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The Emotional Processing Scale

EPS logoThe Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) is a questionnaire measure of a person’s emotional processing style, their typical way of processing stress or emotional situations. It was published by Hogrefe, a leading European Psychometric Test publisher in July 2015 and is available for use by clinicians working in mental health, psychological therapy and health psychology, as well as researchers interested in the emotional life of healthy individuals and other populations.

The EPS has been developed over 12 years by an experienced team at Bournemouth University including Professor Roger Baker, Professor Peter Thomas, and Dr Sarah Thomas (BUCRU).

The EPS can be used to:eps front cover

  • identify and quantify healthy and unhealthy styles of emotional processing;
  • assess the contribution of poor emotional processing to physical, psychosomatic and psychological disorders;
  • provide a non-diagnostic framework to assess patients for research or therapy;
  • measure changes in emotions during therapy/counselling; and
  • assist therapists in incorporating an emotional component into their formulations of psychological therapy.

For more information on the EPS please see this leaflet, or visit this Q&A session with Roger Baker

For more information on the concept of Emotional Processing please see the Emotional Processing website.

There have been 4 completed PhDs at Bournemouth University on the EPS:

Mariaelisa Santonastaso

Carol Wilkins

Glen Howell

Gareth Abbey

Fusion Investment Fund — Introducing the Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS)

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

Although largely invisible to us, our lives are dependent on critical infrastructure (CI).  CI is made up of roads, rail, pipelines, power lines, together with buildings, technology, and people.  Some of this infrastructure is modern, but much of it is ageing and interconnected in so many ways that we fail to realise our dependency on CI or its dependencies until its loss disrupts our day-to-day lives.

tech_laptop

 

This dependency has not been lost on governments, which now invest significant sums on securing this infrastructure from cybersecurity threats. Unfortunately, in most cases, this investment entails bolting security mechanisms onto existing infrastructure.  Such investment decisions are made by people with little knowledge of the infrastructure they are securing and, has such, little visibility of the impact that poorly designed security might have on the day-to-day delivery of these critical services.  Moreover, because technology innovation does not evolve at the same pace in different cultures, and security which mitigate the risks faced by critical infrastructure in one country may not be as effective in another.   The reason for these differences are myriad, and range from differences in working practices to expectations about the scale of infrastructure being secured.  There is, therefore, a need to evaluate security solutions against specification exemplars based on these nuanced, representative environments.  However, to develop exemplars of such environments requires data collection and knowledge sharing about nuances associated with particular forms of critical infrastructure for different cultures.

The Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS) project will examine and model the nuances associated with two forms of critical infrastructure in different national cultures.  It will do so by building a network between Cybersecurity researchers at BU, and the Information Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection Laboratory at Athens University of Economics & Business (AUB). These nuances will be modelled as specification exemplars of UK and Greek water and rail companies. By developing these exemplars, researchers and practitioners will be able to conduct a cost-effective evaluation of new ideas based on realistic CI environments.  The exemplars will also help students appreciate the challenges associated with designing security for complex, real-world systems.  The exemplars will be modelled using the CAIRIS security design tool; this is an open-source software product maintained by researchers at BU. The data necessary to build these exemplars will be collected over a series of visits by AUB researchers to BU, and BU researcher to AUB.

Please contact Shamal Faily if you’re interested in finding out more about BANCIS, or getting involved in the project.

BU research in the spot light

PG research

Taylor & Francis one of the major international publishers publishes a list of top 20 most read/downloaded papers in the Journal of Adhesion Science & Technology. Three of the BU’s Sustainable Design Research Centre (now Cluster) recent publications are in the top 20 most read publications list, of which one is now the top most read publication.

It is note worthy that most of the publications in the top most read articles have been available since 2012. BU publications have been available since December 2014 and Mar/April 2015.

Current research in corrosion is conducted in collaboration with the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory Ministry of Defence and led by Dr Zulfiqar Khan. This research focuses on structural deterioration through corrosion, its monitoring and prediction. A second project in collaboration with the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory Ministry of Defence in wireless corrosion monitoring techniques will start soon.

A recently successful research in collaboration with The Tank Museum at Bovington in corrosion has led to significant contributions and has informed environmental controlled Vehicle Conservation Centre at the Museum.

If you have interests in this area or would like to know more about the corrosion, its implications on structural integrity, longevity, durability & reliability then do contact us.

Dr Zulfiqar Khan

Festival of Learning 2016: Call for Expressions of Interest- Now Open!

As one Festival of Learning ends, another one arises. The call for expressions of interest for FOL 2016 is now open – this is just the idea stage and is your opportunity to say that you’d like to be considered bubblesfor next year.

Over the past few years the Festival of Learning has had circa 5,000 visits. To further this success in 2016, we need you to host lectures, workshops and debates (or whatever type of engaging activity you can think of) showcasing our fantastic knowledge base at BU.

