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New BU Social Work publication

international, writing

Growing international interest in approaches to social work focussing on human growth and development and including each social actor’s real freedoms to act, such as the capabilities approach, has fascinated BU Professor Emeritus, Jonathan Parker. In this new paper Parker and his German colleagues introduce a related, but internationally less well-known concept from German-language philosophy of education discourses, Bildung, arguing that Bildung represents a valuable additional framework that emphasises human growth and human flourishing.
The concept of Bildung has changed over time, with this paper charting development from its late enlightenment-period origins. Two particular variants are highlighted: the original 18th-century Bildung, which focussed on helping the individual reach a state of agency, and Mündigkeit (maturity), a late 20th-century critical theory-influenced Bildung, which focussed on the relationship between the growth of the individual and the society of which they are part. It is suggested that due to their shared tenets, both variants of Bildung can be seen a single concept, one with a strong conceptual closeness to the capabilities approach.
When applied to social work, Bildung suggests a shift away from thinking about the person in terms of utilities and outcomes, towards instead an understanding of a person’s humanness in their freedom to choose their own path and become the author of their own life. Parker and colleagues highlight four key elements of Bildung-informed social work: (1) the role of the social worker stimulating the service user’s dispositions in the context of their social environment; (2) shifting to a relationship-oriented practice, centring on direct work; (3) utilizing community settings in practice, and (4) the importance of refraining from using guidance, persuasion and coercion.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
  1. Frampton, M., Friesenhahn, G. J., & Parker, J. (2024). Bildung, capabilities, human freedom and human flourishing: impulses for social work. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 19(1), 129–156. https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v19i1.727

Expanded Internship award Autumn 2024 – just launched

Dear colleagues,

Please find details of new expanded research internship programme for health and care professionals and practitioners.

https://www.arc-wx.nihr.ac.uk/fellowships-internships

Webinar about the Research Internship opportunity is Thursday 7th November 2024, 12.30-1.30pm. Register your interest to attend and get the Microsoft Teams link for the webinar via this link https://forms.office.com/e/2uvysmuN0q

Please come back if you have any questions or queries.

Best wishes

Jane Murphy

October Development opportunities – sign up now!

Training

Book now for RKEDF development in October 2024! 

 Click on the titles to find further details and book your place!!!! 

ECRN – Introduction/New to BU 

Wednesday Oct 1st, 14:00 – 15:00 – Fusion Building, Talbot Campus 

Everything you wanted to know about being an ECR (but were afraid to ask).  It is open to all who identify as being in the early stages of their research career – whether a Postgraduate Researcher, newly-appointed academic, or returning to research. 

RDS Researcher & Academic Induction 

Wednesday, Oct 18th, 10:00 – 11:00 – online, MS Teams  

An overview of all the practical information staff need to begin developing their research plans at BU and support available through RDS 

 ECRN:  Academic Publishing                                                               

Wednesday, Oct 30th, 13:00 – 14:00 – Fusion Building, Talbot Campus   

This session is aimed at ECRs & PGRs who are new to or who have experience of academic publishing and wish to find out more. 

 ——————————————————————————————  

Please help us in avoiding any waste of resources; make sure you can attend or cancel your booking prior to the session. 

For any further information, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk   

RKEDF: Early Career Researcher Network – Introduction/New to BU

Training

RKEDF: Early Career Researcher Network – Introduction/New to BU

Weds 2nd Oct 14:00-15:00, Talbot Campus

 

This session is facilitated by BU Professors and ECRN conveners.  It is an open introduction to working, researching and thriving at BU where you will learn about key contacts and services, how to manage the expectations of your role, and share advice on developing your skills as an early career researcher.

It is open to all who identify as being in the early stages of their research career – whether a Postgraduate Researcher, newly-appointed academic, or returning to research.

Book your place here

If you are not already a member of the Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) but would like to be, or if you have any questions, please contact: RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk.

DNS staff share their virtual reality research at AHSN Wessex

innovation

on behalf of Professor Debbie Holley

I am delighted to report that Dr Michele Board, Dr Heidi Singleton and I were invited to share our virtual reality research as part of the Wessex Academic Health Science Network webinar on 16.03.2023. Dr Board presented her work on ‘walk through dementia’, which brings the reality of lived experiences places the viewer in the shoes of the person with dementia. More information about this projects and the collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Society are available from the ADRC website.

Dr Singleton and I presented on our work on the mental health 360 video scenarios we created for student nurse education which have been embedded within the curriculum.

Evaluated via Focus group discussions (n=6 students) and an online survey (n=33 thus far); with 94% of nursing students reporting that the videos were extremely or very useful for their learning.  

“It flags up potential extra considerations in practice that you wouldn’t anticipate with just the theoretical teaching. You can better visualise.” (Student Nurse 31) 

“It made me feel confident in how to interact with an individual who may be having a mental health breakdown.” (Student Nurse 15) 

“It showed me that you can take time and check the correct information and repeat steps when assessing and treating a patient.” (Student Nurse 8) 

The learning resources mean that students can link theory to practice and can repeat the activity at any point during their course and from any location.

Thanks to the wider team Ursula Rolfe, John Moran, Emma Collins and our former colleague Jasmine Snowden,

 

Success in HEIF funding: VR Igloo

VR Igloo: Developing and evaluating a novel interactive virtual reality intervention for children with eczema

Team: Dr Heidi Singleton, Yaqing Cui, Dr Xiaosong Yang, Dr Emily Arden-Close, Professor Steven Ersser, Professor Debbie Holley, Dr Sarah Thomas, Richard Glithro, John Moran, Dr Andy Hodder and Amanda Roberts (Nottingham Support Group for Carers (NSG) of Children with Eczema).

Aim: To co-create a complex VR health intervention based on the guided imagery approach to treating eczema (Ersser et al., 2014); targeted at children (aged between 7 and 11 years of age) (complex intervention development). This intervention is not a medical device but addresses a clinical issue and can be used at hospital or in the home. Our processes and outputs will be congruent with some of the staging of complex intervention development advised by the Medical Research Council (2021).

Evidence from our small-scale PPI project (Singleton et al. 2022), points to the need for an interactive VR innovation that provides an immersive experience to distract from itchy eczema with minimal requirements for contact with the child’s face or hands. To tackle this problem, we will design and develop a prototype system of an interactive “mini-VR igloo headset”. We will work with the Department of Design and Engineering to design and develop the prototype.

In keeping with a person-based approach these ideas will be discussed with our PIER group and will form part of the developmental work with our Nottingham based charity stakeholder partner.

This Open Call HEIF funding will enable this cross faculty team to work together, with some additional paid staff, to accelerate and maximise the development of a complex intervention to enhance its potential for impact of this well-established VR Eczema project. It will also provide us with several prototypes to test at BU events.

Heidi, Steve and Debbie research as part of the Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health, follow us at Twitter CWLTH_BU

Build your research capacity with an EquaDem research internship

Are you a Health and Social Care Professional, or work with a Third Sector or Local Authority organization? If you’re looking to enhance your research skills while making a meaningful impact on health and social care, the EquaDem Research Internship might be the perfect opportunity for you. These internships allow release from usual workplace duties—up to one day a week for a maximum of 12 months—to carry our a supervised research project.

Internships must adhere to the following key principles:
1. involve co-production with people with lived experience/ service users.
2. focus on providing solutions to inequalities
3. Applicants should refer to the Focus On Research and Equity (FOR EQUITY) web-based platform when considering the health inequality aspects of their applications.
Throughout the internship, you’ll be supervised by two core members of the EquaDem network. You’ll also gain access to online training modules and other resources to support your research journey. In addition, you’ll be expected to:
  • Attend EquaDem workshops and events.
  • Contribute to the dissemination of your research (e.g., through blogs or web pages).
  • Present your findings at the annual EquaDem Conference.
For all types of internships, salary back-fill will be provided to the intern’s employing organisation to assist with time release. This will involve up to £5000 salary backfill (of which 80% is covered by this fund and 20% to be contributed by the intern host organisation) and up to £500 for research-related costs (such as public involvement, transcription, co-production) (of which 80% is covered by this fund and 20% to be contributed by the intern host organisation).
Calls for the EquaDem Research Internship are annual, and the next application deadline is 18th November 2024, 5pm. If you’re interested, here’s how to apply:
Request an application form by emailing the team at Equademnetworkplus@liverpool.ac.uk. You can also use this email if you’d like to discuss the internships or other potential opportunities.
Submit your application in PDF format by the deadline.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/job/equadem-research-internship/

Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars

Funding opportunities

A couple of useful free webinars have been announced recently. Please take a look and see if you are interested in participating.

ERC 2025 Consolidator Grant Call Information Webinar

17 October 2024 10:00 to 12:30 UK time

The webinar will provide participants with a detailed practical overview of the ERC Consolidator Grant scheme. Viewers will gain a deeper understanding of the proposal format and the key issues they are required to address in planning, writing and costing a proposal. The session will be delivered using the Zoom webinar facility.

The session will be recorded and a copy of the recording alongside the presentation slides will be posted on this event page afterwards. Click on this link to register.

Networking and Brokerage Event – MSCA Staff Exchanges Call 2024

17 October 2024 10:00 to 13:30 UK time

The European Union and India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have launched a new co-funding initiative for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges. Through this scheme, CSIR will top up selected MSCA Staff Exchanges projects, enabling its institutes to engage in joint research projects with European and international partners and second their scientific and technical staff to European research organisations for knowledge sharing and research activities.

The webinar is open for European academic and non-academic stakeholders who want to enhance their organisation’s innovation capacity through interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration with Indian partners.

The event is virtual and free of charge, but registration is required.

NIHR Undergraduate Interns Developing Early Labour App

The Early Labour App group are delighted to welcome Year 2 Digital Science Interns Tom Lower and Kaisei Wieczorek-Numao and Year 3 Midwifery Intern Carys Nash under the NIHR Undergraduate Internship program. Tom and Kaisei are developing the app’s User Interface features such as the avatar features and voice settings. They will also develop a User Activity Logging system under the supervision of Dr. Kun Qian and Prof. Xiaosong Yang.
Carys will be undertaking PPIE in collaboration with Digital Midwife Tracey Thompson RM from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, supervised by Dr. Dominique Mylod (Early Career Researcher in Midwifery). Carys will be sharing the app prototype with mothers and their birth partners to inform the app development.

Pregnancy & COVID-19 in UK: New study published

NHS, Women's Academic Network, writing

This morning the editor of the Frontiers in Psychiatry emailed us that the paper reporting the findings of the baseline data of a large-scale epidemiological study into pregnancy during COVID-19 in the UK has been published [1].  The interdisciplinary research team includes researchers from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (Dr. Latha Vinayakarao & Prof. Minesh Khashu) and Bournemouth University (Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen). 

This longitudinal study explores how the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] pandemic affected the mental health of pregnant people in the UK.  In mid-to-late 2020, we recruited 3666 individuals in the UK for the EPPOCH pregnancy cohort (Maternal mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effect of the Pandemic on Pregnancy Outcomes and Childhood Health). Participants were assessed for depression, anxiety, anger and pregnancy-related anxiety using validated scales. Additionally, physical activity, social support, individualized support and personal coping ability of the respondents were assessed as potential resilience factors.

Participants reported high levels of depression (57.05%), anxiety (58.04%) and anger (58.05%). Higher levels of social and individualized support and personal coping ability were associated with lower mental health challenges. Additionally, pregnant individuals in the UK experienced higher depression during the pandemic than that reported in Canada. Finally, qualitative analysis revealed that restrictions for partners and support persons during medical appointments as well as poor public health communication led to increased mental health adversities and hindered ability to make medical decisions.

The study highlights the increased mental health challenges among pregnant individuals in the UK during pandemic. These results highlight the need for reassessing the mental health support measures available to pregnant people in the UK, both during times of crisis and in general.

Reference:

  1. Datye, S., Smiljanic, M., Shetti, R.H., MacRae-Miller, A., van Teijlingen, E., Vinayakarao, L., Peters, E.M.J., Lebel, C.A., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., Giesbrecht, G., Khashu, M., Conrad, M.L. (2024) Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1411761

Second Consecutive BCS GreenIT Win

Exciting News from BCS:

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve won the BCS GreenIT 2024 Poster Competition—marking my second consecutive win!

Having recently passed my Ph.D. viva in the SciTech Computing and Informatics department at BU, this achievement is particularly meaningful. Last year, my winning poster used comics and anecdotes to highlight urban traffic congestion’s role in the energy crisis. This year, I competed as a member of the British Computer Society (BCS), and the competition’s theme, “Investing in Our Planet,” resonated with my research approach, once again leading to this incredible win.

A huge thank you to my Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. Wei Koong Chai, for his unwavering guidance and support throughout my journey. Join me in celebrating this achievement and the ongoing commitment to impactful research!

Best wishes,
Assemgul Kozhabek

#BCSGreenIT2024 #BUResearchSuccess #DoctoralCollege

BU Emeritus Professor contributes to Transforming Society

Publishing

Congratulations to Prof. Jonathan Parker, Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, who was invited to contribute a post to the influential social science blog Transforming Society. See details here: Transforming Society ~ Now is the winter fuel payment of our discontent. The blog concerns the highly topical winter fuel payments and Jonathan’s policy analysis and its impact.
Congratulations
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen