/ Full archive

Institute of Global Health Innovation – Student Challenges Competition 2015

Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange, student research

Global

The vision at Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) is to support the identification, development and widespread diffusion of healthcare innovation and in doing so to sustainably reduce global health inequalities across the globe.

The  Student Challenges Competition offers students  a key opportunity to showcase their research idea and to win prize money of up to £5,000 to develop this further. Runners-up prizes will also be awarded.

This year, it is also compulsory for all applications to be accompanied by a 2-3 minute promotional video illustrating the  project idea and how it works.

As part of the Audience Choice Award, £500 is up for grabs to shortlisted candidates for those who produce the best video.  The winners will be announced at the Dragon’s Den event with the rest of the prizes.

The competition is open to all UG & PG students based in the UK and can be on any aspect of global health innovation.

For more information click here.

Suicide in India: Modelling data

international, Publishing

The latest BU research publication used a modelling approach to suicide in India [1].  The paper ‘Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling’ is now online and freely available as it was published in an Open Access journal.  The first author of this paper is BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Brijesh Sathian.  The modelling resulted in some useful predictions of future risk of suicide at a population level, see for example: 10.12691.ajphr-3-5A-17.fig_1

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Reference:

Sathian, B. , De, A. , Teijlingen, E. V. , Simkhada, P. et al. (2015). Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling. American Journal of Public Health Research, 3(5A), 80-87.  Online at:  http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/3/5A/17/

Creative Writing for Academics with Kip Jones

Creative writing

Summary: The Creative Writing workshop will be a unique event in that it will not be a typical ‘writing retreat’ (with trees to hug and lots of time to ruminate), but rather a very active experience with lots of exercises, suggestions and supportive feedback on participants’ work from Kip Jones and other participants.  The point is to encourage both students and academics who would like to include more creative writing in their outputs, particularly those whose writing includes reporting on narrative and other qualitative methods of research.  It also helps immensely in the move to publishing in the wider world of blogs and online outlets, moving work to media and film, auto-ethnography and even fiction.

Justification: The important point of Creative Writing for Academics is to help academics and students achieve the goal of achieving more of their work read by wider audiences; in other words, impact. By providing an intense two-day experience for participants to engage in developing writing skills, the playing field is levelled and opportunities for facilitated learning developed. By engaging in creative writing, it becomes possible for all to write more clearly, more simply, even more creatively, when writing not only for academic publications, but also for outlets previously unimagined.

Methods: The workshop will present opportunities to work with academic material and expand its means of production and dissemination to new and creative levels through interfaces with techniques from the arts and humanities, including blog and magazine writing, film treatments and scripts, and poetry and fictional exercises. These intellectual exchanges encourage joint exploration of how researchers can engage with principles and tools from the arts in order to expand and extend the possibilities of dissemination of research data. Concepts of creativity itself will evolve and be transformed by participants’ outlooks and willingness to engage with unfamiliar territory. These processes comprise a ‘facilitated learning’—in that knowledge will be gained as a secondary goal through a process of developing new relationships through small group problem-solving and self examination, grounded in personal past experience and knowledge.

12115534_10153710964944855_4944742169117744163_nKip Jones BA MSc PhD is Reader in Performative Social Science and Qualitative Research in the Faculties of Media & Communication and Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. Jones has produced films, videos and audio productions and has written many articles for academic journals and authored Chapters in books on topics such as masculinity, ageing and rurality, and older LGBT citizens. His groundbreaking use of qualitative methods, including biography and auto-ethnography, and the use of tools from the arts in social science research and dissemination, are distinguished internationally.

Workshop Price: £120. for two days. £90. for students/BU staff

Academics and students at all levels welcome!

Register online at: 

http://creative-writing-workshop.eventbrite.co.uk

Reminder of BU’s Bridging Fund Scheme for researchers

Golden gate Bridge wallpaperBack in August we launched the new BU Bridging Fund Scheme which aims to provide additional stability to fixed-term researchers who continue to rely heavily on short-term contracts usually linked to external funding. This situation sometimes impacts negatively on continuity of employment and job security and can result in a costly loss of researcher talent for the institution.

The new Bridging Fund Scheme aims to mitigate these circumstances by redeploying the researcher where possible, or where feasible, by providing ‘bridging funding’ for the continuation of employment for a short-term (maximum three months) between research grants. It is intended to permit the temporary employment, in certain circumstances, of researchers between fixed-term contracts at BU, for whom no other source of funding is available, in order to:

(a) encourage the retention of experienced and skilled staff, and sustain research teams and expertise;

(b) aconcordat to support the career development of researchersvoid the break in employment and career which might otherwise be faced by such staff;

(c) maximise the opportunity for such staff to produce high-quality outputs and/or research impact at the end of funded contracts/grants.

This is a great step forward for BU and for BU’s researchers and is an action from our EC HR Excellence in Research Award which aims to increase BU’s alignment with the national Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (further information is available here: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/research-environment/research-concordat/).

You can read the full guidelines here: BU bridging fund scheme guidelines v1 070815

FMC Research Seminar: ‘Discussing photographs of soldier transgressions in the news with British military, families and veterans’, Wed, 25 Nov, 3-4pm Talbot Campus.

Communicating Research:
FMC Research Seminar Series 2015-16
Time: Wednesday, 25 November, 3-4 pm
Venue: The Screening Room W240, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus.
A Politics and Media Research Centre event:

Katy Parry, University of Leeds

‘Discussing photographs of soldier transgressions in the news with British military, families and veterans’

This presentation draws on a press photo story of alleged soldier transgressions in Afghanistan to explore both the mainstream media presentation of leaked soldier-produced photographs, and the reactions to this photo-story garnered from group interviews with serving media operations personnel, veterans’ groups and forces families. The photographs apparently depict a British RAF serviceman posing next to a ‘dead Taliban fighter’. Primarily concerned with the visual representation of soldiering in the news and what we can learn from the responses of those with direct experience of war and its after-effects, I contend that the news treatment of this snapshot style imagery presents a particularly rich example through which to explore the unsettling relationship that the press and public have with the act of killing in war, and the jarring discomfort experienced when ‘our boys’ are shown to not only take part in seemingly reprehensible activities, but to picture themselves enjoying such acts.

Whilst the larger project that this paper draws upon is concerned with a range of media genres (film, documentary, comedy, social media), this particular case deals with newspaper journalism. I am concerned here with the represented experience of war for the soldier ‘on the ground’ and the responses to such media portrayals. In the age of more personalised media, peer-to-peer sharing, YouTube memes and citizen witnessing, the perceptions of military personnel and emotional connections with civilian audiences are formed through a more varied and unpredictable media ecology and a hybrid set of production and viewing practices. Shifting focus from the traditional institutional relationships (say, between the state and journalism) to mainstream media handling of individual soldiers’ transgressions also acknowledges the attempted media management of more vernacular and affective qualities (i.e. how soldiers appear in the media as individual moral actors and the emotional responses stimulated).

Katy Parry lectures in Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Her work focuses on visual politics and how ‘frames of war’ circulate in public culture. She is a co-author of Pockets of Resistance: British News Media, War and Theory in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (with Piers Robinson, Peter Goddard, Craig Murray and Philip Taylor, Manchester University Press, 2010), and Political Culture and Media Genre: Beyond the News (with Kay Richardson and John Corner, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

 

About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies.  The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

 

Contributions include speakers on behalf of 

The Centre for Politics and Media Research

The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community

Narrative Research Group

Journalism Research Group

Advances in Media Management Research Group

Emerging Consumer Cultures Research Group

Public Relations Research Group

 

Research Photography Competition

Following on from last year’s successful research photo competition we are now seeking entries for our 2016 competition.

Can you convey your research through an image?

We are looking for academics and postgraduates to tell the story of their research through a photograph, which can be used to inspire current BU undergraduates.

All submitted images will be showcased on the BU website late 2015, where staff and students will have the opportunity to vote for their favourite image/s. An exhibition will also be displayed in the Atrium Art Gallery during February 2016. Winners will then be announced during an Awards Ceremony which will take place on Thursday 4 February 2016.

How to enter the competition:

Step 1: Take your photo!

You can be as creative as you like in capturing the essence of your research. You could take a photo of your research in progress, showing how it is developed. Or you could focus on the people involved – the people behind the research, or the people benefitting from it. Unusual or artistic images are encouraged!

