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PGR funding with EPSRC – Connected Nation Pioneers

Funding opportunities, PG research

Connected Nation Pioneers is an exciting partnership between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and key stakeholders. They have come together to recognise exceptional UK doctoral students whose research contributes towards the development of a Connected Nation.

The competition is open to all UK doctoral students in the final two years of their doctorial training. Applicants need not be funded by the EPSRC to participate.  This competition is being sponsored by DSTL, Facebook, BT, Samsung, Huawei, Thales, Amazon and NVIDIA.

This competition celebrates the transformative and pioneering research of UK-based doctoral students in contributing to up to two of the following category topics:

  • Safe and Secure Cyber Society
  • Intelligent Informatics
  • Making Digital Technology Work for People
  • Creative Computing for the Digital Economy

Applicants will be assessed per category by a panel of industrial sponsors in three stages:

  • An Expression of Interest statement (500 words)
  • A three-minute video pitch
  • An exhibition and pitch presentation

All applicants reaching the third stage of the competition will receive media and presentation training and will have an excellent opportunity to network with representatives from both academia and industry. Each of the four category winners will receive a prize of £2,000 and a NVIDIA graphics card at a VIP Awards Ceremony Dinner, to be held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The category winners will also compete in an elevator pitch contest as part of the Awards Ceremony to select an overall winner, who will receive a further £1,000.

How to apply

Before applying for the 2018 Connected Nation Pioneers competition, please read the call document for full information regarding eligibility and assessment criteria. Please forward questions or comments to PioneersCompetition@epsrc.ac.uk.

The Expression of Interest form should be completed and submitted by the closing date of 16:00 on Thursday 26 April 2018.  This can be found here.  Key dates are also on the link.

You must contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer for your Faculty in advance of applying.  Their name will need to be given on the expression of interest and we will need to record the application on BU’s database for research and innovation.

Last chance to book: US Funding Event

international

The Research and Knowledge Exchange Office is delighted to announce that US funding expert, Robert Porter, PhD, of Grant-Winners Seminars, will be delivering four US Funding sessions this week on 8th and 9th March.

Limited spaces are still available  – please reserve your place now for as many sessions as you can attend:

Thursday, 8th March:

US funding opportunities for international researchers – This session will focus on the eligibility requirements, funding levels, proposal development guides and submission deadlines for key US funders.

Strategies for success in sponsored research – In addition to developing their writing skills, grant seekers must focus on the relational issues that are key to success. This session will address these contextual challenges

Friday, 9th March:

Grants in the Humanities & Social Sciences 

Building the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant Proposal

Find out more about each session and book.

There is a networking lunch between the morning and afternoon sessions. When booking, please advise if you will require lunch and any dietary requirements

 

If you want to develop your international research portfolio, please contact your faculty Research Facilitator.

CQR Seminar for this Wednesday cancelled

PG research

Sorry to inform you that this Wednesday’s ‘In Conversation’ CQR Seminar is cancelled due to illness.

Mark you diaries now, however, for the next Seminar on Wed. 11 April at 1 pm in RLH 208 presented by the ‘Gang of Four’.

Curious?  More information will follow. Stay tuned!

Here are the Seminars for the rest of the academic year:

Review and changes to BU scheme to invest in research capacity for externally-funded projects with prestigious research funders

The scheme to invest in research capacity for externally-funded projects with prestigious research funders was launched in August 2017 and has been revised in February 2018.  The revised policy document can be found here or on the BU staff intranet under ‘policy/ research/ pre-award’.

The main changes are as follows:

  • Applications to prestigious funders when BU is non-lead, i.e. Co-Investigator, will now be considered as long as the value threshold for BU income is met (see below).  This is available for both pathways.
  • The BU income value threshold for ECRs applying to external prestigious research funders has been lowered to £75k (before full economic costing (fEC)) for both pathways: PGR studentships and Postdoctoral research staff.
  • The value threshold for all those requesting a PGR student when applying to an external prestigious research funder has been lowered to £75k (before fEC).
  • Other funders (from those listed in the scheme document) will be considered when projects are valued as BU income over £350K (before fEC) or £75k (before fEC) for ECRS for the PGR studentship pathway only.  A case will need to be made to the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (see scheme notes for case criteria).
  • The value threshold for the postdoctoral research staff pathway remains at £350k or £75k for ECRs (both before fEC).  Only funders listed in the scheme document are considered for this pathway.
  • Information on how to include details of the BU funding in your application for external funding have been made clearer.
  • No retrospective requests will be considered.

Please read the full scheme document for clarification of the above.

JCMS

Professor Jens Holscher Jas joined the review team of the Journal of Common Market Studies, a journal in which he had a number of articles published in the past.

Come to Prof Malcolm MacDonald’s talk: Six steps to develop financially quantified value propositions in B2B markets

Post written by Dr Kaouther Kooli:

I am pleased to announce that Professor Malcolm MacDonald will be giving a talk to the MSc Marketing Management students on Monday 5 March 2018 in room EB306. PGR and academics are invited to attend.

You can find below a summary of the presentation and also Malcolm’s short biography.

 

Summary of the presentation

Six steps to develop financially quantified value propositions in B2B markets

According to McKinsey and my own research, everyone talks about value propositions, but only 5% of organisations have them and even those that do have them don’t always quantify them financially.

Any supplier who can quantify financially how they can help their customers grow their profits will always succeed, no matter how difficult the market conditions.

A lot of what constitutes value from a supplier is about helping the customer to avoid disadvantage, but, much more importantly, those suppliers who can demonstrate that they will create advantage for them will be respected and there will be fewer conversations about price.

This lecture will spell out a process for developing financially-quantified value propositions

 

Professor Malcolm MacDonald Short Biography

Until 2003, Malcolm was Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director of Cranfield University School of Management, with special responsibility for E-Business. He is a graduate in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, in Business Studies from Bradford University Management Centre, and has a PhD from Cranfield University.  He also has a  Doctorate from Bradford University and from the Plekhanov University of Economics in Moscow.  He has extensive industrial experience, including a number of years as Marketing and Sales Director of Canada Dry. Until the end of 2012, he spent seven years as Chairman of Brand Finance plc. He spends much of his time working with the operating boards of the world’s biggest multinational companies, such as IBM, Xerox, BP and the like, in most countries in the world, including Japan, USA, Europe, South America, ASEAN and Australasia. He has written forty six books, including the best seller “Marketing Plans; how to prepare them; how to use them”, which has sold over half a million copies worldwide. Hundreds of his papers have been published. Apart from market segmentation, his current interests centre around the measurement of the financial impact of marketing expenditure and global best practice key account management. He is an Emeritus Professor at Cranfield and a Visiting Professor at Henley, Warwick, Aston and Bradford Business Schools. In 2006 he was listed in the UK’s Top Ten Business Consultants by the Times.

ERASMUS exchange

Awarded & submitted bids

Once again Jens Holscher was awarded an ERASMUS grant to visit the University of Perugia (Italy). BU has a long established collaboration with colleagues in Perugia both in research and teaching. Jens will go there with PhD student Peter Howard-Jones to present a paper on Firm Productivity in the Western Balkans in their research seminar, which they recently published in Economic Annals. They will also give a series of lectures on Emerging Markets.

Colloquium on European Research in Retailing (CERR) 2018

conferences

As members of the scientific committee, Dr Jason Sit and Prof. Juliet Memery would like to invite colleagues and PGR students to submit papers to CERR 2018 at the University of Surrey (Guildford). Please find more details on the CERR website.

The paper/abstract submission is only two weeks away (March 15 2018) so we (the scientific committee) would like to give you a quick update on the event.

  • All preparations around the review process, the programme structure, rooming and accommodation have been completed and we look forward to receive exciting submissions.
  • We have three special sessions focused on developing research papers, contemporary research methodologies in retailing and engaging pedagogic approaches in retail education.
  • We are in the process of confirming an exciting keynote speaker.
  • We have also finalised the social programme. The pub night at the Weyside and the Colloquium Dinner at the Guildford County Club will create the perfect (and very British) environment to network, meet and catch up with colleagues and to reflect on the day’s discussions.
  • Lastly, consistent with the CERR vision concerning supporting the retail research community throughout Europe and beyond, we have kept the costs for delegates at an absolute minimum. With a full fee of GBP 250 and a PhD/Early Career researcher of GBP 180 (all inclusive) we make this not-for-profit event affordable for colleagues on a tight budget. We also offer accommodation on campus for as little as GBP 50 (B&B, per night).

Should you have any questions or queries please contact Jason at jsit@bournemouth.ac.uk or on ext. 61888.

Voting is now open for the Research Photography Competition!

Student Engagement, student research

The Research Photography Competition is a great way for academics and student researchers to capture and share the excellent research undertaken at BU. Each year, the competition has a different theme which can be interpreted in any way, and this year’s theme is people.

It’s down to you, the public, to vote for your favourite image which will determine the top 3 winners of this year’s Research Photography Competition. Voting closes at 4pm on Monday 12 March.

Click here to go to the voting web page.

All photo submissions will be exhibited in the Atrium Art Gallery on Talbot Campus from 20-30 March 2018 and is an opportunity to find out about the research behind each photo in much more detail.

 

​You can take a look at our Photo of the Week on the research website for previous year’s entries and the research behind their photos.

Let the best photo win!

Publishing’s Ratner moment: why eBooks are not ‘stupid’

File 20180227 36700 764jb.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1

shandrus via Shutterstock.com

By Bronwen Thomas, Bournemouth University

In the days before social media – and, presumably, media training – Gerald Ratner’s description of some of the products sold in his chain of jewellers as “total crap” became a byword for the corporate gaffe. Recently the chief executive of publisher Hachette Livre, Arnaud Nourry, seems to have suffered his own “Ratner moment” when he described ebooks in an interview with an Indian news site as a “stupid product”.

The interview, which was intended to address the future of digital publishing and specific issues facing the Indian publishing market, was widely misquoted and Nourry’s comments taken out of context. But there is no denying the fact that the publisher criticises his own industry (“We’re not doing very well”) and attacks ebooks for lacking creativity, not enhancing the reading experience in any way and not offering readers a “real” digital experience.

Some commenters on social media welcomed Nourry’s comments for their honesty. They highlight his seeming support for the idea that publishers should be championing writers and artists working to exploit the creative potential of digital formats to provide readers with experiences that may be challenging and disruptive, but also exhilarating and boundary pushing.

But many of the 1,000-plus commenters reacting to coverage of the story on The Guardian’s website spoke out against “fiddling for the sake of it” – claiming they were not interested in enhanced features or “gamified dancing baloney” borrowed from other media. They also listed the many practical enhancements that ebooks and ereaders do offer. The obvious one is the ability to instantly download books in remote locations where there are no bricks and mortar bookstores. But there are other less obvious enhancements, including being able to instantly access dictionary and encyclopedia entries (at least if you have wifi access) and the option to have the book read to you if you have visual impairments.

Elsewhere, Australian researcher Tully Barnett has shown how users of Kindle ereaders adapt features such as Highlights and Public Notes for social networking, demonstrating that even if ebooks are not that intrinsically innovative or creative, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be made so by imaginative users.

Nourry clearly isn’t averse to the provocative soundbite – in the same interview he went on to say: “I’m not a good swallower” when asked about mergers and conglomeration in the publishing industry. On the other hand, he also seems very aware of the special place of books and reading in “culture, education, democracy” – so his use of the word “stupid” in this context is particularly inflammatory and insensitive.

Dear reader

My research on digital reading has taught me that debating books vs ereaders is always likely to arouse strong passions and emotions. Merely mentioning the word Kindle has led in some instances to my being shouted at – and readers of “dead tree” books are rightly protective and passionate about the sensory and aesthetic qualities of physical books that the digital version possibly can’t compete with.

Mother and daughter Barbara and Jenni Creswell enjoyed Anne of Green Gables in both print and ebook format. Ray Gibson, Author provided

But, equally, my research has shown that enhancements in terms of accessibility and mobility offer a lifeline to readers who might not be able to indulge their passion for reading without the digital.

In my latest project, academics from Bournemouth and Brighton universities, in collaboration with Digitales (a participatory media company), worked with readers to produce digital stories based on their reading lives and histories. A recurring theme, especially among older participants, was the scarcity of books in their homes and the fact that literacy and education couldn’t be taken for granted. Our stories also demonstrated how intimately reading is connected with self-worth and helps transform lives disrupted by physical and mental health issues – making comments about any reading as “stupid” particularly damaging and offensive.

I would like to know if Nourry would still call ebooks stupid products after watching Mary Bish’s story: My Life in Books from our project. A lifelong reader who grew up in a home in industrial South Wales with few books, Mary calls her iPad her “best friend” and reflects how before the digital age her reading life would have been cut short by macular degeneration.

As well as demonstrating that fairly basic digital tools can be used to create powerful stories, our project showed that the digital also makes us appreciate anew those features of the physical book we may take for granted, the touch, smell and feel of paper and the special place that a book handed down from generation to generation has in the context of family life.

Bronwen Thomas, Professor of English and New Media, Bournemouth University

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

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

27th March 2018

24th April 2018

22nd May 2018

26th June 2018

24th July 2018

28th August 2018

25th September 2018

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

Have you noticed a new box appear on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.