/ Full archive

What’s the point of conferences?

The conference season has arrived. The summer vacation has always been the most popular time to attend international conferences and academics get the opportunity to travel either in Britain or often beyond to read papers at conferences, answer questions from expert audiences and enjoy the experience of being surrounded by subject specialists. But conference attendance, especially in far-flung corners of the world may be viewed sceptically by those looking to tighten institutional belts. In this article I want to argue that attendance at international conferences is a vital part of the development of an academic.

My recent attendance at a conference in Italy reinforced my view that, especially for postgraduate researchers and early career researchers, conferences are essential to their development. I think there are different aspects of this. Firstly, presenting a paper to an audience which will include subject experts not readily available in our own institution is critically important. We may have colleagues who share our research interests in our own departments but at an international conference there are likely to be scholars from different countries who are or have been studying our specific subject.   The insights that these experts can provide raises the quality of our research. Often I have found that the question and answer exchange following the presentation is then followed by more intensive one-to-one discussion and these can be extremely important and might include ideas for further research and reading. Conferences are also an extremely important opportunity to network and especially to become part of a research network bidding for a research grant. They are also important recruiting grounds for anthologies or edited collections of book chapters. The conference is the most important place where a researcher advertises themselves for hire either for research grant applications or in further publications or to join a journal editorial board.

There is I think another important aspect of the value of the conferences. Increasingly today, university lecturers are obliged to focus relentlessly on the delivery of programmes to students. The Teaching Excellence Framework has added to the pressure that lecturers feel to improve the satisfaction of their students. This is of course a noble cause but sometimes research loses priority. What conferences and conference attendance can achieve is to motivate lecturers to pay attention to their research.

I express these views at a time when universities, not just BU, appear to be less generous in the funding of conference attendance. As they come under pressure to improve student satisfaction, money for conference attendance may be seen as a frivolous extra. Thinking of my own experience 20 years ago when I read my first conference paper as a PhD student I was delighted to find that in the small audience for my talk was a former BBC member of staff who had produced the programme I was discussing as well as one of Britain’s most celebrated radio historians. Those two supportive and eminent scholars have remained critical friends over the years and I believe that if I had not met them at that conference my whole academic career would have been different and far less successful. I have recently returned from four productive days at a conference in Italy; now that I am a senior academic I probably need less input from international colleagues but the reality is that in the handful of people who listened to my presentation was one of the leading international experts in my field and reading a paper alongside me was one of my PhD students, I learned a lot from both of them.

International conference attendance is a vital part of academic life and I sincerely hope that my colleagues will continue to be able to attend conferences both in the UK and abroad funded by the university.

Research Staff Association coffee morning 25/07/18 ‘Reflections on moving from Post-doc to Lecturer’

The next BU Research Staff Association coffee morning will take place on the 25th July, 10-11am in F105, Fusion Building, Talbot Campus. These coffee morning are open to all staff at BU, and we particularly welcome those on research specific contracts including PGRs.

We are delighted to welcome guest speakers Dr Pramod Regmi from Faculty of Health and Social Science and Dr Julia Hibbert from Faculty of Management to reflect on moving from Post-Doc to Lecturer positions at BU in the last 12 months.We look forward to seeing you there.

BU Research Staff Association

Launch of Nursing long-term health challenges Research Centre

NHS

The nursing research centre is one of the newest BU research centres.  The buzz and energy at our inaugural away day this week was fantastic, as we planned our first year of activity.  The overall aim of the research centre is to contribute to the knowledge base informing the nursing management of long-term health challenges, a rapidly growing aspect of contemporary health care.  We are developing four research programmes in collaboration with practice partners and service users in the following areas:

  • palliative and end of life care
  • nursing leadership and workforce development
  • evidence based nurse education
  • humanising care practices to support living well with long-term health challenges

Led by Dr Janet Scammell and Professor Sam Porter, the research centre has over 40 members and is developing its programme through a collaborative and inclusive strategy to capitalise on the talents of all Centre members and develop research capacity within the department of nursing and clinical sciences.

VC staff award 2017 winner Development day hosted

Centre for Excellence in Learning, student research

The Team Collaboration winners from the 2017 VC Staff Awards recently saw their prize legacy through with a development day. As part of the award, a staff development activity was offered to support the team on building on its success of hosting the British Conference for Undergraduate Research in April 2017 at BU. After much weighing out amongst the group into the options for activities and related calendar alignment (!), a development day was hosted at AFC Bournemouth. Much of the original team were able to take part however given the competing priorities of academic life, not everyone could make it! The programme for the day included guided tutorials from learning technologist John Moran with comprehensive input in providing the team with support of team teaching tools such as eg mentimeter, cahoot and padlet. In the afternoon, senior academic from CEL Curie Scott facilitated sessions. This included workshops on origami and collage, etc as a powerful way within pedagogy to articulate, reflect and critique within education practice.

It was timely to use Curie’s session and the methods within to think about future planning. Discussions then centred around sustaining work practices by connecting them, where possible, to our values. Curie explains ‘We used origami to consider responses to working creatively in education practice: that creative making may initially tricky to engage with as it may be unfamiliar to adults, that it stimulates a great deal of association and that meanings of image in juxtaposition are numerous. Critically, making an object allows highly personalised learning for the individual. Hopefully, the fun continued after our time together as each person was gifted a colouring in origami kit’.

CEL are creating more workshops and can connect this particularly with teams of colleagues for reflective practice, discussions of large topics such as curriculum re-design, group/ team working. If interested register with organisational development

For those considering nominations to VC Awards, our team was pleased to be recognised first by nomination, and then as an award winner. The next round of VC staff awards offers more opportunities for individuals and groups to be recognised and nominated.

How culture influences children’s development

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

By Dr Ching-Yu Huang, Bournemouth University.

From educational toys to governmental guidelines and detailed nursery progress reports, there are lots of resources available to help parents track and facilitate their children’s development. But while there are tricks we can use to teach children to talk, count, draw or respect others, a surprisingly big part of how they develop is determined by the culture they grow up in.

Child development is a dynamic, interactive process. Every child is unique in interacting with the world around them, and what they invoke and receive from others and the environment also shapes how they think and behave. Children growing up in different cultures receive specific inputs from their environment. For that reason, there’s a vast array of cultural differences in children’s beliefs and behaviour.

Language is one of the many ways through which culture affects development. We know from research on adultsthat languages forge how people think and reason. Moreover, the content and focus of what people talk about in their conversations also vary across cultures. As early as infancy, mothers from different cultures talk to their babies differently. German mothers tend to focus on their infants’ needs, wishes or them as a person. Mothers of the African tribal group Nso, on the other hand, focus more on social context. This can include the child’s interactions with other people and the rules surrounding it.

Masai children. Syndromeda/Shutterock

This early exposure affects the way children attend to themselves or to their relationship with others – forming their self image and identity. For example, in Western European and North American countries, children tend to describe themselves around their unique characteristics – such as “I am smart” or “I am good at drawing”. In Asian, African, Southern European and South American countries, however, children describe themselves more often around their relationship with others and social roles. Examples of this include “I am my parents’ child” or “I am a good student”.

Because children in different cultures differ in how they think about themselves and relate to others, they also memorise events differently. For example, when preschoolers were asked to describe a recent special personal experience, European-American children provided more detailed descriptions, recalled more specific events and stressed their preferences, feelings and opinions about it more than Chinese and Korean children. The Asian children instead focused more on the people they had met and how they related to themselves.

Cultural effects of parenting

Parents in different cultures also play an important role in moulding children’s behaviour and thinking patterns. Typically, parents are the ones who prepare the children to interact with wider society. Children’s interaction with their parents often acts as the archetype of how to behave around others – learning a variety of socio-cultural rules, expectations and taboos. For example, young children typically develop a conversational style resembling their parents’ – and that often depends on culture.

European-American children frequently provide long, elaborative, self-focused narratives emphasising personal preferences and autonomy. Their interaction style also tends to be reciprocal, taking turns in talking. In contrast, Korean and Chinese children’s accounts are usually brief, relation-oriented, and show a great concern with authority. They often take a more passive role in the conversations. The same cultural variations in interaction are also evident when children talk with an independent interviewer.

Children in the Western world question their parents’ authority more. Gargonia/Shutterstock

Cultural differences in interactions between adults and children also influence how a child behaves socially. For instance, in Chinese culture, where parents assume much responsibility and authority over children, parents interact with children in a more authoritative manner and demand obedience from their children. Children growing up in such environments are more likely to comply with their parents’ requests, even when they are reluctant to do so.

By contrast, Chinese immigrant children growing up in England behave more similarly to English children, who are less likely to follow parental demands if unwilling.

From class to court

As the world is getting increasingly globalised, knowledge regarding cultural differences in children’s thinking, memory and how they interact with adults has important practical implications in many areas where you have to understand a child’s psychology. For instance, teachers may need to assess children who come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Knowing how children coming from a different culture think and talk differently can help the teacher better interview them as part of an oral academic test, for example.

Another important area is forensic investigations. Being aware that Chinese children tend to recall details regarding other people and be brief in their initial response to questions may enable the investigator to allow more time for narrative practice to prepare the child to answer open-ended questions and prompt them with follow up questions.

Also, knowing that Chinese children may be more sensitive and compliant to authority figures – and more obedient to a perpetrator within the family – an interviewer may need to spend more time in building rapport to help the child relax and reduce their perceived authority. They should also be prepared to be patient with reluctance in disclosing abuse within families.

While children are unique and develop at their own pace, the cultural influence on their development is clearly considerable. It may even affect how quickly children reach different developmental milestones, but research on this complicated subject is still inconclusive. Importantly, knowledge about cultural differences can also help us pin down what all children have in common: an insatiable curiosity about the world and a love for the people around them.

Dr Ching-Yu Huang, Lecturer in Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

CQR: Call for New Members and Seminar Presentations

PG research

The Centre for Qualitative Research welcomes new members and invites them to contribute to our on-going and successful Seminar Series in the coming Academic Year.

Doctoral Students and Academics from across disciplines and Faculties are welcome to join CQR. You can become a Full Member, meaning your publications and research income will be counted through CQR, or you can be an Associate Member.  You can be an Associate Member of several research centres at once. Doctoral students generally join the Centre where their First Supervisor is a member.

One way to participate in the Centre is to give a presentation at one of our seminars.  Information on how to do this follows.

“Go create!”

CQR Seminar Series, 2018-2019

BU 2025: “Advancing knowledge, creativity and innovation”

How have you used/are you using creative approaches in your qualitative research?

Sign up now to share your experience in our well-attended CQR Seminar Series for the next Academic Year!

Some possibilities:

1. Gathering data

Novel approaches to interviewing

Participant involvement in producing data (dance, poetry, media, etc)

Visual methods of collecting data (film, drawing, etc,)

2. Interpreting data

Panel interpretation

Auto-interpretive approaches (autoethnographic, autobiographic, autofiction)

Theatrical interpretation

3. Disseminating data

Film

Dance

Photography

Graphics, visual arts

Drama

Poetry

4. New ways of writing

Fiction

Scriptwriting

Poetry

Autoethnography

Just some suggestions!

Tell us how you might share your creative approach “in conversation” with CQR Seminar participants. This could be by sharing knowledge from a completed or on-going research project, or it could be a hands-on, participatory demonstration of a particular method.

There are nine monthly 50 minute seminars (usually the first Wed of each month) beginning in September.  We need to have your input in terms of title/subject now in order to book rooms and promote the series as a whole.  You may present alone or with a partner.

Please get back to Kip Jones asap with your ideas and to join CQR!  kipworld@gmail.com

 

 

 

Anthill Podcast 27: Confidence

Shutterstock

By Annabel Bligh, The Conversation; Gemma Ware, The Conversation, and Holly Squire, The Conversation.

Includes interview with BU’s Professor Keith Brown discussing confidence artists in financial scamming. [31:50 – 36:38]

This episode of The Anthill podcast digs into the concept of confidence. We start by finding out how scientists define confidence and how it works in the brain.

Producer Gemma Ware takes a confidence calibration test with the help of psychologist Eva Krockow at the University of Leicester, who also shares some of her research findings on whether expressing confidence about something is a good marker of being right about it. And neuroscientist Dan Bang from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, helps explain how a person’s brain computes their level of confidence about certain tasks – and why we need to be aware of the variety in people’s levels of confidence when making decisions as a group.

Then we take a look at how confidence can get us ahead in life – and in the workplace especially. Can you really fake it until you make it? Westminster University’s Chantal Gautier shares some of the findings from her book, The Psychology of Work, where she interviewed a number of industry leaders to discover what it is that makes organisations successful. Confidence is important. But that includes the confidence to admit your shortcomings and ask for help when you need it, she says.

With numerous studies suggesting that men show more confidence than women, we also examine the extent that this explains the gender pay gap. Are women just not leaning in enough?

Lean on in. Shutterstock

Recent research by Amanda Goodall at Cass Business School found that women are actually asking for pay rises at the same rate as men. They’re just not getting them. She helps us unpick the idea that you can fake it ‘til you make it and explains why leaders that are real experts in their field are better than those who aren’t.

Lastly, we turn to the dark side of confidence. The Conversation’s Holly Squire delves deep into the murky world of confidence tricksters, to find out what makes a con man (or woman) tick. Professional magician Gustav Kuhn at Goldsmiths University of London, details the deception involved in card trick scams. And Keith Brown from Bournemouth University explains the reality of financial scamming – and the terrible impact it can have on victims.

The Anthill theme music is by Alex Grey for Melody Loops. The song “I Have Confidence” is sung by Julie Andrews from the musical The Sound of Music by Rogers and Hammerstein. Music in the confidence definition segment is Into the Clouds by Nicolai Heidlas Music via YouTube.
Music in the confidence trickster segment is Curtains are Always Drawn by Kai Engel, and Land of Magic by Frank Dorittke from the Free Music Archive.

Click here to listen to more episodes of The Anthill, on themes including Twins, Intuition, and Pain. And browse other podcasts from The Conversation here.

Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.

Annabel Bligh, Business + Economy Editor, The Conversation; Gemma Ware, Society Editor, The Conversation, and Holly Squire, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

New Security textbook published by BU academic

Fusion, Knowledge Exchange

Shamal Faily has just published the textbook Designing Usable and Secure Software with IRIS and CAIRIS with Springer.

The book was written to help practitioners, be these UX designers, security architects, or software developers, ‘build in’ security and usability. The ACM Code of Ethics states that True security requires usability – security features are of no practical use if users cannot or will not use them. This book explains how usable and secure software can be designed using the IRIS framework and the CAIRIS software platform, and provides real case studies where security and usability is incorporated into software designs at an early stage. This is something most people agree should be done, but few people give advice on how to do it. This book helps fill this gap.

The book also helps educators and students by providing a resource for a course on Security by Design. As explained in the preface, this book was written to support our undergraduate and postgraduate Security by Design unit at BU, and pointers are included on how different parts of this book can support this or similar courses.

More information about this book can be found here. As the book will be used to support teaching at BU, soft and hard copies should be available from the library soon.

Photo of the Week: Understanding Digital Immersion within Streaming and E-Sports

Digital Tethering: Understanding Digital Immersion within Streaming and E-Sports

Our Photo of the Week series features photo entries from our annual Research Photography Competition taken by BU academics, students and professional staff, which gives a glimpse into some of the fantastic research undertaken across the BU community.

This week’s photo of the week is by Charlie Simmons, a final year undergraduate student on a BA (Hons) Business Studies with Marketing programme. This project was co-created with Dr Elvira Bolat, Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the Faculty of Management, and won a prize for the Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) co-creation awards. Charlie’s work is around digital tethering, particularly in understanding digital immersion.

Immersion is used outside of digital space as a term to measure the degree of involvement in a specific activity. Digital immersion is now a ubiquitous phenomenon that can be observed in all human activities starting with consumption of services and products as well as professional tasks. Overall academic literature, in particular business and management literature, lacks understanding of digital immersion, perhaps due to methodological challenges associated with researching this area. Using the context of e-sport, this research study revealed that in the context of digital connectivity immersion is not only a feeling but a state of mind; it causes behavioural changes in its e-sport players and keeps them habitually absorbed. At the heart of digital immersion are people, streamers (influencers) and community whom have the power to manipulate individuals’ behaviour.

At the heart of digital immersion is community; the more an individual is experiencing community and feels part of that community, the more likely they are to be immersed in the digital environment. Entertainment within content is also irrelevant to the digital immersion, which is contrary to existing research. Content allows users to escape from reality and forget about real world problems, and learning in combination with community factors found to have a strong and positive impact on digital immersion. Findings of this research have implications beyond its contextual focus, e-sports. Businesses can utilise learning, escape and community effects to improve online presence and stimulate much more meaningful engagement with a digital content.

—

For more information about this research, please contact Dr Elvira Bolat here.

Digital Me is an online collection of research publications/narratives within the domain of digital, written by BU academics and students. This research covers various disciplines, i.e. management and marketing, health and social science, computing and media, education and more; and spreads through various topics, i.e. digital consumption, digital business, education and digital and more. Find out more here.

BU staff published in new book ‘Enhancing Employability in Higher Education through Work Based Learning’ by Palgrave Macmillan

Centre for Excellence in Learning, innovation, Publishing

‘Enhancing Employability in Higher Education through Work Based Learning’ has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Edited by Dawn Morley, formerly of BU and now at Solent University, there were the following contributions by BU academics, staff and students:

 

Dr Sue Eccles and Vianna Renaud (Bournemouth University)

Chapter Title: Building Students’ Emotional Resilience through Placement Coaching and Mentoring

 

Dr Mel Hughes and Angela Warren (Bournemouth University)

Chapter Title: Use of simulation as a tool for assessment and for preparing students for the realities and complexities of the workplace

 

Dr Dawn Morley (Solent University), Dr Anita Diaz, Deborah Blake, Grace Burger, Tom Dando, Suzanne Gibbon, Kate Rickard (Bournemouth University)

Chapter Title: Student experience of real-time management of peer working groups during field trips

 

For more information: https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319751658#aboutBook

New edited book by BU academics

student research, Women's Academic Network

As a discipline and a profession, social work builds on a wide variety of methods and techniques for its practice. The broader frameworks of social work methodology guide social workers through the process of developing and creating interventions with different service users, carers and other professionals.

This book aims to provide an overview of current debates concerning social work methods and methodologies from an international perspective. It provides and enables exchanges about the variety of approaches and reflects the knowledge base for bringing social work theory into practice in different European settings and welfare contexts. It is a timely and welcome addition to the literature at a  time when European cooperation and solidarity is much needed.

Edited by Professor Spatscheck from Germany, and Professors Ashencaen Crabtree and Parker from the UK, this book comprises chapters selected from presentations held at the 17th SocNet98 International University Week at Hochschule Bremen and includes further contributions from throughout the SocNet98 network. The work includes a chapter by the editors co-authored with past BU Sociology & Social Policy students Emilie Reeks,  Dan Marsh and Ceyda Vasif.

“SocNet98 – European Network of Universities/Schools of Social Work” provides highly successful International University Weeks for social work students and academics from across Europe to learn from and share with one another. These study weeks have enriched social work education for 20 years and continue to do so.

BU Alum’s Research Featured at Fandom Conference

conferences, student research

Callum Cole, BA Events and Leisure Marketing Graduate

BU Alumnus Callum Cole had his research featured at the Fan Studies Network (FSN) Conference 2018  last month. Callum graduated with First Class Honours in 2016 from the BA Events and Leisure programme. His dissertation, which also received a first, entitled The Twitter Force Awakens: An Exploratory Analysis of E-WoM around a Sci-Fi Movie Release was presented at the FSN Conference by his dissertation supervisor Dr Nicole Ferdinand. His research was featured in a  panel dedicated to Events of Fandom which approached sci-fi from the perspectives of event, tourism and leisure studies.

Callum who is currently working as a Marketing Executive at Haven Holidays was previously a placement student for Vue Entertainment, which provided the inspiration for his research.

 

Other papers presented were:

  • Form/Con-tent: Defining the Con as Cultural and Organizational Form by Dr Benjamin Woo, Carleton University, Canada
  • Constructing Queer Sci-Fi Fan Identities: the Negotiation of Representation in Online Spaces by Monique Franklin, PhD Candidate, Flinders University, Australia
  • Performing Sci-Fi through debating Controversy: Communicative Leisure, Collective Memory and Rouge One: A Star Wars Story Below the Line at The Guardian by Professor Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom

Left: Monique Franklin, Top right: Karl Spracklen, Bottom right: Benjamin Woo

Callum, along with the other presenters in this panel have been invited contribute to a special issue for the Journal of Fan Studies.

Callum’s dissertation supervisor Dr Nicole Ferdinand with panel chair Professor Karl Spracklen

 

Doctoral Summer School – hard work and fun!

PG research

The European Media Management Association Doctoral Summer School is a bi-annual event that has previously been run by institutions in Germany, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Zurich. This year the Advances in Media Management (AiMM) research group hosted an international group of doctoral students at BU.

Dr John Oliver, Associate Professor of Media Management, said that “our aim was to create a community of learning where doctoral students, media industry professionals, BU faculty and professional services staff fused media management theory and practice to define the next generation of media management challenges”.

On the social side, delegates were given a Dorset cider tasting experience, an opportunity to see the grave site of Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) and a Gala Dinner in The Library of the Miramar Hotel in Bournemouth.

Dr Oliver would also like to thank the Doctoral College for their support and those members of the AiMM team that helped plan and deliver what can only be considered to be an “excellent event” that has contributed to BUs international profile and reputation. Many thanks to: Dr Joyce Costello, Dr Chris Chapleo, Melanie Gray, Graham Goode, Maria Musarskaya, Muridzo Searchmore and Conor O’Kane.