Why get involved?

  • It is a great opportunity to celebrate life at BU and share your passion with a different audience.
  • It can add fresh perspective to your research. Read this article about how public engagement can help you think about your research from a fresh perspective.
  • It can change people’s lives. Here in the Festival office we have been moved by members of the public telling us about how the Festival has helped reignite a passion for learning, helped support the growth of the charity and even helped people to walk barefoot on a beach for the first time in years.
  • It is a great networking opportunity. Colleagues involved in the Festival in previous years have developed partnerships which have, for example, led to collaborative PhD studentships.
  • It is fantastic for skills development. Especially for early career researchers, the Festival offers an unprecedented opportunity to develop communication techniques which engage members of the public and builds confidence in communicating complex ideas (essential for a future lecturing career!)
  • It helps to meet the expectation of funders and policy makers. The European Commission, HEFCE and our Research Councils (amongst others) expect researchers to demonstrate to the public the value of their research. The Festival provides of a great vehicle to do this as you will receive central support (e.g. for marketing) rather than going it alone.
  • It can support student recruitment. And not just undergraduates, but those looking for postgraduate courses and short courses who have never before considered BU as a potential place to study.

 

Stuck for Ideas?

We had some fantastic events at this year’s festival. Why not have a look at the website to see the kinds of things that went on. Listed below are some of the favourite events from 2015 that demonstrated some innovative and tactful ways to engage the public with research.

  • Zombie Science was a series of fun and interactive sessions looking into the causes of disease and infection control.
  • Jurassica was an event for children to learn about the incredible Jurassic Coast on our doorstep and an opportunity for them to create their own individual work of art to take home.
  • Improve your teamwork was an event that was ideal for individuals and businesses wanting to learn more about how individuals operate in teams, develop an understanding of team roles and ultimately, improve performance.
  • The cyber security awareness workshop gave attendees a chance to learn about the latest cyber threats, learn how secure their password is, and how people may be watching them with interactive demonstrations.
  • Radio drama involved the public in producing, developing and recording short form radio dramas for birst.co.uk and broadcasting them live at the end of the day, supported by actors, staff and students in the Media School. This gave the public a chance to see the radio studio at work behind the scenes.
  • Mindful over mindless was a talk that explained to the public how and why they should incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives to improve their wellbeing and explored the close relationship between the mind and body by drawing on the effects that modern living can have on our physiology.

 

What hasn’t been done before?

Well a lot certainly has been done but if you can think outside the box a bit, there are tonnes of new ways to engage the audience. We love what Science Ceilidh do. They run workshops of your favourite dances rejigged with a twist of science. From simulating your immune system with the Dashing White Blood Cell to swinging your partner DNA base-pairs in the Orcadian-Strip-the-Helix -They’re pulling all the stops out to make science enjoyable and understandable to everyone in an innovative way.

You don’t have to run a long event. Many members of the public actually prefer to attend an event which only lasts an hour or so, rather than for a whole day.

Fill out the expressions of interest application here to get involved. We’re completely open to ideas and we’d love to hear from you! Contact Naomi Kay for any queries.

Fusion Investment Fund – BU research collaboration with the University of Utah

I am glad to receive the Fusion Investment Fund to visit and establish the cooperation with the world famous Simulation & Electronic Animation Lab (SEALAB), the University of Utah, USA.

“Almost every influential person in the modern computer graphics community either passed through the University of Utah or came into contact with it in some way ”- From The Algorithmic Image: Graphic Visions of the Computer Age, by Robert Rivlin.

The University of Utah has one of the earliest and world leading computer graphics research groups, who developed the first display of computer animation in 1976. The University of Utah Medical Centre is one of the 100 Great Hospitals in America. As the key member, Prof. Ladislav is a recipient of an NSF (National Science Foundation) CAREER award which is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty. In the last ten years, Prof. Ladislav published many top-level papers on SIGGRAPH (ACM Transaction on Graphics), and the total number of citation of his work amounts to more than 900.​

The link between NCCA and SEALAB was firstly established by my PhD student Kun Qian. He has contacted Prof. Ladislav (one of the key members of SEALAB) long time ago to discuss various research questions on deformation. Due to the similarity of research interest, we were constantly in touch to discuss the solution of some challenging problems. Prof. Ladislav’s research focuses on geometry based shape deformations which is an essential technique in real-time medical simulation. Our research group has developed many advanced techniques of collision detection, haptic feedback and realistic rendering for real-time medical simulation. We will pay a visit to the University of Utah, combining the expertise and professional knowledge from both partners to perfect our system for the surgery training.

Xiaosong Yang

34th International Human Science Research Conference

I have recently returned from presenting at this conference in Trondheim, Norway. It was a very positive experience and there was a great deal of dialogue and networking  amongst the participants.

“The lived experience of intentional weight loss whilst living in a society with cultural expectations of thinness”

Dr Teresa Burdett

EC Info Day – Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy taking place on the 14th-15th Sept

Info Days

EC Info days: relating to Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy are being held on the: 14th-15th September 2015 in Brusselseuflag

Info days and brokerage events run by the EC are an opportunity to get an overview of work programmes covering the 2016 and 2017 calendar years, meet up and hear from others who are interested in the same programme and potentially form links and build consortia for future applications.

Please click on the link below to book or register your interest – please bear in mind places are limited

http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=events&eventcode=0B56FA95-AFE0-D63B-DD0527FE301EC26C

Please let Emily or myself know if you intend to go so we can co-ordinate if others also wish to attend.

Piirus – top five ways to find collaborators

The Piirus Blog is discussing the top five ways to find collaborators to further your research.

ideasAccording to their research Piirus found that 85% of researchers said collaboration with others helps drive research excellence and 79% of researchers think international research collaboration increases research productivity. In their recent survey, however, research managers ranked developing collaborations as one of their top challenges.

So what can you do?

  1. Decide the types of collaboration activities you seekPiirus
  2. Get tips on how to make collaborations in these areas work
  3. Find collaborators in your research field or from other disciplines
  4. Find people by research methodology or technique
  5. Find collaborators with experience in the equipment you need

Interested? Read more about this topic on the Pirrus Blog.

Piirus can help you make these connections. It is easy to sign up!

 

HE Policy Update

Monday

Staff Teaching Qualifications

It has been argued that the failure of universities to supply sufficiently robust data on staff teaching qualifications is another obstacle to the government’s bid to introduce a Teaching Excellence Framework. HEFCE has asked universities to reveal how many of their staff hold an accredited teaching qualification, with the information viewed as a potential metric in the teaching excellence framework. Lack of teaching qualification data seen as blow to TEF (THE).

NUS

The NUS Vice-President for Higher Education has argued that traditional methods of assessment such as exams and essays “privileged people from certain backgrounds”, particularly the privately educated, and that getting a good mark often reflected “that you know how to play the game” rather than “the effort you have put in or the learning that has gone on”. NUS vice-president blames university teaching for struggles of poorer students (THE).

Students in Work

The insurance company Endsleigh has revealed that three out of every four students are working either part or full-time to help fund their way through university. Three out of every four students working to help fund university, according to new figures (The Independent).

Tuesday

International Students

Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield discusses the integration of international students studying in the UK. He argues that one of the greatest challenges may be convincing home students that they can benefit from working and socialising with international students. Get UK students out of comfort zone and engaging with international peers (The Guardian).

University Admissions

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire has argued that there should be a longer-term aim to move to a system of applying to university after students know their result, rather than the current system of relying on predicted grades to receive conditional offers. University applications ‘should come after results’ (BBC News).

Wednesday

NSS

The National Student Survey results revealed that undergraduate satisfaction has held steady despite the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in England. National Student Survey 2015: £9K fees fail to dent satisfaction (THE).

Thursday

QAA

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has responded to the current quality assessment review. Their response reveals that the QAA supports most of the principles behind the consultation. However, it argues that the UK Quality Code should be reformed rather than removed. Fighting for survival (Research Professional).

A-Level Results

A-Level results revealed that more than 409,000 students have been accepted on to UK higher education courses, a record high and a rise of 3 per cent on the same point last year. Figures also reveal that the gender gap in university admissions continues to widen, with 27,000 more young women than men set to enrol. A-level results 2015: record number of students accepted into UK higher education (THE).

Friday

HE Funding

A report due to be published next month by the influential thinktank, Policy Exchange, argues for funding to be redistributed from university to FE provision. The report is expected to argue that FE colleges would be better placed to meet the growing demand for higher-level technical qualifications than universities, so government funding should be allocated accordingly. Cut university budgets to fund FE, suggests thinktank (THE).

FREE – Places for BU Staff and PhD Students for Creative Approaches in Dementia Masterclass

Research themes, Training

BUDI have a few free places available for BU staff and PhD Students to attend its masterclass entitled “Creative Approaches in Dementia” being held on Wednesday 30 September. This masterclass will be an interactive session which will be exploring the power and potential of creativity in supporting good practice and positive experiences of living with dementia.

Our speakers are:

Derek Eland, artist; Jonny Fluffypunk, poet; Andrew Baker, musician and Sharon Muiruri, drama specialist.

To read the flyer please click here . To book your free place please contact Dr Samuel Nyman at snyman@bournemouth.ac.uk

A year in the Life of an Early Career Researcher

Grants Academy

I joined BU as a lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication on 1 September 2014, three months after being awarded my PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Salford.

So, as the anniversary of my appointment approaches, I consider it timely to reflect on my first year as a full-time academic. I hope that my experience will be of interest to others starting new academic roles this year, at a similar stage in their careers.

