At BU we promote and celebrate the work done to engage public audiences with our research. The Public Engagement with Research team in Research Development and Support can help promote your event to relevant audiences through our monthly newsletters and via our social media channels.
To be considered for inclusion, your event or activity must be;
Focused on BU research, either solely or as part of a wider programme. Events or activities that do not involve BU research, such as marketing or recruitment events, will not be accepted.
Intended for and open to non-academic audiences, either entirely or as a portion of the audience.
Submitted, at the latest, in the first two weeks of the month preceding the event. For example, an event taking place in June should be submitted via the form any time before 14 May.
Event descriptions may be edited for consistency in style with other content.
Dr Ellie Jennings and Dr Alice Hunter write for The Conversation about the problems that can occur when young people are treated as athletes rather than children…
The problem with seeing young sportspeople as athletes first, children second
A recent report commissioned by Swim England, the national governing body for swimming in England, has found evidence of a “culture of fear” in swimming clubs. The report finds that children involved in competitive swimming can be treated like professional athletes, and the importance of sporting performance held above all else.
Sport can be a positive influence on young people’s wellbeing. Children are encouraged to participate in sport, and the aspiration to become an elite athlete is widely seen as an admirable goal.
Many children will find competitive sport enjoyable and rewarding. But problems can occur when the athletic identity of a young person overshadows their identity as a child. There is a risk that clubs, coaches and parents may treat young people as athletes rather than as children. And this can take place at all levels of sport, from children taking part in sports like swimming at local clubs to those who compete at the highest level.
One participant in the Swim England report said that a focus on swimming performance led to their social and academic life suffering, and that they would frequently push themselves in training to the point of vomiting or collapse to please their coach. “The way in which the sport is delivered to children and hiding under the label of ‘high performance athletes’ is driving people away from the sport they once loved,” they said.
“We’re not here to have fun, we’re here to win!” one parent told a researcher for the Swim England report.
A focus on sporting success above all can compromise children’s wellbeing and safety. Young people may be exposed to environments that are highly pressurised, psychologically demanding and often tolerant of abuse.
Certain practices that take place in youth sports, such as coaches and parents screaming on the sidelines, that would be considered unacceptable in other settings. A teacher would be unable to behave like this towards their charges in a school setting, for instance.
In football academies, child athletes are potential future stars – and money spinners. A business mindset shifts the focus from nurturing children to moulding them into “assets” for potential profit.
Treating children like products rather than unique individuals with their own childhood experiences overshadows children’s vital developmental needs.
Accelerated adulthoods
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp recently spoke about the need to protect young football players, including from media attention, as academy youth players made their debut in senior-level games. “But from tomorrow, leave the boys in the corner, please. And don’t ask: ‘Where are they now? Where are they now? Where are they now?’” he told reporters after Liverpool’s FA cup win over Southampton.
Darts player Luke Littler competed in the World Darts Championships and other major darts tournaments at the age of 16. Littler has received intense levels of public scrutiny that extended beyond the reaches of sport: his private life, including his relationship status, has made headlines.
Attention on the personal life of a minor rushes them towards adulthood but also shows a lack of respect for the privacy of young athletes: a significant safeguarding concern.
Children’s names have even been included in reports about doping. Kamila Valieva, a Russian figure skater, experienced the unwelcome publicity of having her positive test revealed at the age of just 15, causing controversy at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Children have the right to be protected from all forms of harm in sport. This extends to their right to participate in sports within a safe and enjoyable environment. There are evidently distinct challenges that arise when young people compete in elite and often adult-dominated sporting spaces.
The abuse of children in sports is a concern at both community and elite levels. It is essential to address these concerns to ensure that the pursuit of athletic excellence does not come at the cost of the fundamental rights and safety of young people.
When children are treated solely as athletes, the excitement around their potential means that the fact that they are still minors may be forgotten. They must be recognised as children first, especially when their performance in elite sports takes place prior to reaching adulthood.
It is the moral obligation of all adults involved in sport to develop an approach that keeps children in sport safe, even when they are classed as elite athletes.
Congratulations to Drs. Louise Oliver and Orlanda Harvey who had their latest article published in the British Association of Social Workers magazine. The article is titled: The seven-eyed social worker: a tool for critical self-reflection”. This article is about how a supervision model, developed by Hawkins and Shohet, which focuses upon the relationship between the service user/client and the social worker. The two BU academics noted that “This model supports critical reflection, delving into the use of self when working with others. It promotes professional curiosity, which is at the heart of critical reflection”. This gives an alternative lens and approach to social work practice.
BU partners with University of Southampton for second year!
The 22nd annual Festival of Social Science takes place this year 19th October – 9th November, with the theme of ‘Our Digital Lives’. This national festival offers the chance to create an inspiring event which enables you to connect your research in a creative and engaging way with a broad public audience.
For the second year, BU is partnering with the University of Southampton (UoS) and we are particularly keen to hear from researchers who have already established collaborations with UoS colleagues and may wish to run a joint event. This collaboration enables us to run an extended programme of events, broadening our impact reach and expanding our networks across Dorset and Hampshire.
Funding of up to £1,000 per event is available, and BU’s Public Engagement with Research (PER) team offers continuing advice and support on all areas of event development, planning, delivery and evaluation. The deadline for applications is Thursday 16th May 2024.
Find out how to apply at this online information session and hear from BU and UoS about previous festival events. The session will be delivered by BU’s PER team and the Impact Funding Team from UoS.
We want to provide small amounts of funding (up to £500) to help researchers develop and incorporate meaningful, two-way engagement with beneficiaries and research users. The aim is to help support a more engaged research culture across BU and accelerate the impact arising from research.
Who can apply?
The scheme is open to researchers at all career stages, whether or not they have previous public engagement experience.
What are we looking for?
We would like to fund engagement activity that addresses any/all of the following:
reaches a new audience or community, or
tests a pilot activity to evaluate what works, with the aim of developing impact from existing research or securing further external funding, or
develops your own engagement skills and understanding of the value of public engagement with research.
The reviewing panel assesses applications on a rolling basis and aims to respond within one week. The latest we can accept applications for this academic year is 28th June and the application form will no longer be accessible after that date.
Support & information
The relevant staff in the Research Excellence Team will provide support to deliver activities and will manage funds centrally. All activity and spend will need to be completed before 31 July 2024.
(Please note that this funding will not be awarded for attending conferences or networking events where the engagement with stakeholders is speculative.)
RDS Academic & Researcher Induction – Weds 27th March
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
The induction day will be interactive and give you the opportunity to meet your faculty-facing RDS support, as well as those responsible for strategy, outputs, ethics, impact, public engagement and knowledge exchange. The videos will provide:
An overview of research at BU and how RDS can help/support academic staff
The importance of horizon-scanning, signposting relevant internal and external funding opportunities and clarifying the applications process
How to manage an awarded project and the BU processes
How to develop internal and external research networks
Key points on research ethics and developing research outputs
Book your place here under ‘RDS Academic & Researcher Induction 27/03/2024’ in the drop-down menu.
On the 6th March 2024, Bournemouth University hosted a Violence Against Women and Girls Summit.
Background: Drs Louise Oliver and Orlanda Harvey (Senior Lecturers in Social Work, Bournemouth University) in partnership with Soroptimist International Bournemouth and the BCP Community Safety Partnership ran a conference last year on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). A reoccurring conversation at the conference was: what next? How do we stop VAWG happening again?
The need to challenge culture led to the team getting together with the addition of Dorset Womens CIC and the charity Acts Fast, to organise the Summit with the intention of bringing together a range of key decision makers form across all those organisations that are on the frontline, working to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls.
The Summit:
The keynote speakers were Superintendent Emma Sweetzer and Dr Kari Davies. Emma emphasized that her role “involves challenging stereotypes and changing a culture from within the force out to the wider public” and her speech was a call to action and Kari presented her research in this area focusing on the barriers and challenges to police and Crown Prosecution Services joint working on rape and serious sexual offence cases.
The summit delegates were regional professionals who work in different areas, under the umbrella of Violence Against Women and Girls, including police, social services, policy makers and managers of charities and researchers. The summit conversations focused on finding solutions to challenging the culture surrounding violence and abuse, and through bringing people together, to think together, and start to develop new suggestions and challenge the issue head on. How to change culture, with a focus on the need to start early and focus on education was at the heart of the discussions.
ABSTRACT Metaverse is expected to deeply affect the travel and tourism industry and requires a dearth of empirical research. In this investigation, two exploratory qualitative research studies were conducted to fill this gap. The first research explored the potential impacts of Metaverse on the travel and tourism industry by interviewing tourism academics. Findings revealed that Metaverse could be used for marketing, CRM, and HRM by hospitality organisations, while it would be useful for marketing and sustainability of destinations. It could also influence tourist behaviour before, during, and after travel experiences. One of the notable findings was related to the close relationship between Gen Z and virtual events. The second research identified the motivations of Gen Z individuals to attend a concert organised in Metaverse. Accordingly, novelty-seeking, escape, fun and excitement, and socialisation were the most significant push factors to use Metaverse. Metaverse-specific characteristics, accessibility, and availability were the important pull factors to attend a Metaverse concert.
“The most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state”, is how Margaret Thatcher described Friedrich von Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom. Published in March 1944 during the Austrian economist’s tenure at the London School of Economics (LSE), the book has been enduringly popular among free-market liberals.
Among its admirers was Winston Churchill, who as prime minister released 1.6 tons of precious war-rationed British government paper to allow additional copies to be printed. More recently Elon Musk tweeted a photo of The Road to Serfdom with the caption “Great Book by Hayek” to his 174 million followers, no doubt bringing Hayek’s work to a new generation.
On the other hand, the Austrian is often seen by the left as an intellectual bogeyman, an enabler of unfettered greed, minimal social responsibility and soaring inequality.
So who was Hayek and why does The Road to Serfdom matter?
How laissez-faire fell out of favour
Born into an upper middle-class Vienna family in 1899, Hayek earned doctorates in law (1921) and political science (1923) at the city’s university. He first made a name for himself in economics in 1928, publishing a report for his research institute employer that predicted the Wall Street crash of 1929 (some critics argue that his achievement gets exaggerated).
Hayek spent 18 years at the LSE (1932-1950), before moving to the University of Chicago (1950-1962). There he worked alongside Milton Friedman, another seminal advocate for free-market principles.
These views were profoundly unfashionable at the time. The social democrat consensus had been shaped by the “robber barron” period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Key industries such as rail and oil had been dominated by cartels and monopolies, leading to massive wealth inequalities.
Then came the Wall Street crash and great depression, prompting a loss of confidence in economists and economic reasoning. Free-market capitalism took much of the blame. Socialism was offered as a realistic and even desirable alternative.
Prominent colleagues of Hayek’s at the LSE, including political scientist Harold Laski and sociologist Karl Mannheim, believed socialist planning was inevitable in the UK. The Labour party explicitly warned in a 1942 pamphlet against a “return to the unplanned competitive world of the inter-war years, in which a privileged few were maintained at the expense of the common good”.
Hayek disagreed. He thought this wave of popular “collectivism” would lead to a repressive regime akin to Nazi Germany.
In The Road to Serfdom, he accepted the need to move beyond the laissez-faire approach of classical economics. But he argued in favour of “planning for competition” rather than the socialists’ “planning against competition” approach. He opposed the state being the sole provider of goods and services, but did think it had a role in facilitating a competitive environment.
In a central theme of the book, Hayek described the difficulties that democratic decision-making would face under central planning. He believed it would lead to policy gridlock and present opportunities for unscrupulous characters to become the key decision-makers.
Hayek’s goal was to show that the British intelligentsia was getting it wrong. Socialist planning, he believed, would see citizens returned to the types of limited freedoms endured by serfs under feudalism.
Hayek and conservatism
The Road was especially popular in the US. This was helped by Reader’s Digest publishing a shortened edition in 1945, introducing Hayek to a non-academic audience of some 9 million households. He was seized upon by conservatives opposing Franklin D Roosevelt’s interventionist New Deal, who feared for the loss of personal freedoms and a drift to totalitarianism.
However, Hayek was concerned his ideas had been oversimplified and misinterpreted. He warned of “the very dangerous tendency of using the term ‘socialism’ for almost any kind of state which you think is silly or you do not like”. By the mid-1950s he had distanced himself from American and European conservatives.
Ultimately, though, after the second world war most western countries adopted a more Keynesian approach. Named after Hayek’s greatest intellectual rival, John Maynard Keynes, this involved using government spending to influence things like employment and economic growth.
Hayek’s work, meanwhile, was mostly ignored until the 1970s, a period during which the UK became mired in stagflation and industrial action. He then became the inspiration for Margaret Thatcher’s policy mix of deregulation, privatisation, lower taxes and a bonfire on state controls of the economy. With the US also facing domestic economic challenges, the then US president, Ronald Reagan, followed suit.
What the critics say
If that was perhaps peak Hayek, he has been heavily criticised from some quarters in recent years. The American economist John Komlos, in his 2016 paper, Another Road to Serfdom, convincingly argues:
Hayek failed to see that any concentration of power is a threat to freedom. The free market that he advocated enabled the concentration of power in the hands of a powerful elite.
Such over-concentration had created the “too big to fail” environment in the financial sector in the run-up the global financial crisis of 2008, and many thought Hayekian deregulation was the culprit.
More recently, the tax-cutting economic policies during Liz Truss’s short stint as UK prime minister were incubated by think tanks who regard themselves as the keepers of the Hayekian flame. Similarly, Argentinian president Javier Milei’s libertarian vision of a minimalist state is said to be influenced by Hayek.
Equally, however, it is easy to fall into that trap of oversimplifying Hayek. It is worth noting, for instance, that in the Road, he also envisaged a substantial role for the state. He saw the state providing a basic minimum income for all. He also argued that “an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition”.
Even Keynes congratulated him on his publication, saying, “morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it”.
In short, while it’s probably fair to say that the world has had to suffer the flaws in Hayek’s ideas, it is important to separate him from his supporters. He was certainly no statist, but his vision for how best to run an economy was not as uncompromising as many would have us believe.
One of the most experienced public engagement trainers in the UK, Dr Jamie Gallagher, is coming to BU to deliver two training sessions on how to evaluate your public engagement activity.
These in-person workshops will highlight how to demonstrate success for funders, record impact, help you improve your processes and give you a better understanding of the people you are connecting with.
Workshop 1 guides you through the best evaluation processes, showing you when, why and how to use evaluation to provide clear, reliable data.
Workshop 2 builds on the learning, taking a more in-depth look at developing evaluation plans for even the most complex topics. You will explore data capture, analysis and reporting and also learn how to write evaluation reports for funders or the REF.
Book on Evaluation of Engagementhereand Advanced Evaluationhere, selecting the appropriate session from the drop down menu. NOTE: This is a two-day evaluation training workshop. Although you can choose to do either of the workshops, we highly recommend you do both – you need to sign up for them separately.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided at both sessions.
Today we received a copy of the book Appreciating Health and Care in the post. This book has a sub-title ‘A practical appreciative inquiry resource for the health and social care sector’ and refers to the work led by Bournemouth University’s Dr. Rachel Arnold. Appreciative Inquiry values people’s expertise and vision and can motivate people to see the world differently and instigate positive change. Rachel been the lead author on several publications around Appreciative Inquiry [1-3].
Bournemouth University (BU) collaborates with the Bournemouth Christchurch Poole (BCP) Council and Cambridge University on modeling traffic congestion propagation. The work, conducted by Dr. Wei Koong Chai and Ph.D. Candidate Assemgul Kozhabek from BU advocates the use of epidemic theory to model the spreading of traffic congestion in cities.
The team proposes a modified Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model that considers the road network structure for a more accurate representation of congestion spreading. Through an N-intertwined modeling framework and analysis using real-world traffic datasets from California and Los Angeles, the study demonstrates improved agreement with actual congestion conditions. The findings offer valuable insights for developing effective traffic congestion mitigation strategies.
Reference:
A. Kozhabek, W. K. Chai and G. Zheng, “Modeling Traffic Congestion Spreading Using a Topology-Based SIR Epidemic Model,” in IEEE Access, vol. 12, pp. 35813-35826, 2024, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3370474.
A recent paper looks at the difficulty and conflict that ECRs experience around achieving impact outside academia – something that they feel passionate about – while meeting more traditional and narrow ideas of ‘research excellence’ in academia.
The paper also looks at ‘publish or perish’ pressures, confidence and imposter syndrome in presenting your research as an ECR, and how focusing on impact can affect careers.
Drs. Pramod Regmi and Nirmal Aryal in the Department of Nursing Sciences published a new paper with colleagues from Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines in PLoS ONE under the title ‘Assessing the basic knowledge and awareness of dengue fever prevention among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia’. [1] Globally, 390 million dengue virus infections occur per year. In Malaysia, migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to Dengue Fever (DF) due to mosquito breeding sites exposure and poor health literacy. This study reports on assessing the current Dengue Fever knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP). The paper identifies strategies to promote awareness around Dengue Fever among migrant workers in Malaysia. Most respondents were male, working in the services industry, had completed high school, aged between 30–39 years and with less than ten years work experience in Malaysia. Overall, respondents’ knowledge was positively correlated with attitude but negatively with practices. Older respondents, who had completed higher education, obtained higher knowledge scores. Similarly, those with working experience of >20 years in Malaysia obtained higher attitude scores. Respondents with a previous history of Dengue Fever strongly considered the removal of mosquito breeding sites as their own responsibility, hence tended to frequently apply preventive measures. Respondents’ knowledge was also positively correlated to their understanding of Dengue Fever information sourced from social media platforms.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
Chaudhary MN, Lim V-C, Faller EM, Regmi P, Aryal N, Mohd Zain SN, Azman AS, Sahimin B. (2024) Assessing the basic knowledge and awareness of dengue fever prevention among migrant workers in Klang Valley, Malaysia. PLoS ONE 19(2): e0297527. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297527
Are you a social sciences researcher looking for a high-profile opportunity to put on a public engagement event as part of a national festival?
Would you like the chance to receive up to £1,000 funding for your project?
We will shortly be opening the call for applications to take part in this year’s ESRC Festival of Social Science, which runs from 19th October to 9th November, under the theme ‘Our Digital Lives’.
Key dates:
17 April, 11:00-12:00: online information session for potential applicants (platform TBC)
16 May: deadline for applications
For the second year, BU is partnering with the University of Southampton (UoS) and we are particularly keen to hear from researchers who have already established collaborations with UoS colleagues and may wish to run a joint event.
The festival and our partnership with UoS offers the chance to create an inspiring event which enables you to connect your research in a highly-accessible and engaging way with a broad public audience.
At this stage, we encourage you to familiarise yourself with the ESRC requirements for the festival, and get in touch with any colleagues at UoS who may be interested in running a joint event.
You can also contact the PER Team in RDS to discuss your idea.
March’s webinar welcomes Space Youth Project. Space Youth Project aims to support young people who are or may be LGBT+ and empower them to have positive self-esteem, know they are supported, have a sense of community and to overcome issues caused or intensified by prejudice in order to facilitate freedom of expression.
The team at Space Youth Project are keen to share their amazing work and explore ideas for research collaboration around trans identities and neurodivergence and the need for specific LGBT+ groups.
Community voices is a collaboration between BU PIER partnership and Centre for Seldom Heard Voices to provide a platform and a voice to local community activists.
The BU Research Staff Association (RSA) is a forum to promote research culture at BU. Research staff from across BU are encouraged to attend, to network with others researchers, disseminate their work, discuss career opportunities, hear updates on how BU is implementing the Research Concordat, and give feedback or raise concerns that will help to develop and support the research community at BU.
We are looking to recruit FST and BUBS Faculty RSA Representatives.
The Faculty RSA reps role is to support the Institutional reps with the running of the BU RSA, attending the Research Concordat Steering Group, and Faculty Research and Professional Practice Committee Meetings, to provide an update on the BU RSA and feedback any comments or concerns.
Eligible research staff are those on research-only contracts – fixed-term or open-ended employment (not PTHP/casual contracts) who have at least one year remaining on their contract at the time of recruitment.
If you are interested in the FST RSA rep or BUBS RSA rep role, please supply a few words to demonstrate your interest and availability in relation to the position. These should be submitted to the RDS Researchdev@bournemouth.ac.uk by 5pm on Thursday 14 March 2024.
Please contact your RSA reps to chat about it if you have any queries.
A reminder that the BU Research Impact, Communications & Engagement sharepoint site contains resources, news and opportunities across the spectrum of connecting external stakeholders and audiences to your research. Unlike the Research Blog, sharepoint sites feature content that’s only visible to BU accounts.
On the site, you will find resources for communicating your research, increasing its impact and engaging the public with your research.
You’ll find links to RKEDF training sessions, guides to impact, public engagement and research communications along with information about useful contacts within RDS and news about the REF.
The site is easily navigable and is divided into three sections:
Research Impact:
This section outlines how we can help you to plan, accelerate and evidence the impact of your research and includes resources, contact details of our Impact Advisers and links to useful information on impact pathways, the REF and impact training.
Public Engagement with Research:
In this section, we explain how we can help when you want to engage with the public to share your research. The ways to do this are many and varied but ultimately, high quality public engagement has huge benefits for BU, for society and for you – the academic. Here you can find links to advice, training and funding along with the contact details of our Public Engagement team and details of how to join the thriving BU Public Engagement Network.
Research Communications:
Here, we offer you support and guidance on the different ways of sharing your research with different audiences. This includes working with the media (including our partnership with The Conversation), writing for the web and using social media.
The site will be updated regularly and has been designed to be as user friendly as possible. Please make sure you bookmark and keep checking back regularly for updates and news.
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