Step 2: Submit your photo

Submit your photo, along with a 100–200 word description of your research by Friday 11 December 2015.

Need inspiration?

Then take a look at our regular ‘Photo of the Week’, where you can read about the research behind the images or visit the Research Photography Competition 2015 webpages which highlight last year’s Research Photography Competition entries.

Why take part?

Not only will your image help to inspire the next generation of researchers, it will also highlight all the fantastic research taking place across the university.

Should you have any queries, please contact Oliver Cooke in our Research & Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO).

We look forward to receiving your entry.

Unlocking the leadership potential of BME early career academics

LF Diversifying Academic LeadershipThe Leadership Foundation has launched a new programme aimed at black and minority ethnic (BME) early career academics who are considering applying for, or aspiring to a senior leadership role in higher education.

Diversifying Academic Leadership has been developed in response to feedback from the LF’s recent BME Leadership in HE Summit, held in partnership with the Equality Challenge Unit in June 2015. Summit participants, drawn from across the UK, said that more could be done to support the career progression of BME staff working in higher education, including development activities aimed at the start of the talent pipeline to encourage more early career academics to consider and apply for leadership roles.

This non-residential programme, designed and delivered by Jannett Morgan, Associate, Leadership Foundation, will run from January to July 2016, with three cohorts (held in Birmingham, Manchester and London respectively).

Participants will explore a range of themes (primarily through face to face workshops, self-organised action learning sets and leadership stories from high profile HE leaders), including:

· Demystifying Leadership

· Increasing Visibility

· Authentic Leadership

· Cultural Identity and Cultural Capital

· Power and Influence

· Sponsors and Mentors

The LF are offering free places on the pilot cohort which starts on 13 January 2016. Delegates on the pilot cohort will co-create the programme and help to establish the programmes strengths.

Places on the pilot will be limited to two people per institution and delegates who take part in the pilot programme play a key role in its co-creation, helping to structure how the programme will work in the future.

Commenting on the programme, Ginnie Willis, Programme Director, Leadership Foundation, said;

“This programme will enable early career academics who are about to apply for, or aspire to a senior role to explore various leadership concepts and help them to identify and develop their leadership style.

Participants will also reflect on the skills necessary to work as an effective leader and have the opportunity to discuss issues relating to their experiences of working in higher education.”

For more information about the programme and to book a place visit www.lfhe.ac.uk/diversifyingacademicleadership.

If you would like discuss the programme content in depth, please contact Sweta Purohit Jina, Business Consultancy Manager.

Responses to Nurse Review of the Research Councils

Following on from Julie Northam’s synopsis of the Nurse Review of the Research Councils posted last week, you may be interested to see the responses from the many interested parties, such as science lobby groups and learned societies.

sir paul nurseResearch Professional have provided an analysis of the responses that can be read here.  The individual statements are shown below:

AHRC Connected Communities Festival 2016

Funding opportunities

ahrcTaking inspiration from the 500th anniversary of the publication in 1516 in Latin of Thomas More’s Utopia, as well as a Connected Communities/ Care for the Future Symposium on ‘Utopias, Futures and Temporalities: Critical Considerations for Social Change’ held in May 2015, the 2016 Connected Communities Research Festival will have a central theme of Community Futures and Utopias. The Festival is being undertaken in partnership with The Somerset House Trust as a part of Utopia 2016: a year of Imagination and Possibility – four seasons of events, exhibitions and new commissions celebrating the idea of Utopia to mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s influential text. Utopia 2016 is a partnership between the Somerset House Trust and its neighbours King’s College London and the Courtauld Institute and Gallery.

The 2016 Festival will support high quality participatory arts research and research co-production activities across the UK on the theme of community futures and utopias and will provide an opportunity to explore creative ways to build upon, and widen and deepen community engagement with, research being undertaken by the Connected Communities Programme and with wider AHRC/RCUK–funded research.

