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Nine Dots Prize – a new prize for creative thinking in the social sciences

Funding opportunities

nine-dot-prizeFriday saw the launch of the Nine Dots Prize – a new prize for creative thinking in the social sciences. It is sponsored by the Kadas Prize Foundation and supported by CRASSH at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Press.

The Prize will be awarded to the best response to its inaugural question: “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?” Applicants are asked to respond in 3,000 words. The Prize will be judged anonymously by its Board of 12 distinguished academics, journalists, authors and thinkers. The winner will receive $100,000 to support them in writing up a short book based on their response. They have the opportunity to spend a term as Visiting Fellow at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge and the book will be published by Cambridge University Press in an open access format. More details can be found at their website or via twitter @ninedotsprize, including closing and decision dates, and how to submit.

The Guardian have written the following article, which puts the prize in context.

New projects in the Student Project Bank

Student Engagement

There are new projects in the Student Project Bank! Projects are available to all undergraduate and postgraduate students at BU and can be used for their dissertation, assignment, unit or group work. Members of staff may also choose a project to set to their students.

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New projects are below, these will be added to the list of available projects on the website today.

SPB012: Promotional video for The Grove Hotel, part of Macmillan Caring Locally

Suitable for:                 Undergraduate/ postgraduate

Brief description:         Create a 2-3 minute video capturing the people The Grove Hotel supports and promoting the idea of a holiday for people with life limiting conditions that is light hearted and fun.  The Grove Hotel is part of Macmillan Caring Locally, a local charity whose objectives are the relief of cancer and life limiting conditions.

 SPB013: Marketing strategy for The Grove Hotel, part of Macmillan Caring Locally

Suitable for:                 Undergraduate/ postgraduate

Brief description:         Create a marketing strategy for The Grove Hotel that will promote their services to a wider audience in order to attract a broader customer base and increase the potential for repeat visits.

 SPB014: Plan and deliver an event for The Pantry Partnership to raise awareness of their work

Suitable for:                 Undergraduate/ postgraduate

Brief description:         Plan and run an event for The Pantry Partnership to help them raise awareness in the local community of their work and to secure a permanent venue. The Pantry Partnership uses food to create social momentum, helping people out of food poverty, enhancing life skills and reducing social isolation.

 SPB015: Annual report animated showreel for Bournemouth 2026 Trust

Suitable for:                 Undergraduate/ postgraduate

Brief description:         Create an animated showreel of less than four minutes in length presenting key information from the Trust’s annual report. This project has a short turnaround time and the film is required for the Trust’s Annual General Meeting on 23rd November.

 SPB016: Design and implement a marketing strategy for The Fusion Café juice bar

Suitable for:                 Undergraduate/ postgraduate

Brief description:         Design and implement a marketing strategy for The Fusion Café juice bar on the third floor of the Fusion Building that will raise awareness of the café and increase the number of customers.

Apply now

If you would like to find out more and apply for one of the above projects, send us an email to request a project brief and an application form.

Community organisations

Do you have an idea that could benefit the community or society but need some help to make it a relaity? The Student Project Bank is still open for project proposals from community organisations, charities, not-for-profits and corporate partners. Find out more and download a proposal form on our page for external organisations.

Event: The Game Changer: Reloaded

Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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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.

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 for some hints and tips that you can put into practice.

The ‘Knitted midwife project’: a political statement

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At the Royal College of Midwives conference in Harrogate over the 19th and 20th October a strange ‘art’ installation appeared formed of, in the region of, 500 knit and crochet midwives. The purpose of the display was to highlight the current shortage of midwives throughout the UK and started as a light hearted conversation on twitter between Dr Jenny Hall from the midwifery team in Bournemouth University and midwifery lecturer Lindsay Hobbs in the University of Bradford. (More information is here https://knittedmidwife.wordpress.com/)

When the conversation took place the statistics showing the number of midwives required was 2600 (by the time the project had commenced it had risen to 3500). To highlight the situation, the @knittedmidwife was born, encouraging midwives and others to ‘knit a midwife’ to solve the problem in time for the RCM conference. Instructions for a simple pattern were placed on a blog and participants were encouraged to create their own clothes. The campaign caused some amusement and inspiration with non-knitters persuading friends and family to knit one for them. Some midwife teams had ‘knit-evenings’. They arrived in batches from as far afield as Texas and Germany. The display at the conference was well received but the knowledge that the number presented was only 500 of the 3500 missing midwives gave impact. A final twist was that each was sold in aid of the RCM benevolent fund; midwives being sold to aid other midwives.

As an adjunct to the project the ‘knitters’ were asked to send with their midwife a message as to why they had done so. At the conference itself questionnaires were also present to inquire about the impact of the display. This ‘knitted midwife’ project will therefore live on as the lecturers mentioned will now be evaluating the messages and questionnaires.

And here is the mini-me midwfery lecturer, complete with pinards stethescope and tablet computer….. More will follow as the project develops.

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Deadline for applications 9am Monday 24th October: funds to support global staff mobility

Global staff mobility – including training, teaching, research or networking – brings huge value to BU and our students, whilst offering invaluable personal career experience.

We are pleased to announce that staff can apply for funds to support these activities through Erasmus and Santander, under the revised Staff Mobility scheme.

Erasmus

Erasmus funds are a great way to build networks and gain experience.

Erasmus staff mobility funds can be used to support travel, accommodation and other costs of academic and professional support staff attending training at an organisation or institution in Europe. It can also be used for academic staff wishing to teach at a European university.

There’s more information and guidance in the application form, including: Funding amounts; duration of visits; priority institutions.

Santander

Santander staff mobility funding can be used to support travel, accommodation and other costs for staff wishing to develop research, education and professional practice projects. This fund is ideal to support academic staff travelling to an international university in order to develop a collaborative relationship.

More information, including advice and how to apply, can be found on this dedicated webpage.

The deadline for applications is 9am on Monday 24th October 2016.

Student Research Assistantship – Applications closing 24th October

Student Engagement, student research

The Student Research Assistantship (SRA) programme is closing for academic applications on Monday 24th October.

 

Each academic application will be marked against the following criteria:

  • Student-centred
  • Co-creation and co-production
  • Fusion
  • External engagement
  • Impact
  • Cross-Faculty

We are currently inviting academic applications for the semester-based programme – if you would like to apply for the summer programme now, please do note that in your application.

Semester-based programme

This placement is for successful students to work for 15 hours a week for a total of eight weeks between 16th January 2017 and 7th April 2017. This programme will have the capacity for approximately 45 placements.

The SRA programme is coordinated via RKEO and the Faculties.

Academics will apply for the funding via an application form. A Faculty based panel will review all staff applications and decide which applications to continue to the student recruitment stage of the scheme.  The application deadline for this round is 24th October 2016.

 If you have any queries, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP and Student Projects) –  sra@bournemouth.ac.uk

Do you or a colleague think you have a solution to an environmental problem?

Knowledge Exchange

The Royal Society Of Edinburgh Logo NERC has agreed to support up to five new Enterprise Fellowships to boost the development of new businesses from investments in environmental research.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Enterprise Fellowship scheme provides support to researchers and innovators who have promising business ideas.

The programme, delivered by the RSE with support from BBSRC, NERC, STFC and Scottish Enterprise, allows fellows to focus solely on developing their business idea. They receive one year’s salary, expert business training, business development funding and access to mentors from a pool of successful individuals in the commercial community.

The next call for applications is now open, closing on 9 November 2016.

More information, including eligibility and how to apply, is available on the RSE website.

Horizon 2020 funding for digital health and tourism

Over the next decades, the number of the elderly people is expected to grow faster, which is projected to more than double its size, reaching nearly 2.1 billion in 2050 from 901 million in 2015. The ageing population has been one of important global challenges, which leads to health, social and quality of life issues to be concerned for society in the coming decades.

The recent 2.2 million Euro project, CHARMED (Characterisation of a green microenvironment and to study its impact upon health and well-being in the elderly as a way forward for health tourism), funded under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme aims to address the above challenges. The BU team headed by Dr Shuang Cang has an international reputation in the emerging digital health and digital tourism area. For example, one of recent papers published by Dr Cang has received about 100 citations in a short time. Digital technology is transforming healthcare, tourism and other industry sectors. There is a need for interdisciplinary teams at local, national and international levels to collaborate in order to realise potential. BU is one of the front runners in this emerging industry revolution. The BU team in this project including active researchers from three faculties has multidisciplinary knowledge which covers pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, multivariance statistics and quantitative analysis (Dr Shuang Cang, FM); digital and mobile technology (Prof Hongnian Yu, SciTech); community healthcare (Dr Carol Clark, HSS); environmental geology and ecosystem services (Prof Adrian Newton, SciTech); collaborative communities and collaborative travel (Prof Janet Dickinson, FM); hospitality management (Dr Viachaslau Filimonau, FM); and four PhD researchers who are researching in the related area.

The CHARMED’s goal is to innovate a solution to the consequential health, social and quality of life issues that result from the demographic change in Europe where the average age of the population will rise. The project is to create an innovative social-economic infrastructure based around health tourism and ecosystems and elevating the well-being through social and therapeutic horticulture. The proposed approach has the unique potential to address environmental, social, cultural and economic factors, which all have an impact on individual and population health and well-being. The CHARMED project will

  1. derive cross-disciplinary and inter-sectorial knowledge of how to improve physical and mental well-being in the elderly
  2. characterise the environmental geology of a selected exemplar site and to correlate the identified features with improvements in health, well-being and recovery
  3. train a new generation of specialists in the sector of recreation and health for the tourism industry
  4. train specialists in social and therapeutic horticulture as a way to improve physical and mental health
  5. create a model for health tourism
  6. and produce a business plan with an economic impact analysis.

The project will not only create the new digital health tourism service for the elderly, but will also generate new jobs in this emerging sector.

The CHARMED project fits in the BU innovation themes of digital and creative industries, health and wellbeing, and leisure, recreation and tourism very well and will contribute and promote the BU international reputation and research capacity in this important emerging sector. The project is an excellent exemplar in fulfilling the BU FUSION vision and providing essential synergy between education, research and professional engagement as below

  1. Initiating and developing the new courses and education programmes in the emerging areas such as digital health, digital tourism, health tourism
  2. Contributing in achieving strong and improved performance in REF2020 through publications, patents, external research incomes and international activities
  3. Promoting and strengthening Global Engagement for BU staff and students
  4. Creating a vibrant knowledge exchange community of students, staff and other business and organisational stakeholders through the project planned mobility between cross sectors (academic & industry partnership)
  5. Enhancing the student experience and training the early-stage researchers through the planned project mobility, workshops, seminars, etc.
  6. Enhancing the students and early-stage researchers’ employment capacity through this research mobility programme.

‘Meet the Entrepreneur’

The Business School and BU Centre for Entrepreneurship were delighted to hold the first of the 2016/17 series of ‘Meet the Entrepreneur’ events at the EBC on Wednesday 19th October at the EBC.

Open to BU students and staff, these seminars are a great opportunity to hear the personal journey of a profiled entrepreneur and learn more about their experiences as a business owner and their approach to founding and growing an innovative business.

Entrepreneur Rupert Holloway, Founder of Conker Spirit, kicked off the series with a fascinating insight into how he approached turning a vision to create Dorset’s first independent gin distiller into a reality.

Beginning the journey only 2 years ago, after losing the love of his career as a chartered surveyor, Rupert had the lightbulb moment of producing a beautifully crafted spirit representative of the Dorset landscape. Refining the flavours and teaching himself the tools of his trade, Rupert arrived at a product that rivals the best in the industry.

Mark Painter, Business Development Manager for the Faculty of Management, said, ‘it was really great to start this series of seminars with such an interesting and thought provoking presentation’. Mark added, ‘Rupert’s story is all about being proactive, seizing opportunities and, as Rupert described it, ‘leaning into’ challenges to avoid falling over’.

The next seminar in this series will be held on Friday 25th November at Talbot Campus and will profile Paul Tansey, Founder and MD of Intergage. For more information and to book your place follow the link to: www.bucfe.com/events

 

A Cloud Based Intelligent Safety Transport Framework for Schools

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.mano

 

Speaker: Manoharan Ramachandran (PhD student within the Creative Technology Department).

 

Title:     A Cloud Based Intelligent Safety Transport Framework for Schools

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 26th October 2016

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Safety in school transportation systems is a critical issue which involves children who are the most vulnerable users of them. Statistics show that in Great Britain (GB) alone 1191 children were injured in 371 coach crashes between 2005 and 2015. Though coach journeys are considered as the safest mode of transport for children, the coach accidents are the one which resulted in a high number of fatalities per accident. England has more than 25000 schools and each school at least make 2 trips per year which is equivalent to 50000+ trips made every year. Schools rely on coach operators to provide vehicles for school trips and home to school services. In the last eight months alone (Jan – Sept 2016), 102 coach operators’ licenses have been revoked without public inquiry in England due to operator’s non compliance. Around 8.3 million pupils are enrolled in England schools. There are no specific safety models available to ensure the safety of children who travelling through coaches. Parents have to spend a considerable amount of time on the streets and making phone calls seeking information about the coach whilst waiting for it, due to the unpredictable nature of the traffic, particularly during the winter months. Proper selection of coach operator, vehicle and real time vehicle tracking & monitoring can considerably mitigate safety risks and the problems of school transport. Most of the existing literature so far has focused on the economy and the shortest routes to transport children, but they do not consider the safety aspects of the coach operator, vehicle and the driver. In this research, two case studies have been conducted in four sectors of stakeholders to identify their problems and needs in school transportation. The outcome will be discussed at this seminar.

 

 

We hope to see you there.