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AHRC Engaging with Government Programme

Training

The AHRC have launched the Engagement with Government Programme, a three day course taking plan in March 2017 to provide researchers with insights in the policy making process and develop appropriate skills.

It is open to ECRs working in any areas of the AHRC’s subject domain.

The course will be held in London, 7th-9th March 2017. The call for applications closes on 7th October.

This is a great opportunity to develop the skills to ensure your research is shaping policy. Further details can be found on the AHRC’s website.

Engaging the social sciences with business

innovation, Knowledge Exchange

esrc logo

A recent report published by the ESRC shows that social scientists are becoming increasingly engaged through their research. This is testament to how the knowledge exchange agenda has become embedded and been embraced. That said, what disciplines are involved varies, as does who they are engaging with. It is also striking, if not entirely unsurprising, that social scientists are more likely to engage with charitable and public sector organisations (49%) than with businesses (30%).

There are, of course, many reasons for this. However, it is important to emphasise that this is not for a lack of relevant insight! Indeed, this raises an important question about how the social sciences can and should engage with businesses to realise the impact of research-based insights. If opportunities for businesses engagement are in the eye of the beholder, then there is a need to make social scientists more aware about the possibilities. If we cannot identify our own value, we cannot expect others to see it.

Engaging with business is not the privileged domain of engineering and the sciences. The challenge, however, is ensuring that the value of the social sciences is not overlooked by businesses, or worse goes unrecognised. The onus, therefore, is on social scientists to demonstrate the relevance of their research to business,  just as they have to charitable and public sector organisations. This is about translation, making research insights accessible where the findings are non-obvious and engaging with businesses to co-produce new knowledge.

Click here to find out more about this research and the academics involved in this area of work.

BU Success in EU Horizon 2020 RISE Collaboration

A six nation collaborative EU bid, led by BU’s Sarah Hean and including Carol Bond, Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Jonathan Parker has been successful in securing funding for a four-year project exploring meaningful, appropriate and effective ways of assisting the rehabilitation of people in prison with mental health problem. Sarah is currently completing her highly successful and prestigious Marie Curie-Sklodowska fellowship at the University of Stavangar, Norway, returning to BU in January 2017.

Reoffending is a problem in Europe and internationally. Offender rehabilitation strategies to reduce reoffending focus on limiting key risk factors (e.g. unemployment, substance misuse) which are so often mediated by the individual’s mental health. Levels of mental health are much higher in the prison population, which therefore limits the effectiveness of rehabilitation strategies.

Professionals in mental health and prison services constantly need to find new solutions to the bespoke needs of each individual offender with a mental health issue. Leaders in these services need to transform current working practices in a process of continuous quality improvement to keep up with the changing needs of the offender population, the development of new technologies and the changing landscape of service provision. However, people who have offended also need to take responsibility for their rehabilitation and play an active role in developing solutions to their own needs and challenges. In other words front line professionals, offenders and leaders need to be innovators.

This project therefore seeks collaborative and effective relational work and knowledge exchange between professionals from mental health, prison services and individual offenders. At present collaboration between prisons and mental health services is limited. New models of interagency working are required in which social innovation and collaboration processes are made explicit. In the fields of developmental work research, practice development and social innovation, there is a range of successful models of collaborative working and innovation that have had positive outcomes in other practice contexts. The methods include the ethnographic ‘change laboratory’ methods in development work research, the Ajkaer model of social innovation and collaboration based on a ‘diamond model’ of innovation already applied to working between prison officers and prisoners, Practice Development Units developed and extensively applied in the field of health and social care organizational change with a national reputation in the UK and competency based educational models focused on developing integration, collaboration and social innovation competences in the workforce. The academic members of the consortium have international reputations in the application of these models and will apply these to the rehabilitation of mentally ill offenders specifically and to the interagency working required between mental health services and prison services exploring which of these models might be most effective in transforming interagency working practices in offender rehabilitation or whether an amalgamation or hybrid model combining the strengths of these might be more appropriate.

Contesting corporate governance – research at BU

Research themes

Prime Minister Theresa May has recently mooted a Germanic-turn for corporate governance in the UK, an echo of a heated debate over the shape of boards of directors in listed companies raging over the past 25 years. By coincidence, BU’s Donald Nordberg, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Management, has been examining the controversies over board design since the Cadbury Code was written in 1992, as investors, corporate chairmen and others wrestled with whether to recommend continuing with unitary boards or follow the German model of dual boards with worker representation. His paper, “Contestation over board design and the development of UK corporate governance,” has just won the prize as Best Paper in Management and Business History at the British Academy of Management conference in Newcastle. Could history be about to repeat itself? The conference paper is at http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/23744/.

Public Health England Physical Activity Tool

downloadPublic Health England has launched a Physical Activity Tool which brings together data at the local level for the whole of England on physical activity, including walking and cycling, as well as data on related risk factors and conditions such as obesity and diabetes. The tool also presents trend data and enables easy comparison of local authority data, allowing users to compare regional neighbours and local authorities with similar characteristics. The tool aims to help promote physical activity, develop understanding, and support benchmarking, commissioning and service improvement.

The data is grouped into three domains:

  • Key indicators – a summary overview of physical activity including a number of key outcomes from the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF).
  • Related conditions – such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and depression. Regular physical activity can reduce the risk of these.
  • Supporting information – population demographics, life expectancy and deprivation.

In addition PHE has also published a data spreadsheet: Physical activity levels among adults in England 2015, available on the PHE Obesity website. It presents physical activity measures (inactive, low activity, some activity and active) and key demographics from the Active People Survey at national, regional, upper and lower tier local authority and County Sports Partnership level.

Read more at: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/physical-activity

Changes to the Research Landscape

The upcoming changes to the research landscape have been in the limelight once again. The Higher Education and Research Bill had its second evidence session on Thursday 8th September which touched on the parts of the Bill that will have implications for research.

The session was joined by Phil Nelson, Research Councils UK; Dr Ruth McKernan CBE, Innovate UK and Professor Ottoline Leyser, The Royal Society. The following points were raised and discussed in the session.

  • UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) will allow for the research councils to be greater together than they are separately
  • It is important to ensure the individual identities of the different research councils are not lost under UKRI
  • How knowledge and research information transfers to government as a whole is crucial- aside from information exchange between research councils.
  • The UKRI is missing an executive committee, the Board will not be able to provide the correct oversight concerning detail and how the organisation will interact with government.  This should be included in the Bill
  • UKRI will help with the business view of research, it will help businesses use the latest knowledge and innovation
  • The Bill does a good job of offering assurances around dual support and the protection of it
  • The UKRI will help with disparities between councils that currently exist
  • The Bill should include more detail around how the Office for Students (OfS) and UKRI will work together, for example with the provision for PGR students. The Bill should precisely outline the involvement that research should have with teaching as a way to help the connection between the OfS and UKRI
  • The focus on interdisciplinary research will help with societal challenges
  • UKRI will also help with ensuring collaboration at a strategic level
  • There are concerns that Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities may be at risk in UKRI. The Bill could do more to protect these areas.
  • If any changes to individual research councils are proposed, they should be consulted on

Additionally, Jo Johnson MP has written to Lord Selborne in response to the Future of Innovate UK inquiry by the Science and Technology Committee. The letter makes the following points

  • Bringing Innovate UK into UKRI will ensure we have the structures in place to exploit the knowledge and expertise we have for the benefit of the whole country
  • Collaborative projects, supported by Innovate UK, with two or more academic partners have twice the economic return compared to those with no academic partners
  • Innovate UK is not, and will not become, the commercialisation arm of the Research Councils
  • We have included multiple safeguards, such as specifying its business-focused mission on the face of the Bill, specifying a board which both balances both research and business interests and which will include a specific innovation champion.

FHSS Seminar Series in Conjunction with Social and Cultural Research Cluster, Bournemouth University

We are incredibly fortunate to have Professor Linda McKie visiting with the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences next week.  As part of her time with us she will present a lunchtime seminar on Wednesday 14th September. Please feel free to bring your lunch and hear from a fantastic speaker. Details for her seminar are outlined below.

Revitalising Spatial and Temporal Frameworks in the Analysis of Unpaid Care and Paid Work Professor Linda McKie Applied Social Sciences from Durham University

Taking place: at 1-2pm in Bournemouth House, Rm B407

 

From Professor Linda McKie,

As the summer of 2016 draws to a close published data has documented the persistence of the gender pay gap for all women with evidence of a deepening gap following maternity leave (Costa Dias et al., 2016). These data generated numerous analyses on segregation and discrimination in education and working life and the many ways in which unpaid care for children, family members and elders remains a dominant factor in everyday gendered inequalities. Little comment was made on women’s crucial role in reproducing generations many of whom will fund future pensions and services through their taxation. These intergenerational reciprocities are generally ignored in favour of the immediate time considerations for employers, workers and families with the need to generate profit, or income and resources for household or business survival.

In this seminar I revisit the analytical frameworks of caringscapes and carescapes. In earlier work, it was asserted that both offer analytical potential to enhance analyses of the temporal and spatial dynamics of caring and working over the lifecourse in different places. Caring, critical to human flourishing and evident in many aspects of women’s lives, is captured in caringscapes. The framework of carescapes explores the relationship between policies and services as determined by employers, the state and capital. Both frameworks are informed by feminist theorising and spatial and temporal perspectives on identifying and analysing how women perceive, engage with, and reflect on, the demands and pleasures of combining informal caring and paid work.

Following the financial crisis of 2008 we are in a long term period of austerity. In this context do these analytical frameworks stand up to further evaluation? As inequalities between regions, social classes, communities and workers deepen, can care ever be centre stage? Given the aims of the centre are to develop social and cultural research my goal is to offer frameworks and issues which colleagues are engaged with in varied ways and likely to develop.

Biography

Linda McKie is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. She graduated from Durham with a Ph.D. in sociology in 1989 and returned in 2012. In the intervening years she has held academic posts at the universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian, researching and teaching in the sociologies of health and illness, gender and work, and research methods and management. In 2004 she was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) and in 2010 appointed a member of the Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF), Sub-panel 23: Sociology. From 2001 she has been an Associate Director at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships and between 2004-2010 Senior Visiting Fellow, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. She has undertaken grant assessment panel work for the Academy of Finland, Greek Government, Irish Research Council and Norwegian Research Council. Peer review work has also been undertaken for various EU panels; COST, Horizon 2020 and Marie Curie. Editorial board membership has included the journals Sociology, Sociology of Health and Illness, and Work, Employment and Society.

The Sensors and Their Applications 2016 conference

Business Engagement, conferences, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

events

The Sensors and Their Applications XVIII (2016) conference will be held on 12th-14th September in London. The Sensors & Applications series of conferences provides an excellent opportunity to bring together scientists and engineers from academia, research institutes and industrial establishments to present and discuss the latest results in the field of sensors, instrumentation and measurement.

ensors and Their Applications XVIII (2016) conference wiill be held on 12th -14th September in London.  The conference is orgnasied by the Institute of Physics Instrument Science and Technology Group. In this year, the Sensors and their Applications conference will also feature an industry session to enable the conference partcipants to showcase the industry and technology transfer activities in sensor related areas.

Invited speakers will give lectures on important recent advances within the symposium, in addition to contributed talks and poster sessions.

Conference Themes

• Optical sensors
• Chemical and gas sensors
• Sensors in biology and medicine
• Advances in sensing materials
• Nanotechnology for sensors and actuators
• Smart sensors and interface electronics
• MEMS and silicon fabrication techniques
• Imaging: integrated actuators
• Thick and thin film sensors
• Sensor modelling
• Sensor packaging and assemblies

For further details on the conference and to register, please go to the event website.

Funding for arts and heritage

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation

money and cogs

As crowdfunding in the UK continues to grow, it is also becoming an increasingly important source of finance for arts and heritage projects. As a result local authorities, institutions, public bodies and foundations have begun to explore what this new form of finance means for the people and organisations they are supporting and how they can work with the crowd on identifying and funding worthy projects.

However, none of the matched funds to date have had a dedicated focus on arts or heritage projects. Linked to this, there has been little research done on the real impact of matched crowdfunding, such as whether or not it has the opportunity to generate more funding for the arts and heritage sector or increase awareness and public participation in supporting and initiating projects.

Crowdfunder is working with Nesta to  launch a matched crowdfunding pilot aimed squarely at the arts and heritage sectors. The pilot will provide two streams of £125,000 in matchfunding to arts and heritage projects that have received backing from the crowd. Nesta is developing the pilot in partnership with Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Crowdfunder will develop the matched crowdfunding platform for the pilot.

To find out more.

Resources for corporate-start up collaboration

Business Engagement, Knowledge Exchange

networking

Download the tools created from research on corporate-start-up collaborations with the Startup Europe Partnership.

As a corporate, why would you consider working with startups? What are the benefits and risks involved? How can programmes be structured in order to engage with them?

And, as a startup, howwould you  approach corporates? What’s the best way to present your  project?

If you have found yourself asking these questions, then the ‘What Works’ online repository is for you.

Find out more.

Innovate 2016 – The Global Spotlight on UK Innovation

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

Innovate 2011v4

Innovate 2016 will be held at Manchester Central on the 2nd – 3rd November 2016.

Take part in the global showcase of UK innovation, hear from global thought-leaders and create real business opportunities at Innovate 2016. Find out about today’s business opportunities and future-looking trends across manufacturing, health, cities of the future and technologies of the future.

Hear from industry-leaders on topics such as:

  • Retaining the edge with disruptive business models
  • Manufacturing: Tackling the productivity gap
  • Implementing resilience in a city of the future
  • Next-generation medicine: The UK as a world leader
  • Emerging technologies revolutionising innovation

View the full agenda.

Inspirational speakers
Hear from top-level inspirational speakers from organisations including:  Siemens, Versarien, Amazon, University of Manchester, Hyperloop One, High Value Manufacturing Catapult and of course Innovate UK CEO Dr Ruth McKernan CBE and Catherine Raines, CEO from the Department for International Trade.
Support zone

Discover the breadth of funding and support for businesses  and meet with the organisations that exist to help business thrive. The Support Zone will be back featuring among others the UK Business Angels Association, British Business Bank, HMRC and Growth Hubs.

Register and find out more.

 

Best paper award for CEL

Dr Debbie Holley and David Biggins presented a paper, co-authored with Dr Marketa Zezulkova and George Evangelinos, at the 3rd EAI International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training (eLEOT) in Dublin between 31st August and 2nd September 2016.  The paper was entitled Digital Competence and Capability Frameworks in the Context of Learning, Self-Development and HE Pedagogy.  The paper was possible through funding granted by the REF Committee as part of Unit of Assessment 25 (Education).

The paper was awarded the conference’s Best Paper Award.

The paper explores and compares the EU digital competence framework with the digital capabilities framework introduced within the UK higher and further education context in 2009 and updated in 2015.  The similarities and differences between the frameworks were explored.  Similarities include the focus on data in the context of privacy and overall literacy, as well as the inclusion in the latest release of both models of wellbeing into the key areas. The main difference between the digital competence and capabilities frameworks is in the former’s neglect of life-long learning and self-development. The paper concludes by arguing for a human-centered approach to digital competence and capability frameworks, in which learning, self-development and wellbeing should play a vital role.

BU’s TEL Toolkit was used as a case study example of how the frameworks can be used to underpin and inform physical implementations of digital solutions that benefit staff and students.   The team’s presentation at the conference acknowledged the creation of the Toolkit was a collaborative project for BU involving LLS, IT and academic staff.  The TEL Toolkit contains help, support and information to allow academic staff to use technology to develop their teaching, promote learning and enhance the student experience.  Since its launch in February 2016 it has been accessed 2,409 times, with 40% of the traffic coming from outside BU.  To access the TEL toolkit please click here.

The team were very pleased to receive this prestigious award.  Their research into frameworks and how TEL can be used to support teaching and learning is continuing.

For further information about the papers delivered at eLEOT 2016, the twitter feed is #eleot2016.

If you would like more information on using TEL in your teaching, please contact David Biggins, TEL Theme Leader.

**New** Intention to Bid Forms & Annexures for Quality Approval

Guidance

bulogo

The Faculties have requested, through the Deputy Deans of Research & Professional Practice (DDRPPs), that RKEO provide support targeted to achieve their research strategies. To aid in this, it has been agreed that, as part of the internal approvals process for bids involving external funding, the following shall become mandatory:

  1. An Intention to Bid (ITB) form must be lodged with RKEO; and
  2. At the time of lodgement, the PI must cc. his/her Head of Research with the ITB Form.

To implement the DDRPPs’ decision, RKEO has taken the opportunity to produce a more easy-to-use, streamlined ITB form to be used across all Faculties, with an Annexure for Quality Approval (A-QA) that is customised for each Faculty.

The ITB form and A-QAs will shortly be uploaded onto the Staff Intranet for download and use.

The RKE Bid Timeline and RKE Sample Costs documents on the same Staff Intranet page will also shortly be updated for reference.

RKEO’s Funding Development Team is available to provide pre-award support and their contact details can be found on the Research Blog. Should you have any difficulty in accessing the documents on the Staff Intranet, please request them from us and we will send you a copy.

Due to various staff movements and other exigencies of the workplace, the original team of Funding Development Officers which previously comprised 4.2 FTE to support the 4 Faculties is currently comprised of 2.4 FTE. For optimal support of your application and to aid in workload management, it is of particular importance that a completed ITB form and A-QA be lodged with RKEO at the earliest opportunity, ideally 3 weeks before the submission deadline.

RKEO Academic and Researcher Induction

Guidance

The Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO) invite all ‘new to BU’ academics and researchers to an induction.

Signpost with the words Help, Support, Advice, Guidance and Assistance on the direction arrows, against a bright blue cloudy sky.This event provides an overview of all the practical information staff need to begin developing their research plans at BU, using both internal and external networks; to develop and disseminate research outcomes; and maximising the available funding opportunities.

Objectives 

  • The primary aim of this event is to raise participants’ awareness of how to get started in research at BU or, for more established staff, how to take their research to the next level
  • To provide participants with essential, practical information and orientation in key stages and processes of research and knowledge exchange at BU

Indicative content

  • An overview of research at BU and how R&KEO can help/support academic staff
  • The importance of horizon-scanning, signposting relevant internal and external funding opportunities and clarifying the applications process
  • How to grow a R&KE portfolio, including academic development schemes
  • How to develop internal and external research networks
  • Key points on research ethics and developing research outputs
  • Getting started with Knowledge Exchange and business engagement

For more information about the event, please see the following link: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/research-lifecycle/developing-your-proposal/

The fifth induction will be held on Tuesday, 18th October 2016 on the 4th floor of Melbury House.

Title Date Time Location
Research & Knowledge Exchange Office (R&KEO) Research Induction Tuesday 18th October 2016 9.00 – 12.00 Lansdowne Campus

9.00-9.15 – Coffee/tea and cake/fruit will be available on arrival

9.15 – RKEO academic induction (with a break at 10.45)

11.25 – Organisational Development upcoming development opportunities

11.30 – Opportunity for one to one interaction with RKEO staff

12.00 – Close

There will also be literature and information packs available.

If you would like to attend the induction then please book your place through Organisational Development and you can also visit their pages here. We will directly contact those who have started at BU in the last five months.

We hope you can make it and look forward to seeing you.

Regards,

The RKEO team

RKEO