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Royal Society announces new Athena Prize Diversity Award

Royal SocietyThe Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has announced a new national award which recognises individuals and teams in the UK research community who have contributed towards the advancement of diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in their institutions and organisations. The award aims to inspire innovation and leadership in diversity issues.

The Royal Society Athena Prize, to be awarded biennially, will join the Society’s prestigious set of medals and awards announced each summer.

Nominations for the inaugural 2016 round of the Royal Society Athena Prize will open in the new year, with more information on the selection criteria and nominations process to be provided nearer the time.

Speaking about the award, Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said, “It gives me great pleasure to be able to announce the establishment of the new Royal Society Athena Prize.

“I would like to encourage everyone in the research community to look around their institutions and organisations and think of who they might nominate for the Athena Prize. Do you know someone who has set up an innovative project that is contributing to the advancement of diversity in science, someone who is persistent in the face of adversity and limited funds, someone who is inspirational and has kick-started a culture change and should be recognised for their efforts? If so, we’d like to hear from you when we open up nominations for Royal Society Athena Prize in early 2016.”

The top project will receive a medal plus a cash prize of £5,000 and runners-up will receive a cash prize of £1,000. Prizes will be presented at the Royal Society’s annual autumn diversity conference, where the winners will talk about their projects.

The Royal Society is committed to promoting and increasing diversity in UK STEM. A diverse and inclusive scientific workforce draws from the widest range of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences thereby maximising innovation and creativity in science for the benefit of humanity.

For more about the Royal Society’s commitment to diversity please visit their diversity pages.

Research Councils announce unconscious bias training for peer reviewers

RCUKlogoThe Research Councils have launched a new programme for all peer reviewers and decision-makers, to raise awareness and reduce the impact of unconscious bias.

Over a period of three years, beginning in January 2016, more than 1,300 people involved in peer review from all seven Research Councils will be given access to high quality training designed and developed by the Research Councils and the consultants Pearn Kandola (www.pearnkandola.com). Together, they will translate this training into an online application and make it available to their geographically dispersed peer reviewers.

Professor Jackie Hunter, Chair of the Research Councils’ Equality and Diversity Group and Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), said: “Raising awareness of unconscious bias strengthens the Research Councils’ commitment to addressing equality and diversity Together, the Research Councils invest £3 billion in research each year, covering all disciplines and sectors, to meet tomorrow’s challenges today. Ensuring that fair decisions are made in peer review and funding is of the utmost importance.”

Robust Semi-supervised Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

PG research

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

 

Speaker: Jing Wang

 

Title:   Robust Semi-supervised Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 2nd December 2015

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Clustering aims to organize a collection of data items into clusters, such that items within a cluster are more “similar” to each other than to those in the other clusters, which has been used in many fields, including machine learning, pattern recognition, image analysis, information retrieval, and bioinformatics. Clustering is usually performed when no information is available concerning the membership of data items to predefined classes. For this reason, it is traditionally seen as part of unsupervised learning. However, in reality, it is often the case that some data information (e.g. labels) is available and could be used to bias the clustering for producing considerable improvements in learning accuracy. Also, data have some new challenges, such as high- dimensionality, sparsity, containing noises and outliers, etc. This motivates us to develop new technology to deal with this kind of complex data. To address all these issues, we propose semi-supervised nonnegative matrix factorization approaches. Experiments carried on well-known data sets demonstrate the effectiveness.

 

We hope to see you there.

CSR – highlights for research and KE

george osborneOn Wednesday the government outlined their plans for spending over the next five years in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and Autumn Statement. The main points in relation to research and KE are:

Research councils:

  • The Nurse Review recommendations will be implemented (see an overview of the recommendations here).
  • Subject to legislation, the government will introduce a new body – Research UK – which will work across the seven Research Councils.
  • Innovate UK with remain and will be integrated into Research UK.

 

Budget:

  • The BIS budget will be cut by 17% (£2.2bn).
  • The science budget will be protected in real terms.
  • This includes a new £1.5 billion Global Challenges fund to ensure UK science takes the lead in addressing the problems faced by developing countries whilst developing our ability to deliver cutting-edge research

 

Research Excellence Framework:

  • The government will take forward a review of the Research Excellence Framework in order to examine how to simplify and strengthen funding on the basis of excellence, and will set out further details shortly.