Expressions of Interest (EOIs) are now invited to contribute to the Festival which will run from February 2016 through to June 2016, culminating in a major weekend-long Utopia Fair at Somerset House on 24th-26th June. This call for EOIs will support participatory arts research and research co-production activities through two main strands of the 2016 Festival:

  1. A Programme of Local Festival Activitieswhich bring together at a regional / local /community level researchers from the arts and humanities (and other disciplines where appropriate), research organisations, community groups, creative practitioners and other community partners. These local activities can take place at any time from February 2016 to late June 2016 and will be brought together as a UK-wide Festival programme of local activities
  2. Participation in the Utopia Fair, 24th-26th Junethrough the partnership with The Somerset House Trust as a part of Utopia 2016: a year of imagination and possibility. Building on local Festival activities EOIs are invited to include ideas for participatory arts research co-production projects which will produce creative, co-produced/ participatory, research outputs which can be showcased at a weekend Festival, The Utopia Fair, to be held in the Edmond J Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House in London which will take place on 24th – 26th June 2016. The Utopia Fair will bring together representatives of contemporary utopian movements, celebrating projects already flourishing in the margins and liminal spaces around the UK, and the importance of the spaces that artists create for dreaming. It will enable visitors to join in and taste utopia now, inspiring them to take a piece of utopia home with them and into their lives. 25 stands are available at the Utopia Fair to showcase creative community –co-produced outcomes from local Connected Communities Festival activities. As well as the stands, there are also opportunities to showcase other outputs, such as film screenings or performances, at the Utopia Fair

Proposals which additionally or alternatively propose to showcase creative co-produced outputs locally or at other relevant events regionally or nationally in 2016 will also be welcomed.

Closing Dates

Closing Date: 16/12/2016

How to make an application

Applications should be submitted through smartsurvey using the following link http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/AHRCConnectedCommunitiesFestival2016/ at the latest by 12 noon on Wednesday 16th December 2015, and will need to go through the BU institution submission process.  Please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer if you are interested in applying.

Full guidance detailing the awards available and requirements for submission of proposals can be found in the EOI call document.

Further Information

Further information on The Somerset House Trust Utopia 2016 season Utopia 2016: a Year of Imagination and Possibility can be found at utopia.somersethouse.org.uk or from the press release at www.somersethouse.org.uk/press-releases

Contacts

Please contact connectedcommunities@ahrc.ac.uk with any questions.

AHRC Leadership Fellows

Funding opportunities

ahrcThe AHRC’s Leadership Fellows scheme provides time for research leaders, or potential future research leaders, to undertake focused individual research alongside collaborative activities which have the potential to generate a transformative impact on their subject area and beyond. In addition to demonstrating support for high quality, world leading research and associated outputs, proposals must include collaborative activities to support the development of the Fellow’s capacity for research leadership in the arts and humanities.

Leadership Fellows awards are supported as a partnership with Research Organisations. Applicants should discuss any potential application with their Research Organisation at an early stage, as strong evidence of institutional support for the proposed Fellow’s career and leadership development is required as part of the application process.

Applications to the scheme will be welcomed for research in any subject area within the AHRC’s remit. Proposals may be for research at a range of stages of development, provided that substantial high quality research outputs are planned to emerge directly from the Fellowship. A range of activities, including knowledge exchange, can be included in proposals and the scheme incorporates elements of the former Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts and Knowledge Transfer Fellowships schemes.

The scheme provides opportunities for mid and senior career researchers who meet the eligibility criteria outlined in the Funding Guide. There is a separate route to support applications from early career researchers with outstanding future leadership potential.

The Leadership Fellows scheme provides funding for a period of between 6 and 18 months. Proposals with a full economic cost of between £50,000 and £250,000 may be submitted.

Further details about changes to the scheme’s aims, eligibility requirements and assessment criteria are detailed in the Leadership Fellows Funding Guide (PDF, 1.2MB).

Public Policy Highlight Notice in the AHRC Leadership Fellows Scheme

AHRC is launching a highlight notice in its Leadership Fellows scheme as part of a range of activities to support the contribution which arts and humanities research can make to public policy.

The aim of the highlight notice is to encourage applications to the Leadership Fellows scheme which propose innovative ways to exercise leadership through engaging policy makers in their research, and explore the potential for impact in policy development. This can be in connection with any area of public policy.

