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**** Speaker Spotlight **** Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day on 21/6/16


IR21616
BU is hosting a Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day on 21st June 2016, dedicated to exploring the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research.

The Funders’ Perspective will be provided by three speakers:

Charlotte Lester, as Policy Advisor at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) will discuss her role where she manages interdisciplinary research and public engagement with research policy

Dan Licari (Innovate UK / KTN Creative, Digital & Design) will explore industry interactions 

Ben Sharman (EU NCP – Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies) will outline Embedding SSH across Horizon 2020.

Other presentations include:

Key Note address – Dr. Louise Mansfield (Deputy Director of the Brunel Centre for Sport, Health and Wellbeing and member of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing research team)

Supporting Interdisciplinary Working – Prof. Alan Lester and Debbie Foy-Everett (Sussex), Jordan Graham and Ehsan Masood (Research Professional) and Christopher Ferguson (Piirus)

The Academics’ Perspective – Prof. Adele Ladkin (BU), Dr. David Hutchinson (Portsmouth) and Dr. Justine McConnell (TORCH, University of Oxford)

Facilitated networking session – How can I contribute?

Please see the Speaker Biographies for further information on our contributors.

The event will take place in BU’s Executive Business Centre. It will be opened BU’s Professor Michael Wilmore (Executive Dean – Faculty of Media and Communication and the closing remarks will be made by BU’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Vinney. To find out more about BU’s Research, why not register to receive updates from our award winning Research Blog.

Please see the finalised Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day Progamme for more information. Key to the programme, as well as inspirational speakers, there will be plenty of time to network with colleagues and participate in exploring your own relationship with interdisciplinary research.

This event, is free and open to academics and research support staff throughout the UK.

Places are limited, so book now via Eventbrite.

Could Bournemouth be a ‘Green Capital of Europe’?

Business Engagement, Festival of Learning

Our Festival of Learning event (27th June), in partnership with colleagues from Bournemouth Borough Council, will consider this question and explore a vision for developing green talent, sustainable business, and a sustainable city – a virtuous circle!

We shall showcase the leadership role of BU, in relation to sustainable development (education, research, community) and particularly our work to achieve EcoCampus Platinum. We shall also feature the MSc Green Economy – a course which is producing exceptional post-grads who are engaging with amazing projects.

Chris Shephard, Head of Economic Development & Sustainability at Bournemouth Borough Council will provide an update on activities, including the Compact of Mayors, the Earth Charter and work to take sustainability forward. We are already doing a lot locally (the Sustainable Food Partnership and Sustainable Fish City, for example) but are we doing enough of the right things? How do we capture and promote endeavours?

Dr Simon Cripps will talk about natural capital in the context of development planning, both of infrastructure and building, but also of development and growth projects.

Edmund Taylor, Environmental Barrister and Chair of the Sustainable Business Leadership Group (SBLG) will introduce the thinking that led to the formation of the group (we owe thanks to Lee Green), and suggest ways that others might engage. Synergies arise when business leaders work together to share practice and innovation; the group has already catalysed networking and learning.

Following formal presentations, breakout sessions will consider how we build capacity, develop leadership for sustainable development and make a step-change in valuing and contributing to natural capital.  Could we, for example report on natural capital in our Annual Reports? A valuable outcome from the event would be to have a clearer understanding of how we develop a greener economy and work towards branding ourselves as a Sustainable City – gaining the award ‘Green Capital of Europe’ at some point in the future, would be something to be proud of!

Places are free.

To book a place please register at:

https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/festival-of-learning/events/building-a-sustainable-city-how-can-business-leadership-create-a-greener-bournemouth/

Assessing Undergraduate Research Assistants’ Learning through Participatory Methods

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion Investment Fund, student research

This blog post reports on the progress of the CEL-Fusion Funded project Assessing Undergraduate Research Assistants’ Learning through Participatory Methods (AURAL).

The Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) is an institutional programme run by BU’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO), which furnishes academics with the financial means to hire a part-time (spring cohort) or full-time (summer cohort) research assistant who works between 75 and 225 hours on the academics’ research projects. This scheme runs twice a year and this year alone attracted 95 applications from academics with the most diverse projects.

Student researchers plan their diaries' content over pizza and snacks.

Student researchers plan their diaries’ content over pizza and snacks.

Interventions that use a ‘students-as-researchers’ pedagogy, where undergraduate students are involved in research-intensive projects, are increasing in the UK (Walkington, 2015) and internationally (Healey, 2014). BU’s URA programme is an apposite case study given its arrangements of paid research placements, which position the scheme as both research-based and work-based learning. This research contributes to the burgeoning literature on students-as-researchers through its employment of a dialogical participatory research design whereby students actively self-monitor their evolving learning when working on a research project. Through the use of reflective diaries and participatory sessions, students engaged in the process of evaluating the impact of this university-wide scheme.

In this endeavour, RKEO and CEL worked closely to embed the research into the scheme. We matched a participatory planning session for those students taking part in the research with the induction for the entire cohort of URA, so that the timing would be convenient for the majority of them. In addition, the research was run in parallel with their URA placements, and the necessary adjustments were made when students continued working beyond their URA contracts.

The preliminary results of AURAL were reported during CELebrate, through a session that provided a link with other colleagues interested in fostering research-based learning and its university-wide implementation. Twelve students from the spring cohort agreed to take part in the research, but only 7 wrote at least one diary entry and 3 made it to the closing session. All students who agreed to take part are being invited for an in-depth interview, while 17 new participants have been recruited from the summer cohort.

For a flavour of the passages coded under ‘research skills’ gained by participants, see the quotes below:

I learnt how to successfully collect various forms of offline data in order to provide some background data for a study. I have also learnt that the collection process is not a scary as first thought, and confidence and professionalism is key to the collection of good data and a happy participant. The participant feel safe and confident and more willing to participate if you actually look like you know what you’re doing and happy to be doing so (Participant 3, Diary entry 5)

I understood Thematic Analysis a lot better and felt more comfortable doing it now knowing what I was doing (Participant 4, Diary entry 2)

The full results of this scheme will be ready by the end of the summer. Watch this space!

References

Healey, M. (2014). Integrating Undergraduate Research into the Curriculum: International Perspectives on Capstone and Final-year Projects. CUR Quarterly, 34(4), 26-32.
Walkington, H. (2015). Students as researchers: Supporting undergraduate research in the disciplines in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy.

Note: Earlier versions of this text were submitted as part of a number of internal and external applications and presented at CELebrate. The blog post was first published at the CEL Blog, and is reposted here with permission.

Vitae and Researcher Development

student research, Training

Vitae is an organisation set up to promote career development in both postgraduate researchers and academic staff. Their Researcher Development Framework is intended to help people monitor their skills and plan their personal development. At BU we will be using this framework to format the training on offer for the postgraduate research students and academic staff.

The Vitae website is an excellent resource and the organisation regularly runs free training events for researchers, PGRs and those involved in research development. Upcoming events include Vitae Connections: Supporting Open Researchers.

Vitae_RDF_logo_2011The Researcher Development Framework (RDF) is the professional development framework to realise the potential of researchers. The RDF is a tool for planning, promoting and supporting the personal, professional and career development of researchers in higher education. It was designed following interviews with many successful researchers across the sector and articulates the knowledge, behaviours and attributes of a successful researcher.

There is a planner available on the Vitae website to help you assess which stage you are at with your skills and a tutorial providing guidance on how to use the framework.

Top 10 tips from researchers on using the Researcher Development Framework (RDF):

1. You might choose to use the RDF for short term as well as long term development. The RDF can be used in planning for your long term career ambitions but also to make a feasible short term plan. It can be useful to imagine your long term ambitions in order to focus your career path however the reality of progressing through to the higher phases may be more difficult to plan. In the short term, making decisions about how to progress to the next phase or what sub-domains are most important for you will be easier. Try to be realistic when setting these short term goals.

2. Use the RDF to highlight your strengths and areas for development and how these might be used to benefit/influence your personal, professional and career development.

3. Use the RDF to highlight your applicable and transferable skills. This is important for career progression within or outside academia.

4. Prioritise those areas which are most relevant. You don’t have to try to develop in all the areas of the RDF at once. There may be some sub-domains/descriptors where there is less relevance in progressing through the phases for you.

5. Draw on experiences outside of work to evidence your capabilities.

6. Progression to the highest phase in a descriptor will not be applicable to everyone but being aware of the possibilities can aid personal and career development.

7. Talk to others to get their views about your strengths and capabilities. Your supervisor, manager, peers, family and friends are a great source of information to find out more about yourself. Talk to them about how they perceive your capabilities. By understanding how others view you, you will be able to make more informed choices about your future.

8. To move from one phase to the next why not explore attending courses. These courses may be run at a local level (within your University) or may only be run nationally or internationally so awareness of opportunities for training is important. Vitae also run a wide range of courses which address many aspects of personal and career development.

9. Some phases may only be reached through experience and practice however good self-awareness and professional development planning will aid the process.

10. Networking is likely to enable you to reach more experienced phases.

HE & Research Bill

Following on from the blog post after the release of the White Paper, the HE & Research Bill provides both clarification and a bit more insight into what the higher education reforms mean for research.

The bill reiterates the creation of the umbrella body United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) which will include the UK’s seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England. Research England will take over responsibility for HEFCE’s current functions in relation to the allocation of quality-related research funding and knowledge exchange.

The bill also gives away slightly more detail around the reforms and what they mean for research.

  • The Secretary of State may add, omit or change the name of a council although this does not apply for Innovate UK or Research England.
  • The Secretary of State will also be able to change the field of activity associated with each of the councils.
  • The Secretary of State may give UKRI directions about the allocation or expenditure by UKRI of grants received.
  • However the Secretary of State will not be able to give direction in respect of functions exercisable by Research England concerning particular courses of study or programmes of research, or the criteria for the selection and appointment of academic staff and for the admission of students.
  • The last post highlighted the issue of continued dual support. As expected, the bill introduces the “balanced funding principle” which will ensure that a reasonable balance is achieved in the allocation of funding between the 7 councils and Research England.

As part of wider reforms to higher education, the introduction of the new Teaching Excellence Framework has caused the sector to raise concerns around the possible wedge between research and teaching. Although there is a reference in the White Paper ensuring that teaching and research remain coherent and coordinated at the national as well as the institutional level, the HE & Research Bill provides very little clarity apart from the provision that there will be cooperation and information sharing between Office for Students (OfS) and UKRI. The discussions around the distance between research and teaching have not been diluted since the publication of the bill and this area is one to watch over the next coming months. Jane Forster has written for Wonkhe on research and teaching, you can view her blog here.

**** Speaker Spotlight **** Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day on 21/6/16


IR21616
BU is hosting a Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day on 21st June 2016, dedicated to exploring the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research.

The Supporting Interdisciplinary Working Academics’ Perspective will be provided by – Prof. Alan Lester and Debbie Foy-Everett (Sussex), Jordan Graham and Ehsan Masood (Research Professional) and Christopher Ferguson (Piirus).

Prof. Alan Lester and Debbie Foy-Everett will present their talk entitled ‘Opportunities and challenges of managing internal interdisciplinary research initiatives: Sussex Research’. As director of Interdisciplinary Research at Sussex, together with Professional Services counterpart, Debbie Foy-Everett,  Alan leads a unit within tjheir Research and Enterprise division called Sussex Research, which facilitates interdisciplinary and other kinds of research initiative primarily through internally funded schemes of various kinds.

Jordan Graham and Ehsan Masood will outline the services offered by Research Professional in facilitating interdisciplinary research.

Christopher Ferguson, Piirus Social Media Correspondent, will discuss how to ‘connect and collaborate with researchers worldwide’.

Other presentations include:

Key Note address – Dr. Louise Mansfield (Deputy Director of the Brunel Centre for Sport, Health and Wellbeing and member of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing research team)

The Funders’ Perspective – Charlotte Lester (HEFCE), Dan Licari (Innovate UK / KTN Creative, Digital & Design) and Ben Sharman (EU NCP – Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies) Spotlight post to follow.

The Academics’ Perspective – Prof. Adele Ladkin (BU), Dr. David Hutchinson (Portsmouth) and Dr. Justine McConnell (TORCH, University of Oxford)

Facilitated networking session – How can I contribute?

Please see the Speakers’ Biographies for further information on our contributors.

The event will take place in BU’s Executive Business Centre. It will be opened BU’s Professor Michael Wilmore (Executive Dean – Faculty of Media and Communication and  the closing remarks will be made by BU’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Vinney. To find out more about BU’s Research, why not register to receive updates from our award winning Research Blog.

Please see the Provisional Interdisciplinary Research HE Sector Day Schedule for more information. Key to the programme, as well as inspirational speakers, there will be plenty of time to network with colleagues and participate in exploring your own relationship with interdisciplinary research.

This event, is free and open to academics and research support staff throughout the UK.

Places are limited, so book now via Eventbrite.

NCCPE Engage Competition 2016

Knowledge Exchange

The bi-annual NCCPE Engage Competition has launched for 2016, aiming to recognise and reward high quality examples of public engagement with research. The competition first ran in 2014, when 230 entries were received and awarded prizes to some exceptional engagement projects.

This year there are six competition categories, and the winner of each category will receive a prize of £1,500 to go towards further public engagement work at their institution. The winners and runners-up from each category will be celebrated at an awards ceremony as part of Engage 2016, the NCCPE’s annual conference, this year on the 29th and 30th November.

Please follow the link for more details!

BU to host National Undergraduate Research Conference in April 2017

Centre for Excellence in Learning

BCUR17

Bournemouth University is getting ready to host the 7th BCUR (British Conference in Undergraduate Research) on April 25-26 2017. Previous hosts include: University of Central Lancashire (2011), University of Warwick (2012), Plymouth University (2013), University of Nottingham (2014), University of Winchester (2015), and in 2016 Manchester Metropolitan University. BU has had representation at each of these gatherings previously, and is looking forward to hosting in 2017. At the last gathering in Manchester, the faculty of Management, SciTech and HSS all had undergraduate student abstracts accepted, profiling their research by way of poster session or oral presentations.

Two students who participated at the March 2016 conference in Manchester took a lot away from the enhanced learning experience the conference offered.

Manchester postersAaron Wornes, final year international hospitality management student who presented his research on The General Attitudes of Self-Service Technology said “The diversity and level of research that was being presented was enthralling. I felt so proud that I was able to share my interests though my own research. My only regret was that I didn’t hear about BCUR sooner, I can’t wait for Bournemouth to host next year”. Edwin Lewis, a final year Tourism Management student made the following observations, “…it has given me time to reflect not only on my own research and what else I could include, but also the wide variety of undergraduate research that is being studied. The conference really helped me understand how important it is to recognise research projects. I am very excited that BU gets to hold BCUR next year”. Edwin presented his dissertation research on The Impacts of Airline Hubs on the European Aviation Market, A Case Study of the Emirates.

FoM at MMU

The current BU organising committee is taking shape with UET support and is made up of Gail Thomas (CEL), Luciana Esteves, Mary Beth Gouthro (conference co-chairs); representatives from each faculty, ie Maggie Hutchings/Peter Thomas (HSS); Xun He (SciTech); Fiona Cownie (FMC) and Miguel Moital (FoM). Also contributing to the planning are team members from: Marketing Communications, BU Events Team, SUBU and Estates.

Bournemouth Uni is expecting well over 400 delegates to this national research conference next April. It is a great opportunity to showcase the diverse quality of undergraduate research being undertaken at BU and other UK universities in attendance. If you seek further information, please contact any of your faculty colleagues mentioned above or co-chair Mary Beth Gouthro mgouthro@bournemouth.ac.uk.

For more information on BU’s prior involvement in BCUR activities, previous research blog entries can be found below, and follow #BCUR17.

2014:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/04/24/school-of-tourism-undergraduates-highlight-research-at-national-bcur-gathering-2/

2015:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2015/03/02/bu-undergraduate-research-featured-in-houses-of-parliament/

2016:

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2016/02/16/bu-undergraduate-research-on-show-in-parliament/

 

Environmental design specialist Terri Preece visits BUDI!

PG research

Terri Preece Wayfinding Lab resized

In May 2016 environmental design specialist, Terri Preece, from Richard Fleming’s group at the University of Wollongong, Australia, came to visit BUDI and the Wayfinding Lab, following on from a conversation made with PhD Student Mary O’Malley during her Poster session at the ADI 2016 conference. Terri, who consults care-homes and hospitals on how they can be more user friendly for people with dementia was particularly interested in the work BUDI does surrounding designing environments to support orientation, including our eye-tracking (see picture below). PhD student Chris Hilton showed Terri a demo of his virtual reality eye-tracking study which looks at what aspects of the environment people attend to when learning routes, whilst  Mary O’Malley showed Terri her study which investigates how older adults interpret “you-are-here” maps.

Report by Mary O’Malley, PhD Student

BUDI presents at “Sensing the Place” event in London

PG research

Mary persensing sessing (1)

As part of GreenSky Thinking Week, PhD student Mary O’Malley was invited to talk as part of the ARCC “Sensing the place – experiences & wayfinding in a changing climate event, held by BuroHappold in London on 27th April 2016. Mary presented a short talk, about the different navigation representations we make when learning new environments and discussed how these are affected by ageing and Alzheimer’s disease. She then went on to talk about her PhD research which looks at creating environments that support successful orientation The event was mainly made of architects and urban designers which resulted in great discussions on how psychological theory can apply to practice!Mary sensing (2) resized

Report by Mary O’Malley

 

sensing-place-download

Higher Education Innovation Fund – Call is now open!

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, HEIF, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

andrew archery

Further to the blog post advising this call was soon to be announced – applications are invited for the latest round of HEIF funding. This call is now open.

All the information can be found here.

This includes:

  • Call schedule
  • Application form
  • Frequently asked questions (FAQS)

Both the application form and the FAQs contain a lot of information relevant to the call in addition to a number of useful links that will help when completing your application form.

 

Human Milk Banking in the UK

PG research, student research

UKAMBBreast feeding is the gold standard for feeding babies. This might not be surprising for most of you, although the rates of exclusive breast feeding in the UK are low. But have you ever heard of human milk banking? The UK Association for Milk Banking (UKAMB) does an incredible job in providing safe and screened donor breast milk all over the country through 16 donor milk banks, mostly to preterm babies whose mothers cannot provide sufficient breast milk. Feeding human donor milk instead of formula milk is for example associated with a lower risk for the severe gut infection necrotising enterocolitis.

Breast milk and donor milk also contain omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are essential for brain and visual development in early infancy. However, research based at BU has identified that the current intake levels of preterm infants are too low to match the in utero accretion rates. Therefore, the aim of my PhD project at BU is to investigate approaches to increase the intake of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids in preterm babies to improve their outcomes. One aspect I will be looking at is the intake from donor milk. Therefore, I was invited by the UK Association for Milk Banking to give a short presentation about my research at their annual training day in June.

I am looking forward to meeting donor milk bank staff and other researchers in the field of human milk banking at this day. I will post more details after the event. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to contact me at inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

If you would like to find out more about human milk banking in the UK or want to become a milk donor visit UKAMB’s website at http://www.ukamb.org/.

Isabell

Linking your BRIAN account with your ORCID account

BRIAN, Publishing

OrcidA recent upgrade on BRIAN means that you are now able to link your ORCID ID with your BRIAN account. Click on this link to register for an ORCID account if you haven’t already got one.

Configuring ORCID is really easy. Go to your BRIAN homepage and scroll to the bottom of the page where you’ll find your ‘Data sources’. Simply click ‘configure’ next to the ORCID data source and you’ll be greeted with an authentication screen to either login or register with ORCID.

Screen Shot 2016-06-06 at 10.51.49

Once the accounts have been linked, BRIAN will periodically search ORCID for your “works” containing a DOI, PubMed ID or Scopus ID. Using these identifiers, BRIAN will then collect trusted metadata from other data sources including PubMed, Scopus and CrossRef and automatically associate this harvested data with a your BRIAN account.

About ORCID

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors, and national boundaries and its cooperation with other identifier systems. Find out more on their website.

2015/16 Research Photography Competition – in the Atrium Art Gallery!

As some of you may know that for the past two years we have run the Research Photography Competition and the challenge we set our academics and students was ‘Can you tell the story of your research in a single image?’. We saw an overwhelming response from researchers all across the university downing tools to take up their cameras and think of unusual ways to illustrate their research.  The resulting images demonstrate not just the creativity of our academics and students, but also the fascinating range of research taking place at BU.

For one week only, some select entries from the past two years are being displayed the the Atrium Art Gallery until the 13th of June. Come and see Research from all across the university in areas as diverse as science, education, health, computer animation, sport, Law and much more.

So if you are interested in what research is happening at BU or need some inspiration for your entry to the next competition, then please feel free to come along!

if you have any questions on the competition or on the display, please contact Oliver Cooke .

IMG_2313

Warwick workshop application deadline & 2016 John Maddox Prize

This is a reminder about the Standing up for Science media workshop at the University of Warwick on Friday 24th June. The closing date for applications is 9am on Monday 13th June and we’d love to see early career members from BU there. The workshop is open to early career researchers and scientists in all sciences, engineering and medicine (PhD students, post-docs or equivalent in first job) – please find more details in the flyer and pasted below. Do let me know if you’d like any more details, or if you’d like to join us as an observer on the day.
Also, as some of you may know, nominations are now open for the 2016 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science. Now in it’s fifth year, this unique international prize recognises the work of an individual who promotes sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, facing difficulty or hostility in doing so. Please do share this with your networks (#MaddoxPrize on Twitter) — and start thinking about who you might nominate for the award. The deadline for entries is 1st August 2016. If you’d like to run an article or feature it in a newsletter- please let me know.
John Maddox was a founding trustee of Sense about Science, and an inspirational figure to many. A passionate and tireless communicator and defender of science, Maddox engaged with difficult debates, inspiring others to do the same. To nominate someone for the prize or find out more, please visit http://bit.ly/Maddox2016.

Innovate UK – Open funding competition – £15m

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

InnovateUK_LogoA_Interim_RGBx320govuk[1]

This competion is open to the  best business–led ideas or concepts that can be drawn from any technology, engineering or industrial area, including Innovate UK’s four priority sectors for growth.

Projects may focus on:

•market research;

•technical feasibility;

•industrial research;

This call opens on 6 June.

For more information including dates and deadlines and competion scope  click here .

General competition guidance.

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Committee inquiries: open calls for evidence

Below is a list of committee inquiries with current open calls for evidence. Please contact Emma Bambury-Whitton if you would like to discuss submitting evidence.

Commons Select Committee inquiries

Joint Committee inquiries