are currently recruiting for academic members of the group.

Role of working group members

We are looking make four academic appointments to the group, who will help to shape the future direction of knowledge exchange at Bournemouth University.  We are interested in recruiting staff who, between them, have taken part in a variety of knowledge exchange activities and who have worked with a wide range of non-academic organisations.

Members of the working group will be expected to work as part of team in order to review BU’s strengths and weaknesses in knowledge exchange and make recommendations for change.

The working group will meet c. 4 times per year.  Terms of reference for the working group can be downloaded here.

Application criteria

To apply for the role, please submit a short expression of interest (no more than 1 page) to the Chair and Deputy Chair of the Working Group (via knowledgeexchange@bournemouth.ac.uk), outlining how you meet the following criteria:

  • Experience of developing or leading a range of knowledge exchange activities (scored out of 5: Working group members are expected to have taken part in or led on a range of knowledge exchange activities as part of their research. Please give examples of these activities, outlining your role and what happened as a result of these activities.
  • Experience of working with a variety of different non-academic organisations (scored out of 5): We are looking to appoint academics who, between them, have worked with a variety of different types of organisations and with a wide range of different industries.  Please outline your experience and what it would bring to the working group.
  • Demonstrable interest in developing knowledge exchange at BU (scored out of 5): Working group members will be expected to work together to review BU’s strengths and weaknesses in knowledge exchange and make recommendations for change. Please state why you would like to be part of the group and how you would work to make it a success.

Application deadline

Please submit your application to knowledgeexchange@bournemouth.ac.uk by 5pm on Wednesday 11 March.

Review process

Applications will be reviewed by the Chair and Deputy Chair of the Panel during the week of 16 March.  Applicants will be contacted about the outcome during the week of 23 March.

 

 

Gender in Conflict Conference: WAN-funded event

conferences, Women's Academic Network

On Wednesday 9 October 2019 Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and I hosted an international and intersectional conference involving staff, students and Erasmus colleagues to debate issues of gender, violence and conflict in contemporary societies. We were very fortunate to receive funding from the Women’s Academic Network for this event, and for additional guest speakers who will be visiting BU in the coming months to contribute to discussion on this theme.

The focus of our ‘Gender in Conflict’ conference was to provide a platform for discussion and reflection on conceptualisations of gender and violence that have heightened visibility in post-conflict environments. We asked contributors to consider what we can learn from questions of gendered violence in a fragile international context and whether international lessons can be applied to social environments in the UK.

The aims were:

  1. To de-colonise and de-exoticise knowledge about gendered violence in war and post-conflict contexts abroad by going beyond stereotypical assumptions and representations;
  2. To interpret contemporary UK conceptualisations of gendered violence through an alternative lens inspired by international experience.

We were fortunate to have the opportunity of the Erasmus-funded presence of two visiting Kosovar colleagues who presented at this event.  Dr Linda Gusia and Assoc. Prof. Nita Luci are the founders and directors of the Programme for Gender Studies and Research at University of Prishtina, Kosovo. They are highly visible women’s rights activists in Kosovo. The post-conflict situation in Kosovo poses unexpected challenges to equal rights not only arising from classic patriarchal cultural legacies but also from masculinity reiterations in the totalising field of international intervention.

We were also joined by two BU criminologists of our own Department for Social Sciences who are working in related fields: Jade Levell on gang crimes in the UK and Dr Shovita Dhakal Adhikari on agency and interventions within human trafficking in Nepal. This conference emerged from our own academic interests in questions of gendered hate crime in the UK (Dr Jane Healy) and on questions of social justice in transnational and post-conflict settings (Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers).

Stephanie welcomes participants

Stephanie opened the conference by encouraging contributors and audience members to reflect upon the transferability of interpreting phenomena we often consider in their specific contexts alone and the limitations arising from differences in our epistemological framings of analyses, contingent on such context and distinctions such as ‘the Global South’. Questions of cultural translation, power, language and positioning can be perceived or experienced as barriers to engagement, rather than opportunities to share best practice. The aims of the conference were to critically re-envisage our contemporary conceptualisations of such concepts on the basis of comparison and shared reflection.

Jade Levell was our first speaker, with a paper entitled:  “The competing masculinities of gang-involved men who experienced domestic violence/abuse in childhood”. Jade’s presentation, drawn from her PhD thesis, considers the conflicted and competing gender performances by marginalised men who have been drawn into gangs in the UK. She demonstrated how these men are performing hegemonic masculinity in an attempt to claim power where they have none. This is conveyed through a language and symbolic rhetoric of war and honour.

Jade Levell introduces her research

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nita Luci then spoke about “Researching Gender in the Balkans” as she traced the recent history of gender studies research in Kosovo. Her presentation began during a period where few academics were interested in looking at gendered experiences in the region to the emergence of the Programme for Gender Studies and Research in contemporary Kosovo. Through this timeframe, she highlighted the simultaneous re-framing and changing conceptualisations of masculinities in Kosovo.

 

 

Visiting scholar Nita Luci from University of Prishtina

 

 

 

Linda Gusia’s paper took this conceptualisation further. In “Recognition of Sexual Violence in Kosovo after the War” Linda highlighted the conflict between the hyper visibility of war-time sexual violence and a complete silencing of questions of gender and nationalism before the war. She considered how sexual violence against women was propagated by men, as an attack on the nation’s male gaze. Through a nationalist lens the concept of heroism was the prevailing public image and discourse. There was limited space for women’s own conceptualisation of the war as their stories were reframed through a narrative of sacrifice, martyrdom and atonement.

Visiting scholar Linda Gusia

In her paper entitled “Exploring Child Vulnerabilities: pre- and post-disaster in Nepal”, Shovita Dhakal Adhikari demonstrated similar patterns of silencing of women’s and girl’s experiences of human trafficking in Nepal. Shovita critiqued the application of Westernised concepts and labels to Nepalese society, particularly in regard to discourses of vulnerable victims in need of ‘rescue and protect’. Here again, women’s bodies are being controlled as a method of protection.

BU’s Shovita Dhakal Adhikari shares her research on child trafficking narratives in Nepal

 

Lastly, Stephanie chaired a panel discussion of all of the speakers, entitled “Inverting the gaze: Juxtaposing gender and conflict in transitional societies abroad and the UK”. This produced a lively debate around concepts of competing masculinities, vulnerabilities and visibilities of marginalised voices that could be drawn from all case studies presented. The conference drew to a close with contributors and audience members agreeing that this was an energising and engaging series of papers that showcased similarities in constructions of gender and gendered violence, both in the UK and abroad.

Participant contributions

Two further speakers who were unable to attend this conference at short notice were re-scheduled to visit BU this academic year:

  • Dr Emma Milne from Plymouth presented on Criminal Justice Responses to Maternal Filicide: Judging the failed mother on 13 February 2020.
  • Dr Hannah Mason-Bish will visit on 23 March 2020 to discuss Gender and Hate Crime.

For further details or discussion please contact: jhealy@bournemouth.ac.uk or sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk