Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health

Centre for Seldom Heard Voices

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health
Centre for Seldom Heard Voices
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
It’s Not Too Late to Get Involved in Being Human Festival 2025
If you’re still thinking about taking part in Being Human Festival 2025 by organising a public engagement event, activity or project, there’s still time to apply. The deadline for the Festival Event (unfunded) pathway is 5:00 PM on Friday 4 July.
This year’s festival will take place from 6 to 15 November, with the theme Between the Lines.
While the deadlines for Institutional Grants and Festival Event Grants have now passed, the Festival Event (unfunded) pathway remains open to those planning activities that do not require festival funding.
Why take part?
Being part of the festival is a valuable opportunity to share your research more widely, connect with different audiences, and be part of a national conversation about the humanities.
This pathway is open to any organisation with a link to humanities research — including universities, museums and galleries, libraries, archives, subject societies, and more.
To find out more, click here to read the full details.
We have a few places available for our policy engagement training sessions, which are now open to any researchers interested in learning how to get their research in front of decision makers.
Friday 30th May, 9.30am-1pm, F306, Fusion Building, Talbot Campus
Developing Policy Engagement for Impact BOOK HERE
Wednesday 11th June, 9.30am-1pm, online via Zoom
Developing Policy Engagement for Impact (same content) BOOK HERE
Developing Policy Engagement for Impact
Facilitated by BU’s policy consultant Carys Davis, this provides expert advice on navigating the policy landscape to ensure your research reaches and informs decision makers. Topics covered:
As part of the 2025 Being Human Festival Public Engagement Training Programme, this session will cover ways to promote your public engagement event and will explore how to reach your target audience, how to choose the best channels and platforms for promoting your event, and how to create a simple but effective promotional plan.
It will take place on Wednesday 2 July 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM. The session is free to attend, but booking is required.
What will be covered?
Accessibility information
This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form.
To book a place, please follow this link.
As part of the 2025 Being Human Festival Public Engagement Training Programme, this session will provide an overview of the practicalities of delivering a public engagement event.
It will take place on Wednesday 1 October 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM. The session is free to attend, but booking is required.
What will be covered?
Accessibility information
This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form.
To book a place, please follow this link.
As part of the 2025 Being Human Festival Public Engagement Training Programme, this online session will explore how researchers can work effectively with the press and media.
The session will take place on Tuesday 29 July 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM. It is free to attend, but booking is required.
This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form.
To book a place, please follow this link
As part of the 2025 Being Human Festival Public Engagement Training Programme, this session will explore the importance of inclusive engagement and how to effectively connect with diverse audiences.
It will take place on Thursday 12 June 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM. The session is free to attend, but booking is required.
This session will be held on Zoom and closed captioning will be available. Any resources referred to during the session will be circulated afterwards via email. Please make a note of any accessibility requirements in the booking form.
To book a place, please follow this link.
Kate Welham, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at BU, has been appointed as chair of one of the 34 sub-panels that will assess research from universities across the country for the next Research Excellence Framework assessment in 2029.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the excellence of research in UK higher education providers and is managed by Research England.
The outcomes from REF assessments are used to inform the allocation of around £2 billion per year of public funding for universities’ research.
Professor Welham will lead the assessment for Archaeology.
Her role as chair will involve appointing the other members of her sub-panel and developing the criteria they will use to assess submissions. She will then work with her panel on rigorous evaluating submissions against those criteria and providing advice to the main panels on the quality of research.
After her appointment was announced, Professor Welham said: “I’m honoured to be invited to serve as chair of the archaeology Sub-Panel for REF2029. This is a valuable opportunity to support our discipline and ensure that its excellence—wherever and however it is expressed—is recognised fairly and consistently.
“Archaeology in the UK is a wide-ranging and globally engaged field, and I look forward to drawing on my experience from REF2021 and the current PCE pilot to help foster a collaborative and transparent process that delivers a rigorous and trusted assessment.”
Professor Welham’s appointment was made by the four UK higher education funding bodies – Research England, Scottish Funding Council, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research in Wales and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland – and the REF Main Panel Chairs.
REF Director Rebecca Fairbairn said: “I’m delighted to welcome this outstanding group to lead the REF 2029 sub-panels. Their deep expertise and broad perspectives will be central to building an assessment process that is fair, rigorous, and trusted by the research community.
“We have been working in partnership with the sector throughout this process, and I’m grateful to everyone who expressed interest – your engagement is what strengthens the credibility and value of the REF across our research landscape.”
Many organisations use the concept of Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the intervention design and testing stage of a labour migration project. CoE is an interesting concept, which links to the notion of a ‘show home’ on a building site, the Scottish Government notion of a ‘demonstration project’, or more basic the content of the suitcase of a travelling salesman in the last century. For example, currently the Scottish Government established a Gypsy/Traveller Accommodation Fund, running from 2021 to 2026, to deliver good quality local authority sites with the initial ‘demonstration projects’ providing examples of how to design more and better accommodation for the community. Whislt a previous demonstration projects in Scotland featured teenage sexual health behaviour (1-2). A ‘model home’ or a ‘show home’ is the same house as the new one you will be buying or renting, but fully decorated with often expensive stuff. This to show the seller the house’s best potential, i.e. to give you a sense of what you own home could look like.
The idea behind a CoE is that a group of people with a share aim, provide leadership, skills training, research, and advice and support on topic based on a high level of expertise among the team members to ensure best practice. It is to demonstrate that something could work and also how it might work in practice.
Professor Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
References:
Bournemouth University’s (BU) Doctoral College aims to create a stimulating and motivating Research Culture and Community at the university. As part of this goal, the Doctoral College has funded a proposal by Anjana Paudyal, Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) to organise a half-day workshop on ‘Academic Writing, Publishing & Collaborating’ on 28th May.
This event is part of BU’s Research Culture and Community workshop series. The interactive workshop, facilitated by experienced BU with as guest contributor Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust. Of all midwives working in the NHS (i.e. not in academic posts), Jillian is the most widely published midwife in the South of England; Jillian is also Visiting Faculty in FHSS.
Wednesday morning’s sessions will cover academic writing, collaboration in writing, writing for practitioners’ journals, publishing identifiers and metrics, and responding to journal editors and reviewers. There will also be opportunities for Q&A and networking.
The event at Talbot Campus is now fully booked, but if you are a postgraduate student and you would like to be put on the waiting list: please email Anjana Paudyal at: apaudyal@bournemouth.ac.uk.
We would like to thank the Doctoral College for supporting this important event!
Dr. Orlanda Harvey & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
(Anjana’s Ph.D. supervisors)
On 19th May 2025 at the Wessex Women and Girls Event at the Southampton Science Park, BU’s Centre for Midwifery and Women’s Health showcased its research and innovation in women’s health.
Professor Vanora Hundley and Dr. Dominique Mylod presented their ongoing development of an Early Labour app as a case study for the Maternity and Infant Health Equity Research Collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University. Professor Carol Clark’s presentation focussed on pelvic floor health and the cost of urinary and faecal incontinence to women’s health and the planet. Dr. Chloe Casey honoured her mother-in-law’s memory with her PechaKucha presentation on using creative methodologies to engage women in recovery from alcohol.
In addition, Dr. Malika Felton and MRes students Susara Blunden and Maryam Malekian displayed posters summarising their research into the impact of exercise on women’s physiology and health, improving diagnositic and treatment pathways for women with endometriosis and exploring the impact of professional knowledge and skills on breastfeeding support respectively.
The event provided a valuable platform for BU researchers to connect with regional partners, contribute to the growing Wessex Women and Girls research network, and play a key role in shaping future initiatives aimed at closing gaps in women’s health. The CMWH’s invovement reinforces BU’s role as a leading voice in this important area of health innovation.
This information, with some edits, is reposted from recent UKRO news.
The UK Research Office (UKRO), in its capacity as UK National Contact Point for the European Research Council (ERC), is organising a webinar for researchers who are interested in applying for the 2025 or any of the future ERC Advanced Grant calls. Attendance is free of charge, however, registration for the webinar is required. The session will last 2 hours.
The webinar will provide information on the submission process, how proposals are evaluated and other elements you’ll need to consider when designing a project for your research excellence idea ahead of the ERC Advanced Grant deadline of 28th August 2025.
Antonino Puglisi, UK National Contact Point, and Professor Rachel Gibson will be joining the webinar. Professor Rachel Gibson will share details of her journey towards getting an ERC Advanced grant.
Today we had the introductory meeting of our recently funded ‘British Academy Project on Evidence-Informed Policymaking in Nepal’, the project is coordinated by the University of Huddersfield by Prof. Padam Simkhada, who is also Visiting Professor in Bournemouth University’s (BU) Faculty of Health & Social Sciences. The co-investigator at BU is Dr. Pramod Regmi (Principal Academic in International Health), with other co-applicants based at the Keele University, Canterbury Christ Church University, the University of Sheffield, the University of Chester, the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC), Kathmandu University and the research-based charity Green Tara Nepal.
This one year grant is officially starting next month (1st June). The plans for this project were laid some time ago, and expressed in our 2022 paper ‘Nepal urgently needs a National Evidence Synthesis Centre‘ [1]. Our funded project will focus on the activities of: (1) formative research; (b) capacity building including evidence synthesis; (c) the establishment of a National Evidence Synthesis Centre; and (d) the evaluation of sustainability planning. The British Academy see this award also as providing a developmental opportunity, enabling award holders to build connections within the cohort and critically beyond that as well.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Reference:
Today ResearchGate announced that the paper ‘The Interdisciplinary Research Team not the Interdisciplinarist’ [1] has been read 3,000 times. The paper, with psychologist Dr. Shanti Farrington (previously Shanker) as lead author, was written with colleagues from (a) the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, namely Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen; (b) the NHS, Ms. Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate in University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust; (c) the University of Huddersfield, namely Prof. Padam Simkhada, who is also Visiting Professor at BU; and (d) the University of Greenwich, in the person of Dr. Sharada P. Wasti (previously based at the University of Huddersfield).
This methods paper addresses some of the pitfalls and barriers to being an interdisciplinary researcher. Being involved in interdisciplinary research is not an easy option for an individual discipline expert. It requires individual skills, ability to see beyond one’s discipline and perhaps personality characteristics such as a great team player. Interdisciplinary research may involve a mixed-methods approach underpinned by conflicting, and according to some, incommensurable research philosophies.
This paper on working interdisciplinary is part of a suit of academic papers on the topic written by some of the same authors [2-3]. All papers are fully open access and hence freely accessible across the globe to anyone with an internet connection.
References:
Professor Huseyin Dogan was honoured with both the Best Service Award and the Best Paper Award at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence held in Silicon Valley, USA. This recognition highlights the importance of Human-Centred AI and Professor Dogan’s valuable contributions to the area.
Professor Dogan travelled to Silicon Valley in May 2025, supported by funding from Google, USA, to lead a special track focused on Human-Centred AI. The track included 24 paper presentations and addressed the crucial need for ethical considerations in the development and application of both autonomous and collaborative Human Centred AI systems.
The conference organisers stated that “these honours are a testament to Prof Dogan’s outstanding contributions and dedication to the field.”
Bournemouth University’s commitment to shaping the future of User Experience (UX) and Human-Centred AI extends beyond this prestigious conference. Professor Dogan also recently led a highly anticipated workshop at CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan, on “Defining a User Experience Research Point of View” also funded by Google. The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) is globally recognised as the premier international forum for research in human-computer interaction.
This influential CHI workshop was a collaborative effort, organised alongside leading experts in the field: Stephen Giff (Google, USA), Renée Barsoum (Admiral, UK), Elizabeth Churchill (MBZUAI, formerly of Google and the ACM), and Alan Dix (Swansea University, Wales, UK). The participation of such prominent figures highlights the significance of the topic and BU’s contribution to the international research community.
These recent successes highlight Bournemouth University’s growing influence in the critical field of Human-Centred AI and User Experience research. Through international collaborations and impactful engagement at leading conferences like IEEE AI and CHI, the university is actively contributing to the discussion around developing AI systems that are both effective and aligned with human values.
To mark the Twentieth Anniversary of Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro’s modern classic Never Let Me Go, BU Principal Academic Dr Yugin Teo from the Faculty of Media and Communication participated in a three-part edition of the World Literature Podcast on YouTube, together with Prof Laura Colombino from the University of Genova, hosted by Dr Ivan Stacy.
World Literature Podcast logo
Part 1 of the podcast examines the cultural impact the novel has had since its publication in 2005, and its importance as a work of dystopian and science fiction: https://youtu.be/Ttsz-Vt2MbE?si=6pSX_jfu5FAwJNDq
Part 2 discusses how the novel deals with memory and how it speaks to contemporary politics: https://youtu.be/1vILMft2DkQ?si=e6EKu33CFFuMOAyZ
The final part features recommendations for further reading and predictions for Ishiguro’s next novel: https://youtu.be/C8Ox0nSeB_0?si=sQYF3Sj5xRyoEVuD
Up to £1,000 per event available to engage the public with your research in a national prestigious festival
The 23rd annual ESRC Festival of Social Science (FoSS) takes place Saturday 18 October – Saturday 8 November 2025, with the theme of ‘Our Working Lives’.
The festival is an annual UK-wide celebration of research and knowledge about people and society, organised and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It provides a platform for researchers from UK universities to engage the public in a wide range of topics, from health and wellbeing to crime, equality, education, and identity, through engaging events such as exhibitions, lectures, panel debates, performances, and workshops.
The festival is free to attend, with most events open to everyone, though some may target specific groups. It offers researchers a unique opportunity to take their work beyond the university, connect with diverse audiences, and present their research in creative and accessible ways. Funding of up to £1,000 per event is available.
The national FoSS team is coordinating public engagement training with Engagement Trainer and Consultant Jamie Gallagher in June (repeated in September). Attendance at these sessions is mandatory for all event leads to attend and further details will be shared upon successful application.
We are particularly keen to receive applications from PGRs and early to mid-career researchers and encourage groups/teams to apply. If you have a supervisor, they will need to endorse your application by emailing publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk.
If you are considering applying, we strongly encourage you to get in touch with us directly as early as possible.
Apply to take part by completing the online application form.
Deadline for applications: 5pm FRIDAY 23 MAY 2025
You can view the slides from the Information Session here. If you weren’t able to attend, or if you would like to revisit what was covered, you can also watch the session here.
Before submitting your application, please make sure you meet both the ESRC eligibility criteria and our key requirements. This is essential for your proposal to be considered. Applications that reference academic or undergraduate audiences, or propose campus-based venues, will not be eligible. This opportunity is focused on public engagement beyond academic settings.
Festival Event Leader Pack this practical guide supports researchers in planning and delivering events for the festival. It covers the festival’s aims, event criteria, useful planning tips, audience engagement, and evaluation. It also details the funding, training, and promotional support available from the ESRC, making it a key resource for aligning events with the festival’s goals.
Please contact the Public Engagement Team to discuss your application publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk