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HE Policy update

Posted a little late – I’ve missed a couple of blogs so catch up on the last few here.

Read the UUK evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee inquiry into industrial strategy.
This highlights the role of universities in:
• making long -term, sustainable contributions to productivity and growth,
• creating the best possible environment for businesses to thrive
• sustaining the world-class excellence of the UK’s research base to attract businesses from all over the world to locate and invest in the UK
• meeting the demands of business through a strong supply of higher-level skills

Research Professional have highlighted a sharp drop in H2020 participation from members that are not full or associate members – “Only 11.7 per cent of Horizon 2020 grant agreements were found include a partner who was not an EU member or Horizon 2020 associated country, the report said. Under Framework 7, 20.5 per cent of agreements included at least one non-European country.”

The Higher Education and Research Bill has finished its Commons committee stage and the amended legislation has now been returned to the Commons. A date for its third reading, when MPs will vote upon whether to pass the amended legislation, has yet to be set. Jo Johnson, the universities and science minister, batted away all opposition amendments at the final committee meeting on 18 October, which examined the bill’s research provisions. The opposition amendments sought to provide additional protections for the existing research councils and to ensure a closer relationship between research and teaching, which Johnson said were “unnecessary” since such powers will be developed in the framework documents, and would jeopardise the flexibility he wants for the legislation. He also confirmed that If the bill is passed into law in its present form, ministers would have powers to change the names and functions of the research councils without consulting the academic community. Meanwhile, peers are holding informal conversations about how to approach the bill when it enters the Lords.

Brexit speculation continues – this week there was a rumour that students would be excluded from immigration figures after all, squashed quickly by No 10:
“The Government objective is to reduce annual net migration to the tens of thousands, and in order to deliver this we are keeping all visa routes are under review.
“Our position on who is included in the figures has not changed, and we are categorically not reviewing whether or not students are included.”

A UUK task force has been looking at violence against women, harassment and hate crime affecting university students and has now reported. See the UUK press release here.
“The evidence showed that while many universities have already taken positive steps to address these issues, university responses are not always as joined-up as they could be. There is more work that can be done to share effective practice across the sector.

HESA published a report on the DLHE consultation – this is not the outcome of the consultation, just an analysis by HESA of the responses, but it gives a sense of direction. HESA will publish a proposal based on this feedback and run a second consultation on it towards the end of the year.

Two research reports were also published – these were commissioned by HESA to support the review.
• CFE Research’s report on ‘What do good outcomes from HE look like’ considers what good outcomes are for a range of groups, including students and graduates, higher education providers, employers and society/the state.
• Warwick Institute for Employment Research’s report on ‘Richer information on student views’.

And a reminder to engage in the “Schools that work for everyone” consultation – workshops on 4th and 17th November – e-mail policy@bournemouth.ac.uk for more information

NIHR-funded TACIT Trial: TAi ChI for people with demenTia.

Research themes

Since the beginning of 2016, Dr Samuel Nyman (Psychology Department, and Bournemouth University Dementia Institute) has been funded 100% of his time for 3 years by the NIHR on a Career Development Fellowship. Part of the fellowship is to conduct a research project: “The TACIT Trial TAi ChI for people with demenTia”.

The first external presentation about this project was on the 11th November 2015 as part of an ESRC-funded seminar series, Physical activity among hard-to-reach groups: Issues of research, policy and practice. That presentation was noticed by Haringey Council who have charged a scrutiny panel with the task of reviewing their strategy for increasing physical activity among older people in their borough. As part of this review, last week on the 13th October, Haringey Council invited Samuel, along with other colleagues from across charitable / higher education / private sectors, to present about the project. The project was met with much interest and contributed to a roundtable discussion on how to implement the current evidence-base into practice.

tacit-trial-picture-oct-2016

 Dr Nyman and guests with the scrutiny panel, Haringey Council Chamber

The project is starting to recruit into its Pilot Intervention Phase, and will recruit into the randomised controlled trial phase in the spring of 2017. The trial results will be available in the autumn of 2018 before Samuel finishes his fellowship in December 2018.

For further information about the TACIT Trial, please see:

InsideBU – Out Now

Student Engagement, student research

insidebu-front-cover-useThe latest issue of InsideBU, the magazine for BU staff and students, is out now.

This issue brings the concept of Fusion to life through a range of features and articles including:

  • Celebrating undergraduate research through hosting the prestigious British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) next year
  • National research into the scale and impact of financial scamming in the UK, headed by BU’s National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work and Professional Practice
  • The research stories behind the Fusion mural on Talbot Campus.

Hard copies are available across both campuses and you can also read it online – simply click the arrows on the bottom right of the screen to expand it to a full page size.

If you use a screen-reader, Word and PDF versions are also available. The current issue – and all back issues – can also now be found on the Staff Intranet, under ‘Find’ on the bottom right of the homepage.

Please email insidebu@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like hard copies sent directly to you.

We appreciate all feedback and suggestions for future issues. If you have a story for the next issue of InsideBU, email insidebu@bournemouth.ac.uk.

How universities can work with creative industries

Guidance

The University Alliance and the Arts Council England have published a guide for cultural institutions that want to work with universities along with a report on universities’ role in cultural leadership.

a-clearer-pictureThe guide encourages greater collaboration between cultural organisations and universities.  It supports small and medium sized arts and cultural organisations on partnering with universities. Matt Robinson has written a blog about the guide and its aims.

The report is a collection of case studies highlighting existing partnerships and the ways in which universities are acting as custodians and champions of the arts. You can find those case studies here – Making Places: universities, the arts and creative industries.making-places

 

NVivo workshop and surgery – 4 November

Centre for Excellence in Learning, PG research

As part of the Graduate School’s Research Development Programme 2016/17, Jacqueline Priego from CEL will be delivering an NVivo workshop. Details below:

Date: 4 November 2016

Time: 9.00-11.00

Venue: S103

Bookings via myBU *

Audience: This workshop is suitable for PGRs with some knowledge of qualitative analysis approaches.

Intended learning outcomes. By the end of this workshop you should be able to:

• Confidently identify the main elements of the NVivo interface

• Open and create new NVivo projects

• Prepare and modify documents

• Create codes and code documents

• Rearrange the coding system

• Perform simple retrieval of coded documents

• Use annotation and linking tools.

If you are already using NVivo for your research, you might like to drop in for the last half an hour of the session, when an open surgery will be held.

Jacqueline Priego has been delivering CAQDAS workshops and training postgraduate students and researchers on qualitative analysis since 2010. She is also available for queries relating to MAXQDA (not supported at BU).

*Spaces are limited due to room capacity – please book through myBU to avoid disappointment.

Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework: Getting started on applying for research funding – Tomorrow 27 Oct at 12.00 noon!

The first session for the ‘Pre-Award at BU’ pathway called ‘Getting started on applying for research funding’ will be held tomorrow in Poole House, PG10!

This session will explore how best to adapt research in response to the changing external environment. The workshop will provide information on the best routes to funding based upon career stages and also introduce who in RKEO can support you.

By the end of this session you will:

  • Understand how best to access help with research proposals at BU
  • Identify appropriate funders for different areas of research.

Please book your place on the Organisational Development webpage here.

As this session starts at 12.00 noon to 1.00 pm, please feel free to bring your lunch.

rkeo-rke-pre-award-at-bu

UKRO Visit – Slides now available

Funding opportunities, innovation, international, Post-award

UKRO logoRKEO were pleased to welcome UK Research Office’s BU account manager, Maribel Glogowski for our annual subscriber visit, on Tuesday 25th October. Maribel is based in Brussels, along with the rest of the UKRO team, so is BU’s perfect partner for keeping us up to date with funding developments in the EU.

UKRO is the European office of the UK Research Councils. It delivers a subscription-based advisory service for research organisations (in the main UK HEIs) and provides National Contact Point services on behalf of the UK Government. UKRO’s mission is to maximise UK engagement in EU-funded research, innovation and higher education activities. As a BU member of staff, you can sign up to receive email alerts direct to your inbox.

Maribel covered the following topics:

  • Updates on project management including post-referendum statements
  • Creative Europe
  • Erasmus+
  • Accessing the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges

All the slides from the day are available in the MyBU Community for the Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework. Please select the International Pathway to access these slides – more resources are being added over the coming months.  All staff have been pre-enrolled into this community.

If you have any questions about this event or are considering applying to EU funding schemes, please contact Emily Cieciura (RKEO, Research Facilitator: EU & International)

 

Business collaboration & networking

Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

gamechanger

Need help with networking? – why not book onto the business engagement and networking session on 2 November for some hints and tips that you can put into practice.

Date: Wednesday 16 November

Location: The Fusion Building, Bournemouth University

Event information:

Building on the successful Game Changer event held earlier in the year, Bournemouth University and NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group present The Game Changer Reloaded – promoting innovation and fostering collaboration across Dorset. Join Richard Dolan, Dr Phil Richardson and Professor Jim Roach and a diverse collection of speakers to learn more about the art of the possible and the power of innovation to transform health services within the region.

Places are going fast for both sessions so make sure you book your space. Academics are encouraged to attend both sessions but if you are looking for potential funding partners / research collaborators session 2 is a must.

It’s free: book now for sessions 1 and/or 2

Timings:

Session 1 – 9.00 am -3.00 pm: Speakers from BU and external organisations share their innovation journeys throughout the day providing inspiration and ideas to those attending as to how to get involved.

Session 2 – 3.15 pm  – 4.15 pm: Facilitation and networking: This session offers the opportunity to share ideas and develop future collaborations. There’s also the chance to begin to consider research ideas that could subsequently be progressed in order to obtain external funding in the future.

Each session will need to be booked separately.

Throughout the day there’s a pop-up innovation exhibition for guests to enjoy and to share and refine ideas.

It’s free: book now for The Game Changer Reloaded 

This event forms a number being run at the university as part of the Festival of Enterprise.

Need help with networking? – why not book onto the business engagement and networking session on 2 November.

PhD studentship in Norway

Bournemouth University are collaborators in the CO-LAB Research programme, a EU funded Horizon2020 RISE consortium COLAB with colleagues from Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The University of Stavanger invites applications for a doctorate scholarship in interagency collaboration between mental health and criminal justice. The scholarship is part of the EU funded CO-LAB Research programme.

CO-LAB Research programme
Effective collaboration between mental health (MHS) and correctional services (CS) impacts on mental illness and reduces reoffending rates. Service leaders have indicated a need for more effective models of collaboration. Researchers have identified the Change Laboratory Model (CLM) of workplace transformation as a more effective means of supporting interagency collaborative practice than current integration tools. It provides a way to optimise the effectiveness of mental healthcare provision to offenders through a model that fosters innovation and collaborative processes. However, the change laboratory, highly successful internationally and in other clinical contexts, is a new idea in prison development, none as yet being applied to the challenges facing the MHS and CS. The wickedness, complexity and unpredictability of challenges facing interagency working in these secure environments means that piloting the CLM is premature and it must first be adapted to the MHS/CS context.

The aim of this programme is to validate the change laboratory model ready for implementation in practice. It builds a community of practice that enriches international research capacity and cooperation to achieve this aim. It brings academic knowledge of the Change Laboratory model to the market of interagency practices between mental health and correctional services for the development of innovation and the advancement of integrated service provision to mentally ill offenders. Knowledge exchange takes place through secondments, interactive workshops, the development of workforce training programmes, study tours, shadowing opportunities and ethnographic research. Through this knowledge exchange, the consortium delivers a user-informed prototype of change laboratory model ready for implementation in the MHS and CS field. This validated change laboratory model, offers the ERA a clear strategy with which to promote integrated care for mentally ill offenders.

The Ph.D. project
The Ph.D. project contributes to the ethnographic research dimension of the COLAB programme.  Although the project will be developed by the Ph.D. candidate, the overarching objective of the project is to explore the current interagency practices in MHS and CS from the perspective of front line professionals and using cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as its theoretical perspective.  Part or all of the data collection must take place in the UK and therefore candidates should be prepared to spend a total of 6 months in the UK collecting data and have a good command of English.

Through participation in the COLAB consortium, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to build their cultural competences and their own EU research networks across both practice and academic partners. COLAB partners come from academic institutions in Finland, Denmark, Norway the UK and the Netherlands.

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/129882/doctorate-scholarship-in-interagency-collaboration-between-mental-health-and-criminal-justice

 

For further details: please contact Sarah Hean

shean@bournemouth.ac.uk

Innovation awards

Business Engagement, innovation

Innovate 2011v4

SME innovation awards (2016) – small business were honoured on Tuesday evening at  an awards ceremony at the Houses of Parliament.

The awards recognise the many innovative successful projects that Innovate UK has co-funded. They celebrate the projects and companies that show the impact of innovation on business growth and the economy.

There were 5 categories – 4 specific and 1 overall award for inspirational innovation. Could we consider research and collaboration at BU for such an award? KTP’s also form part of this funding and contributed to Mech Tool Engineering Ltd, Gaist Solutions Limited and University of York and Phasefocus being shortlised.

Read the blog post in full including the winners and organisations shortlisted and how their areas of innovation became award winning.

Live funding competitions.

How to apply for funding.

Case studies.

Research Professional Fingerprinting – coming to you soon

Funding opportunities, Guidance

Research-Professional-logo‘Research Fingerprinting’ is a new development on the Research Professional platform that delivers highly relevant funding opportunities to researchers.

How does it work?

Using advanced, highly-targeted algorithms, in combination with their extensive industry knowledge and refined discipline taxonomy, Research Fingerprinting generates personal funding alerts for the majority of the researchers at our institution, based on publicly available information about your research interests and published work.

Once deployed, fingerprinting will perfectly match our researchers with their research interests and help deliver the most relevant funding opportunities into your inbox every week.  You will be able to edit your fingerprint if you find that the some of the disciplines do not match your research interests.

You will already have alerts set up and so when this is switched on, you will receive two alerts on a Friday.  You can compare these to see which is finding the most relelvant funding opportunities.  This should be the Fingerprint and so you can then remove your previous selected alerts.  The fingerprint will update as your research interests grow.

When will we get it?

This post is to let you know that Research Fingerprints is coming soon.  It is now available for the majority of academics but we have yet to switch it on.  We will be rolling this out shortly and will notify you via another blog post.

 

 

Are you using technology for social good?

Funding opportunities, innovation

Technology in the hands

Digital technologies and the internet are providing new opportunities to address social challenges.  This phenomenon is known as digital social innovation (DSI). To explore what DSI is, who is working on it, and how they can be supported, a website has been launched www.digitalsocial.eu in partnership with the Waag Society and SUPSI, with funding from the European Commission DG Connect. The website features stories and case studies of DSI, along with information on funding and events for DSI. It also helps people and projects working on DSI to showcase their work and find new collaborators.

Two years on, DSI has come a long way. New organisations, projects and collaborations are popping up across Europe. Terms like crowdfunding, making, sharing economy and digital democracy are entering the mainstream. The number of incubators, accelerators and investment funds focused on tech for good has grown. Emerging technologies like blockchain and widely accessible 3D-printing have given DSI new potential.

How can you get involved?

  • Sign up: With over 1,000 organisations and 700 projects signed up,  it’s quick and easy to register and is your access point to the world of www.digitalsocial.eu.
  • Submit funding and events: There are two really simple forms which you can fill in  about funding and events. It doesn’t matter if you’re responsible for them, or if you just came across them on Twitter.
  • Talk to each other: The website allows you to see which organisations work with each other and which projects they work on. Please do reach out to organisations you work with and use the site to find new partners who you think might be able to help you. You never know what might result from a serendipitous conversation on  the website.
  • Spread the word: Please tell other digital social innovators about the website and encourage them to sign up. From Meet-ups to conferences and online communities, this  community is huge.
  • Provide  feedback: about the site.

To find out more about the types of projects showcased on this site and the blog post in full  – click here . A great way to start developing collaborations and identfying ways in which your research could influence policy and generate impact in the future.