Public policy in this context is understood broadly to include government at local, regional or national levels, as well as in connection with international governance bodies. Equally it covers the policies adopted by major civil society and third-sector organisations, such as major charities or charity partnerships, professional associations, etc, which effectively have a role in setting policy in areas which impact public life.

While proposals are welcome in any area of public policy, AHRC has been working with the Chief Scientific Advisors in Whitehall and devolved administrations to identify policy areas where input from arts and humanities researchers are particularly welcome. These areas, along with contact details for the Departments involved, are available in this Highlight Notice document (PDF, 157KB).

Closing Dates

Closing Date: 30/09/2016

The Leadership Fellows scheme does not operate under fixed deadlines. You may submit a proposal at any point during the year.

This highlight notice runs in the Leadership Fellows scheme until 30 September 2016.

Please note that the assessment process for applications submitted to the scheme (Standard and Early Career routes) takes approximately 30 weeks and the earliest start date for a project should be no earlier than 9 months after submission to the AHRC.

On occasions, there might be a delay in obtaining the peer reviews for an application and this may result in the assessment process taking longer. In such circumstances, the AHRC will contact the applicant to inform them of any delay.

How to make an application

For both routes of the Fellowships scheme you must submit an application through the cross-council Joint Electronic Submission – (JE-S) System. If you need any assistance to use the system, please contact the JE-S helpdesk by telephoning 01793 444164 or on JesHelp@rcuk.ac.uk.

If you are thinking of applying then you must contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer in the first instance.

Further Information

The Leadership Fellows scheme has its own Funding Guide (PDF, 1.2MB). This guidance should be used for applicants who open their Jes Application form from 1st May 2014.

Leadership and Peer Review College: Members of the Strategic Reviewer Group of the AHRC’s Peer Review College met in February at two separate meetings. One of the areas they discussed was leadership in the context of the Fellowship Scheme and a PDF has been produced to summarise their comments (PDF, 121KB).

Impact Summary and Pathways to Impact: – Frequently Asked Questions (PDF, 178KB)

RCUK Impact Requirements – Frequently Asked Questions

Examples of Impact from AHRC-funded projects (PDF, 296KB)

Support for Research Leadership

The AHRC has produced a film on Leadership in the Arts and Humanities which is available from the following page.

AHRC ‘Engaging with Government’ course

Funding opportunities

ahrcThe AHRC Engaging with Government programme is a three day course which will take place in March 2016 and is designed to provide an insight into the policy making process, and help participants develop the skills needed to pursue the policy implications of their research. It also aims to build links between policy makers and the most dynamic new research in the arts and humanities. AHRC are inviting eligible researchers to submit an application to attend the course.

The programme will:

  • Encourage you to see opportunities where your own research could make a valuable contribution in a public policy context;
  • Challenge you to think in more depth about the policy process, and the role of research within it;
  • Increase the influencing and communication skills that you need to achieve this.

Eligibility

The programme is for early career researchers (ECRs) and is open to ECRs working in any area of the AHRC’s subject domain. At the point of application, applicants must be either within eight years of the award of their doctorate or equivalent professional training, or within six years of their first academic appointment.

In addition, applicants must be employed in a full- or part-time postdoctoral or equivalent position, which may be either fixed term or permanent, and which lists academic research as one of its main responsibilities. Applicants must be in post at the time of application, and the position must extend beyond the delivery of the ‘Engaging with Government’ course in March 2016. Further, the position must be held at a research organisation which is eligible to apply to the AHRC.

The course will be held at the Institute for Government Offices in central London on 8, 9, and 10 March and applicants will need to commit to attending all three days in full. The costs of the course, accommodation, travel, and subsistence will be paid for according to AHRC’s standard terms and conditions.

  • Closing date: 5pm on Friday 27 November 2015
  • Notification of Outcomes: w/c 11 January 2016
  • Course information sent to participants: mid-February 2016
  • Course: 8, 9, and 10 March 2016

Closing Dates

Closing Date: 27/11/2015

How to make an application

Please apply via Smartsurvey.

Further Information

Engaging with Government – Call for Applications (PDF, 128KB)

Engaging with Government Case Studies (PDF, 101KB)

Contacts

If you have any queries about the programme or the application process, please contact publicpolicy@ahrc.ac.uk