 

Funding, priorities and investments:

Health and social care:

  • £5bn more to be invested in Health Research, key priorities being the genomes project, anti-microbial resistance and tackling malaria.
  • £600m additional funding will be available for mental health.
  • £150m will be invested in launching a competition for a Dementia Institute with the remit of tackling the progression of the disease.
  • Women’s Health charities/sector will be invested in, as will military charities.

Science and technology:

  • £1bn will be invested in energy research, with a key priority being the reduction in costs of low carbon energy.
  • Defence budget will be increased from £34bn to £40bn – emphasis will be on new equipment, capabilities and fighting cybercrime.
  • Investment in a new Cyber Innovation Centre in Cheltenham to supporting cyber excellence across south west.

Arts, sports and culture:

  • Arts and culture budget will be protected and £1bn will be invested.
  • The Arts Council will be invested in.
  • Funding in UK Sport will be increased in run up to the Olympic Games in Rio.

Knowledge exchange / enterprise:

  • £12bn invested in local growth fund.
  • 26 Enterprise Zones to be created including 15 in towns and rural areas. Two new zones are planned for the south west region.
  • Innovate UK will remain but based on a grant system with £165m in loans will be on offer. It will be integrated into Research UK (overarching body of the Research Councils).
  • Funding to Catapult Centres will increase.

NIHR Research Design Service Research Grant Writing Retreat

Funding opportunities

Do you have a great idea for research in health or social care?

Would your team benefit from protected time and expert support to develop your idea into a competitive funding application?

The NIHR Research Design Serice (RDS) are offering a unique opportunity for health and social care professionals across England to attend a week-long residential Grant Writing Retreat at Bailbrook House, Bath in June 2016. The purpose of the Retreat is to give busy professionals dedicated time to rapidly progress their research idea into fundable proposals. The Retreat will provide a supportive environment for teams of two or three people to develop high quality research proposals prior to application to national peer-reviewed funding streams. Find out more.

To apply for a place please contact your local branch of the NIHR Research Design Service based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

 

HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?

Publishing, writing

bucru identity

The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.

The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.

BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.

Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!

BU Research Staff Association develops

The second BU Research Staff Association (RSA) coffee morning took place today in the EBC café. This was a fantastic opportunity for research staff across BU to meet to discuss their work and share ideas for future collaborations. Members of RKEO were also on hand to provide research related advice and support. We will continue to hold the BU RSA coffee mornings in 2016 on the last Wednesday of each month, in the EBC café between 10-11am.

RSA coffee morning 25.11.15

To enable research staff to showcase their work internally and externally, the BU RSA also hopes to participate in a number of BU events in 2016. If any one has any ides or would like to help organise these events then please do get in contact with us.

See you on 27th January at the first coffee morning of 2016!

Kind regards, Michelle and Marcellus
Michelle Heward and Marcellus Mbah (BU RSA)

Connecting histories of welfare

Fusion

Profs Jonathan Parker and Sara Ashencaen Crabtree undertook their annual field trip to Sherborne Abbey and St Johns’ Almshouse (Yes! The apostrophe’s in the right place, it refers to two Johns.) on Monday. The trip is held for Sociology & Social Policy students studying the histories of social welfare.

This year was particularly valuable as the students are producing group narratives concerning a range of characters and scenarios from history involving research into policy, legislation and practices to contextualise their stories. Seeing at least six hundred years of active community welfare and care through the almshouses, and tracing back Sherborne’s history to the time of Alfred the Great – who initiated a precursor to the poor laws for his people – the students were able to see the lived experiences and histories written about in their own research. This was brought sharply into the present day when it was revealed that the Sherborne foodbank programme serving a population of little over 10,000 people is delivering in excess of 1,000 food parcels each year! Students gained great insight into the connecting strands of welfare at formal and informal, state and charitable/third sector levels.

Sherborne

COST Actions – supporting high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes

Funding opportunities

COST Actions are a flexible, fast, effective and efficient networking instrument for researchers, engineers and scholars to cooperate and coordinate nationally funded research activities. COST Actions allow European researchers to jointly develop their own ideas in any science and technology field. COST Actions are bottom-up  science and technology networks, open to researchers and stakeholders  with a duration of four years. They are active through a range of  networking tools , such as workshops, conferences, training schools, short-term scientific missions (STSMs), and dissemination activities.  COST does not fund research itself.

COST prides in its support for high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes. Importantly, COST does not set any research priorities. cost

Currently on the COST website is a report on Collecting research data to counter femicide worldwide

Femicide across Europe is the first pan-European research network investigating the causes and risk factors of a phenomenon killing thousands of women every year, worldwide.

Femicide refers to the killing of women and girls because of their gender. European researchers studying the  cultural, societal and psychological   causes  and  risks factors  behind femicide set up the network to fight the phenomenon through advocacy and research. One idea is to create a  European Femicide Observatory  gathering and comparing data from each of the 30 countries involved, of which half are Inclusiveness Target Countries . The goal is to come up with  new guidelines  and shape new EU public policies countering killings.

Specialists have been studying quantitative and qualitative data and ways to reduce discrepancies in country records. Such discrepancies are often due to the different definitions of femicide, which is sometimes seen as gender-based violence.

“When our COST Action was first proposed, the term femicide was not widely used. Everyone knew of homicide, but few had given thought to the fact that some women, particularly those involved in intimate relationships, were murdered simply because they were women. Today, two years within the COST Action, ‘femicide’ has become a buzzword, Action Chair Dr Shalva Weil explains.“

Network members have also been advocating for a more straightforward approach to lowering femicide rates in Europe. They have already addressed the Portuguese Parliament and the Parliament of Aragon in Spain. The network also took part in two United Nations sessions in Bangkok (November 2014) and New York (October 2015).

By participating in the network’s training schools and scientific exchanges, young researchers are also given the chance to better understand the phenomenon EU-wide. One outstanding result of the Action’s work is a  comparison of national statistics from 10 European countries .

The Action’s next annual meeting will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2016.

Why not take a look at the COST Action database to see if there is a current Action relating to your research? You can then consider joining an existing Action or submitting your own proposal.

Click on the tag COST Action (below) to see other BU posts on this topic, including  Edwin van Teijlingen’s report on his recent publication and his experience of attending a COST Action Training School.

If you are interested in applying for COST, please contact Emily Cieciura, Research Facilitator: EU & International of you Faculty’s Funding Development Officer.

Black British Academics Career Development Programme

DGabrielBU Academic, Deborah Gabriel, created Black British Academics in 2013.  Find out below what they offer to academics across the higher education sector.

“At Black British Academics we take a proactive approach to race equality both through the provision of specialised services to HEIs and through dedicated networks that provide support to members. In terms of career progression, we recognise that tackling institutional barriers should be a priority and therefore we are working both through our institutional (E&D members) and through the provision of consultancy services to develop a range of measures that includes the development of a culturally democratic leadership programme for senior university staff targeted at VCs/PVCs, HODs, deans, associate deans and other senior operational staff.

However, within our academic community there is a wealth of knowledge, skills and expertise among senior staff who have developed strategies to successfully navigate raced and gendered spaces and who possess invaluable experiential knowledge that represents our collective social aBBAnd cultural capital. Our Academic Career Development Programme focuses on the four key areas of academic practice: Education, Research, Professional Practice and Enterprise and offers both online and offline resources including  podcasts, videos, e-guides, workshops and symposiums and promotes networking and inter-disciplinary collaboration on projects across the key areas of practice.”

BUDI at the Care and Dementia Show, Birmingham 2-4 November 2015

Dr Fiona Kelly, Dr Suyu Liu and Dr Michelle Heward represented Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) at the Care and Dementia Show held at the NEC in Birmingham from 2-4th November 2015. The Care and Dementia Show is designed to provide education, products and services to any organisation responsible for the care of older people.
Blog piece photo

This show attracted over 300 national exhibitors from many sectors of the care industry, including care home providers. This was a fantastic opportunity for BUDI to network and meet a range of potential collaborators. During the event we met over 200 delegates, many were interested in BUDI’s research and education services, including the MSc Applied Dementia Studies programme.

The show was a good opportunity to meet practitioners in the field of dementia care, and to see first-hand the range of products and services on offer to people affected by dementia.

THE BOX SET MINDSET: THE FORENSICS OF POPULAR CULTURE: A Day Conference, Saturday 28 November

boxset jpg

THE BOX SET MINDSET: THE FORENSICS OF POPULAR CULTURE

A day conference organised by

The International Association of Forensic Psychotherapy

and 

Media and Inner World research network

in association with

Bournemouth University and the University of Roehampton

28 November 2015, 9.30am – 6pm

The Wesley Centre, London, 81-103 Euston Street, London NW1 2EZ

Representations of crime and criminal behaviour have long been central to the history of popular culture and now seem to dominate the landscape of the popular cultural imagination. From Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books through to Hollywood films such as The Silence of the Lambs and television shows such as Law and Order, and The Bridge, the forensic dilemmas underpinning dramatic fiction have regularly fascinated audiences. In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in long-form television series that grapple with forensic dilemmas involving gangster and mafia groups, murderers, drug barons and corrupt political figures and organisations. Our fascination with these shows has been intensified by technological shifts that allow us to ‘binge-watch’ box sets so that aspects of the experience of addiction also arise in us as avid viewers and fans.

This one-day symposium brings together members of IAFP and the Media and the Inner World research network to explore the psycho-cultural appeal of well-known television dramas, in which the forensic themes of murder, violence, and revenge play a key narrative role. Focusing on highly successful television series such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing, Breaking Bad and House of Cards, this event will apply the expertise of eminent forensic psychotherapists and senior academic researchers to discuss why and how audiences relate to such programmes and their dark, compelling themes and characters. The production of such drama is now big business thanks to the box-set mindset it invokes, and it is significant that forensic ideas often lie at the heart of the storylines.

What fantasies are at play when engaging with the psychopathologies of crime on show in such programmes and what makes them such compulsive viewing? What do these forensic themes and their dominance in popular culture tell us about the psychodynamics of contemporary society and the fantasies that circulate within it? How can an understanding of these processes enhance the practice and theories of forensic psychotherapy and also create a dialogue with academic researchers in the field of media and cultural studies? We hope to address these questions throughout the course of the day through an exciting programme of panels and discussion groups.

 

THE BOX SET MINDSET

THE FORENSICS OF POPULAR CULTURE

 

Programme and Speakers

9.30 – 10.00                       Registration and coffee

 10.00 -11.00                    The Killing and its Forensic Psychopathologies

  • Dr Sandra Grant, OBE (Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist)
  • Dr Andrea Esser (Principle Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Roehampton)

 11.00 – 11.15           Refreshments

 11.15 – 12.15                   The Forensic Dilemmas of Breaking Bad

  • Dr Estela Welldon (Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust)
  • Bradley Hillier (Specialist Registrar in Forensic Psychiatry in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation)

 12.15 – 1.15                      The Forensic Pleasures of House of Cards

  • Brett Kahr (Psychotherapist, Broadcaster and MiW Honorary Professor)
  • Candida Yates (Professor of Culture and Communication, Bournemouth University)

1.15-2.15                            LUNCH

 2.15. -3.30                          Workshops on The Killing, Breaking Bad and House of Cards

 3.30-3.45                            Refreshments

 3.45-5.00                            Reflecting on the Day: A Group Experience

5.00-6.00                            Drinks Reception

 

Semester-based Undergraduate Research Assistantship Projects 2016

Funding opportunities

Following on from the academic applications of the Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA), the panel have selected the following projects to recruit a student to.

The links all lead to the individual job adverts on MyCareerHub, all BU staff and students have access to this system.  These vacancies are currently in the recruitment stage to recruit a student.

Alessandro Inversini – eTourism 4 Development

Alison McConnell – App Development Research Assistant: Development and evaluation of a mobile device App to lower blood pressure

Amanda Korstjens – Co-creation of scientific publications and conference outputs on primate biogeography and conservation

Andrew Adams – The 2014 Brazil World Cup: evidencing the impacts on human rights and assessing the implications for future mega sport events

Anita Diaz – Producing a website–based research tool for evidencing and enhancing the impact of student-staff co-created research in wildlife

Anna Feigenbaum – Mapping the Media – Research Assistant

Barry Richard – Researcher on ‘Freedom of speech and the emotional public sphere’ project

Caroline Jackson – Creative Events Researcher

Dan Jackson – Tweet for victory! Political use of Twitter in the 2015 UK General Election

Einar Thorsen – Sourcing practices in online news and live blogs: exploring opportunities for a civic turn in journalism

Elvira Bolat – Student adoption, use and relationship with wearable technology and telematics

Erika Borkoles – Research Assistant

Huseyin Dogan – Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Exemplar Short Films

Iain Hewitt – Research Assistant: desk-based assessment, digitisation and publication

Jane Murphy – Measuring the impact of training and education on nutrition and dementia care

Jonny Branney – URA in Innovative Pedagogy

Lois Farquharson – Research Assistant (You’re Brilliant Awards Project)

Luciana Esteves – X Band Radar Applications and Coastal Management

Maggie Hutchings – Student Researcher: Negotiating ubiquitous connectivity for digital inclusion

Milena Bobeva – Student Researcher on Reverse Mentoring as a form of Pervasive Learning

Peter Hills – Development of the face span

Philippa Gillingham – Public perception of urban pollinators research team

Raian Ali – Conceptualizing Voluntary Transparency in Socio-Technical Systems

Roman Gerodimos – Digital Literacy and Global Citizenship

Sebastien Miellet – Individual strategies in face recognition

Shamal Faily – Undergraduate Research Assistant: CAIRIS

Sue Eccles – Globelongers: Understanding and Learning from International Students

Vanessa Heaslip – Understanding Disability amongst HE Students

Viachaslau Filimonau – Research Assistant

Xun He – The social life of cognition: performance in dyads

 

Please do share any relevant URA positions to your students where applicable.

The next round of URA funding applications is due to open in February 2016 for summer research assistants to work full-time for six weeks over the summer holidays.

Further information on the URA scheme can be found here.  If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) on 01202 961347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk or urap@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

‘Vulnerable Warriors: Counter-terrorism and the rise of Militarised Policing’ seminar by Dr Anna Feigenbaum and Daniel Weissman,

conferences, Fusion, Knowledge Exchange, student research, Women's Academic Network

Dr Anna Feigenbaum

Daniel Weissman

2nd December 2015, Royal London House, R303, 1-1:50 pm

All staff and students welcome to the last Social Science seminar in 2015.

Abstract:

This paper seeks to better understand the cultural and material processes of police militarization and its relationship to security infrastructures and geo-political practices of social control. In this paper we trace the rise the ‘Warrior Cop’ through an analysis of changes in the circulation of advertisements of policing and policing products at security expose between the late 1990s and the present, taking our analysis up through the recent Paris attacks and the Milipol Security expo held days after.

This analysis is framed against the backdrop of existing research on the shift in the post-Cold War period from a security focus on the threat of the nation-state to the threat of insurgency and non-state actors. This period was characterized by national and transnational changes to policing: intelligence gathering and information sharing, as well as equipment supply and transfer and knowledge exchange around training and operations.

We begin this paper with an overview of the key shifts in the military and policing sectors that gave rise to the phenomenon of ‘Warrior Cops’. In contrast to dominant narratives of police militarisation that see power and tactics shift directly from the military to the police, we outline what we refer to as the militarization of security, a process through which not only the police, but also judicial and emergency response services, infrastructures, feelings and attitudes become transformed in ways that position the need for warriors against the threat of risky spaces and vulnerable bodies.

For any enquiries regarding the Social Science seminar series please contact Dr Mastoureh Fathi: mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

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.