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Congratulations to Dr. Alison Taylor

PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Alison Taylor whose PhD paper ‘The therapeutic role of video diaries: A qualitative study involving breastfeeding mothers‘ has just appeared online [1].  This paper, in Women and Birth (published by Elsevier), was co-authored with her PhD supervisors Prof. Emerita Jo Alexander, Prof. Kath Ryan (University of Reading) and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

The paper highlights that despite breastfeeding providing maximum health benefits to mother and baby, many women in the United Kingdom do not breastfeed, or do so briefly.  Alison’s study explored in a novel way the everyday experiences of first-time breastfeeding mothers in the early weeks following birth.  Five UK mothers were given a camcorder to capture their real-time experiences in a video diary, until they perceived their infant feeding was established. This meant that data were collected at different hours of the day by new mothers without a researcher being present.  Using a multidimensional approach to analysis, we examined how five mothers interacted with the camcorder as they shared their emotions, feelings, thoughts and actions in real-time. In total mothers recorded 294 video clips, total recording time exceeded 43 hours.

This paper focuses on one theme, the therapeutic role of the camcorder in qualitative research. Four subthemes are discussed highlighting the therapeutic impact of talking to the camcorder: personifying the camcorder; using the camcorder as a confidante; a sounding board; and a mirror and motivator. The paper concludes that frequent opportunities to relieve tension by talking to “someone” without interruption, judgement or advice can be therapeutic and that more research is needed into how the video diary method can be integrated into standard postnatal care to provide benefits for a wider population.

Alison is Senior Lecturer in Midwifery and a member of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternatal & Perinal Health.

 

 

Reference:

  1. Taylor, A.M., van Teijlingen, E., Alexander, J. & Ryan, K. The therapeutic role of video diaries: A qualitative study involving breastfeeding mothers, Women Birth (2018), (online first)  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wombi.2018.08.160

Nobel Prize should be just the start of making women scientists more visible

File 20181010 72100 15vbbdh.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Darren Baker/Shutterstock

Shelley Thompson, Bournemouth University

Until this year, only 19 women had won a Nobel Prize for science – just 3% of the total winners. But the Nobel Committee’s decision to recognise Donna Strickland and Frances Arnold, respectively, with the 2018 chemistry and physics prizes, suggests this imbalance is finally being addressed.

The Nobel recognises outstanding contributions to humankind, so it should go without saying that the outstanding women working in the fields of science and medicine should be recognised for their contributions. And there are many who deserve to be seen through awards and media representations. But perhaps more importantly, the image we see of women in science from things like the Nobel Prizes can make a difference to what happens within the field.

Women laureates are grossly underrepresented in all of the Nobel Prize categories, especially when you consider their participation in these areas today. Globally, women still represent less than a third of the science workforce, but that’s far more than the 3% recognised by the Nobels.

Even in the last few years, as more women have entered scientific fields, they have been notably absent among Nobel prize winners. The last woman to win the chemistry prize was Ada Yonath in 2009. And before Donna Strickland there hadn’t been a female physics laureate since Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963. The Nobel Committee has said it is taking steps to improve its record on women but that it would likely be five to ten years before we see a significant change in distribution.

The reality is that women are still under- and misrepresented in almost every facet of science. The numbers start with a lower proportion of female science students at secondary level and gradually decline at every stage of education and leadership. For example, women are underrepresented as first authors of scientific research papers and their papers are much less likely to be cited by others. By the time it gets to candidates for the Nobel Prize, there are very few women left to choose from.

You can add to that the persistence of outdated ideas around gender differences within science. Just recently, a CERN professor was suspended for sexist comments linked to debunked science made to a room full of women scientists. In many ways, it made Strickland’s winning of the physics Nobel all the more sweet but demonstrates the lingering mischaracterisation of women in science both inside and outside of the profession.

Representation matters

With all this mind, it’s important to remember that media representation matters. It gives women and girls opportunities to literally see themselves, in this case, as scientists. We know from research that female role models can make a difference to women’s decisions about whether or not to start a scientific career. And more generally, media representations help us to understand ourselves and others. So, if images of successful women are missing from the picture girls and women have of science through the media, it can limit the extent to which they will see themselves as scientists.

We need to normalise the representation of all women in science. More women winning the Nobel Prize, and more news articles celebrating those women’s achievements, are just the start. Changing how women scientists are seen can also be achieved through film and television representations, news articles, Wikipedia entries and so on.

Globally, for example, women made up only 19% of experts appearing in television, radio and print news reports. When women scientists are made less visible in this way, they are, in the words of feminist thinker Gaye Tuchman, “symbolically annihilated”. In other words, they are effectively omitted, trivialised and condemned by the mass media.

Women scientists are moving to the centre.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

While there are many examples of women scientists in film and television, they’re now starting to appear more often as lead characters rather than as sidekicks to men – for example, Sandra Bullock’s Ryan Stone in Gravity. Recent films such as Hidden Figures and the reboot of Ghostbusters have made the female leads’ role as scientists a key focus and driver of the storylines. This kind of change is important for moving women scientists from, as feminist critic bell hooks puts it, the “margins to the centre”.

Even the number and content of Wikipedia entries about women scientists is important, as the crowd-edited encyclopedia helps document what society values and exposes people to cultural heritage. But research shows that Wikipedia has a poor record on gender equality in terms of including women’s biographies.

This was highlighted when it emerged that, before her Nobel win, Strickland’s contributions to science had been deemed not significant enough to warrant her own Wikipedia page. Such examples underline the importance of efforts like those of Jessica Wade to increase the number of Wikipedia entries about women scientists’ contributions.

Changing all these media representations together can help more people to see women as scientists and to value the contributions that they make. This will empower women scientists today and inspire more girls to join the next generation. Perhaps then, a Nobel Prize winner being female won’t be such big news and the focus will be on their science rather than their gender.The Conversation

Shelley Thompson, Head of School of Journalism, English & Communication, Bournemouth University

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

Reminder – NERC standard grants (January 2019 deadline) – internal competition

Funding opportunities

Reminder

 

NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures at: http://intranetsp.bournemouth.ac.uk/policy/BU Policy for NERC Demand Management Measures.docx.

As at March 2015, BU has been capped at one application per standard grant round. The measures only apply to NERC standard grants (including new investigators). An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.

BU process

As a result, BU has introduced a process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Standard Grant round. This will take the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available standard grant round is January 2019. The deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 18th October 2018.  The EoI form, BU policy for NERC Demand Management Measures and process for selecting an application can be found here: I:\R&KEO\Public\NERC Demand Management 2019.

NERC have advised that where a research organisation submits more applications to any round than allowed under the cap, NERC will office-reject any excess applications, based purely on the time of submission through the Je-S system (last submitted = first rejected). However, as RKEO submit applications through Je-S on behalf of applicants, RKEO will not submit any applications that do not have prior agreement from the internal competition.

Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RKEO, and will work closely with the Research Facilitator and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Access to external bid writers will also be available.

Appeals process

If an EoI is not selected to be submitted as an application, the Principal Investigator can appeal to Professor Tim McIntyre-Bhatty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Any appeals must be submitted within ten working days of the original decision. All appeals will be considered within ten working days of receipt.

RKEO Contacts

Please contact Rachel Clarke, RKEO Research Facilitator – clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk or Jo Garrad, RKEO Funding Development Manager – jgarrad@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.

10 years of graphics and serious games research

staff profile pages

We would like to invite you to the first research seminar of the new academic year for the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: 10 years of graphics and serious games research

Speaker: Dr Vedad Hulusic
Bournemouth University

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 17 October 2018

Room: F112 (Fusion Building)

Abstract:
As a new member of the Games team, CT, SciTech, in this talk I will give an overview of my work over the past 10 years. I will start with my early research career, as a PhD student at the University of Warwick, where I worked on auditory-visual cross-modal interaction for computer graphics. I will then present some work on virtual reconstruction of cultural heritage I have done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I worked as an Assistant Professor. In 2015 I moved to France (Télécom ParisTech) where I worked on high dynamic range imaging (HDRi), and image and video quality assessment. Finally, I will talk about serious games for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the area I work in for the past 6 years and the current main area of interest. Here, I will cover some basic aspects of the theoretical framework we used for creation of our games, as well as main findings and plans for future.

We hope to see you there!

Wellbeing in Nepal – Libraries week

Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research, will talk about wellbeing in Nepal. Professor van Teijlingen has done over a decade of field research in Nepal, especially on community-based projects on maternal health.

Edwin has extensive experience in public and reproductive health and has collaborated in large-scale evaluations of community-based public-health interventions.

Most publications by Professor van Teijlingen can be found on BURO, Bournemouth University’s repository.

Thursday 11 October, 3.30pm – 4.30pm, EB306, Executive Business Centre, Lansdowne Campus

Valid Informed Consent for clinical research – training opportunity

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 is currently a great training opportunity to help familiarise yourself with the background to, and process of informed consent in clinical research.

The Wessex Clinical Research Network are hosting a training session at Poole Hospital on Wednesday 31st, 08:30am – 12:30pm.

If you’re interested in attending, get in touch with the Wessex CRN to book your place. Hurry as there are only 6 seats left!

Women’s Academic Network (WAN): Gender Research Seminar Series

BU Women’s Academic Network (WAN) launches its Gender Research Seminar Series on Wednesday 28th November 1.30-3.30 (Room: Fusion 112). The inaugural seminar addresses gender, race and ethnicity, and celebrates the excellent work of two BU women academics: Dr Deborah Gabriel and Dr Hyun-Joo Lim.

 

Dr Gabriel is a senior lecturer in politics, media & communication and co-author of Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia. Her seminar presentation is entitled:Inside the Ivory Tower: Advancing a Black Feminist Strategy for Race and Gender Equality. The abstract is as follows:

Gender – like other facets of identity have always been approached institutionally from a monocultural standpoint, through essentialised categories that make up ‘protected’ characteristics within Equality and Diversity policy. This has contributed to the exclusion, invisibility and stagnant career progress of women of colour, since their needs are only considered as an afterthought. This has led to tokenistic efforts centred on ‘promoting diversity’ rather than strategic interventions to address barriers to equality, especially in relation to White privilege. In this presentation, Deborah Gabriel discusses Black British Academics’ Ivory Tower project, designed to promote critical consciousness and agency – key themes within a Black Feminist standpoint and important components for developing a critical race strategy to facilitate an intersectional agenda for race equality.​

 

Dr Hyun-Joo Limis a senior lecturer in sociology and author of East Asian Mothers in Britain: An Intersectional Exploration of Motherhood and Employment. Her presentation is entitled: No freedom: the abuse and inhumane experiences of women inside and outside North Korea. The abstract is as follows:

North Korean women are routinely subject to systemic human rights abuse and sexual violation inside and outside North Korea. As a result of the strong influence of Confucian patriarchy, women inside North Korea face a violation of basic rights and inequality on a daily basis. In addition, for the many who successfully escape their country to gain a better life and overcome hunger, the search for freedom is just as tough, as they are frequently abducted, sold and exploited by traffickers. In this presentation I will talk about my research on North Korean female defectors living in the UK and the systemic human rights abuse they experienced both inside and outside their homeland, specifically in China.

 

The seminar is open to all. If you wish to attend please email the co-conveners of WAN so that we can keep track of numbers.

Jayne Caudwell: jcaudwell@bournemouth.ac.uk

Lorraine Brown: LBrown@bournemouth.ac.uk

Francis Hawkhead: fhawkhead@bournemouth.ac.uk

7th Call to the Interreg 2Seas programme

Funding opportunities

The 7th Call for step 1 applications to the Interreg 2Seas programme is open.

If BU academics are interested or are not sure about participation, there is an introductory and project development workshop scheduled in London on 23rd October.

Here is the link to programme and registration; please be aware that registration closes on 16th October.

Some projects are looking for UK Partners in following areas:

– Recovery of phosphorous from waste water to re-use as fertiliser – looking for very particular types of organisation
– Re-using industrial waste as new products of value
– Circular entrepreneurship in the leisure economy
– Adapting to future risks from coastal storms and compound flood events
– Converting empty buildings into affordable housing.

If you are interested in joining any of above projects, please contact international Research Facilitator or your Funding Development Officer for more details.

More information on the programme available on Interreg 2Seas website.

Professor Heather Hartwell research into large scale nutrition interventions to improve public health

Professor Heather Hartwell research into large scale nutrition interventions to improve public health

Good nutrition and eating well is an important part of public health and can help stave off a number of age-related illnesses. Over the last twenty years, Bournemouth University’s Professor Heather Hartwell has been carrying out research into nutrition in the context of developing large scale interventions to improve public health. Her work has taken her from prisons to hospitals to workplace canteens. When Professor Hartwell began her research career in nutrition, much of the health policy focus was on one-to-one support for people who were struggling with associated health conditions. The idea that large scale interventions might be successful was only beginning to be recognised.

“One of the first projects I was involved in at Bournemouth University was a commission from the National Audit Office, exploring nutrition in prisons,” says Professor Hartwell, “We found that while prisoners did have healthy eating options, the catering on offer tended to over-rely on processed foods – bread, sausages and pasties, for example. This meant they were eating more salt than the general population, which can lead to high blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. Among other things, we recommended that they used the prison gardens to grow fresh produce, as it was a low-cost way of adding more vegetables to the food on offer. Around the same time, we were also looking at nutrition in hospital catering. In this setting, we found that there were much fewer healthy food options on offer and that meal production and delivery were overseen by a number of different teams – caterers, porters and ward staff. This meant that there was no real consistency and making it easier for miscommunication to take place.”

“It was quite eye-opening working in two very different public sector contexts,” continues Professor Hartwell, “As researchers, it’s important to go into every situation with humility because until you’re fully immersed in the context in which you’re working, you can’t fully appreciate the barriers that staff might be facing. In the NHS, for example, catering managers are often providing three meals per day, drinks and snacks on a very low budget, which limits what they’re able to do. You can’t achieve perfection in any situation, but co-created research can significantly improve what was there before.”

Working in public sector settings and seeing the difference that larger scale interventions could make on people’s health then led Professor Hartwell to consider the difference that healthier eating options could make in workplace canteen environments. “These settings are really important because they’re where people eat on a regular basis, not just one-off celebratory meals. If people are continually being offered unhealthy food choices, then it can have long-term implications for their health. We’re offered very little information about what’s in our food when we eat out, so my starting point was to improve that.”

Over the last few years, Professor Hartwell has been working on a major European grant, FoodSMART, which has been addressing exactly that issue. The grant enabled Professor Hartwell and her team to develop an App, which uses data provided by catering companies to help consumers to make more informed choices about their meals. “We wanted to create an IT solution for the contract catering industry which would both better inform their consumers and also give the companies an edge when competing for new contracts,” explains Professor Hartwell, “It was slightly ahead of its time when we first created it, but is getting much more interest now as workplaces are increasingly concerned about employee wellbeing. Nutrition can help contribute to better health, which helps to reduce sickness rates and can improve productivity too.”

Alongside FoodSMART, Professor Hartwell and her team were also leading on another European grant, which was looking at increasing our protein intake through vegetables. In the context of an increasing global population, it is important for the agricultural and catering sectors to consider more sustainable sources of food. “The project was about encouraging people to get their protein through vegetables, rather than meat, which uses far more resources than arable farming,” says Professor Hartwell, “It’s a healthier way of meeting our protein requirements as vegetables contain less fat and are much more sustainable in the long run.” Partly inspired by the issues of sustainability raised in this project, Professor Hartwell and her team have recently started working on a new research grant with partners in Brazil to consider how to improve our long term food security.

More information about VeggiEAT can be found here: https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/veggieat/
More information about FoodSMART can be found here: https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/foodsmart/

Congratulations to Dr Terri Cole for receiving this year’s BPS Textbook Award

Dr Terri Cole’s co-written book Forensic Psychology: Theory, Research, Policy and Practice (2015), with Jennifer Brown (London School of Economics) and Yvonne Shell, has won the British Psychological Society Book Award 2018 in the Textbook category. The Society’s Book Award recognises excellent published work in psychology and recipients will be presented with a commemorative certificate at the Society’s Annual Conference.

The book was nominated by her publishing company, SAGE: “It is such an honour and I’m absolutely over the moon to have even been nominated for the Awards”, says Dr Cole. “It is a subject all of us have spent our careers working in and we are all very passionate with a variety of experience.”

Image result for Forensic Psychology: Theory, Research, Policy and Practice by Brown, Shell and Cole (2015)

Forensic Psychology: Theory, Research, Policy and Practice (2015) is primarily targeted towards Masters students studying Forensic Psychology, as well as practitioners and those already qualified who need to keep up with the CPD (Continuing Professional Development). It is also a useful companion to professionals in allied criminal justice professions.

Students of Forensic Psychology need to learn how to combine practical skills such as report writing or assessments with a critical understanding of both theory and the wider political and policy landscape that surrounds the profession, and Dr Cole’s book will help them to understand how these crucial areas of the profession interact and how they can shape one another.

The text provides a detailed analysis of key concepts, debates and theories while weaving in insights and reflections from key professionals working in practice from all fields amidst the text, ensuring readers have the necessary knowledge and skills to pass assignments and get past the stage 2 supervised practice requirements en-route to becoming a qualified forensic psychologist.

“Rather than just summarising the theory, we have incorporated ours and others’ practical experiences and lessons learnt adding a human element and discussing wider points from the political framework in which our work is based, to the personal toll of working in such a domain,” says Dr Cole.

Sarb Bajwa, chief executive of the British Psychological Society, says: “I congratulate all the award winners whose varied expertise emphasise the depth and diversity of psychology. The fact that we were able to recognise three such distinguished and appealing books shows that psychology publishing is in good health. What shines through in each of these books is a relentless focus on good science and an insistence on following the evidence.”

For more information on this book, contact Dr Terri Cole here.

UKRI want your views on ‘Digital Innovation for Development in Africa’

UK Research and Innovation are opening an online discussion platform and they want to collect thoughts and ideas to help shape research in the area of digital innovation for development across Africa.

The Digital Innovation for Development in Africa Online Platform will allow you to share your thoughts on the issues and challenges faced by people living within Africa to determine where digital solutions could lead to the biggest impacts. From undemocratic elections to infectious diseases; to lack of access to education to global warming, they want to realise the challenges faced by communities across Africa and consider the potential value digital research and innovation could bring.

The platform will also create an online community which will engage and connect local actors, researchers, entrepreneurs, charities, etc., and allow users to exchange ideas and expertise. The ideas gathered from the Digital for Development in Africa Platform will be collated and used to shape future UKRI spending activities under the Global Challenge Research Fund. Thoughts collected on the challenges and potential for digital innovation to solve these will provide recommendations for research and innovation in these areas in order to make progress in addressing these challenges.

To express your interest in joining this platform, please complete the following SmartSurvey. Expressions of interest to join the online platform will close at 16:00 BST 19th October 2018. After this, users will be selected and notified from the expressions of interest. Please note, there is a limited number of users permitted to use the online platform, therefore, by completing the survey, you will not be guaranteed an invitation to use the platform. For further enquiries, please contact GCRF@rcuk.ac.uk