To put my experience in context, while technically an early career researcher, I’m no spring chicken! I was a very mature PhD student (even though no-one ever guesses my real age) and joined BU with baggage in tow!

The eclectic baggage I brought with me was six years’ experience as a lecturer in higher education on a part-time basis combined with a variety of other roles including journalist, research assistant, blogger, PhD student, social entrepreneur and Chief Executive of Black British Academics.

I arrived at BU with drive, motivation and ambition intact, after four years of intense doctoral study, with my carefully prepared 5-year research plan, diligently completed after receiving my PhD award, which accompanied me to my interview at BU in June 2014.

By my own observations, the first five years post PhD is make-or-break time. With aspirations to become a professor one day, performing the yearly regime of international conferences, journal articles, books, book chapters and funding bids are necessary tasks.

My primary area of research in media and communication is centred on racial constructions and representations in media and popular culture and how race shapes and influences engagement with and use of digital technologies.  My PhD thesis is a study on the social, cultural and counterhegemonic practices of Black British bloggers.

DG-MPG-Nov2013

A the Media and Politics Group conference

Year 1 of my 5-year research plan included developing publications from my PhD thesis. In November 2013 I had presented a paper from the chapter: Alternative Voices, Alternative Spaces, Counterhegemonic Discourse in the Blogosphere at BU for the Media and Politics Group annual conference. It won the James Thomas Memorial Prize, and is the first chapter in a new book being published with Palgrave Macmillan in September, edited by four faculty colleagues, called Media, Margins and Civic Agency.

I presented another chapter of my thesis at the Cyberspace conference in the Czech Republic in November 2014, which I recently submitted for review at Information, Communication and Society: Blogging While Black, British and Female: A Critical Study on Discursive Activism.

A third chapter: Challenging the Whiteness of Britishness: Co-Creating British Social History in the Blogosphere, was presented at the ICCMTD conference in Dubai in May, and has been accepted for publication in the Online Journal of Media and Communication Technologies for a special issue in September.

My PhD thesis now exhausted publication-wise, I am currently focusing on three strands of research: race and ethnicity in media and communication, pedagogies of social justice and cultural democracy and race equality and cultural democracy. These research interests are broadly linked to three key dimensions of my role as an academic: 1) research (extending knowledge within my discipline) 2) education (teaching), and 3)professional practice.

Cultural democracy, a recurring theme in my research, is a conceptual framework developed in the US more than a decade ago, surprisingly unfamiliar and underexplored on this side of the Atlantic. However, I plan to change that by advancing understanding through research based on its application in practice. After setting up the Cultural Democracy Network in May, shortly after being awarded a small grant from the Grants Academy to develop partnerships with UK-based institutions, I was invited to deliver a guest lecture on cultural democracy to 14 journalists at Research Fortnight’s London offices.

DG at RG [2] 260515

At Research Fortnight

Two of my current research projects represent research papers based on consultancy projects completed this past year. The first is a journal article I am co-authoring with Prof Kevin Hylton called Culturally Democratic Voices: Enhancing Race Equality Through Minority Staff Experiences, which we plan to submit to Race, Ethnicity and Education.

The second is a co-authored paper with Aisha Richards called Social Justice Pedagogy and Cultural Democracy: Promoting Inclusion and Equality in Further and Higher Education. It has just been accepted for presentation at the IAFOR International Conference on Education taking place in Hawaii in January, and we hope it will be selected for publication in the Journal of Education.

I have a book chapter coming out in September being published by Verlag Springer called Race, Racism and Resistance In British Academia, which I presented at the Surviving in a White Institution symposium at Leeds University in May, organised by the Critical Race and Ethnicities Network.

Finally, I am co-editor of a book project with Dr Shirley Tate, an Associate Professor in sociology at Leeds University, which is a collection of autoethnographies called Hear Us: Women Academics of Colour: Surviving and Thriving in British Academia, which we plan to publish next Autumn. It is a project I developed for the Black Sister Network at Black British Academics.

It has been a busy and productive year as an early career researcher, and in terms of my plans for the year ahead, this will be focused on the completion of work in progress, developing a funding bid and turning my attention to new areas of research.

One of these areas is advertising, which will inform my teaching on the BA Advertising degree. I plan to examine issues around constructions and representations of race and gender in TV advertising, examining audience perceptions. The other new area of research which builds on my doctoral study is engagement with digital technologies among Black elders.

In terms of the 5-year research plan I started out with, I discarded it within the first three months! I prefer to work with a yearly plan as I have found that in practice, the research culture and environment is too fluid, dynamic and constantly changing to plan specific publications so far in advance.

However, it is still a useful exercise post PhD to prompt thinking about the areas of research to focus on and the types of research projects to undertake. I have a target for publications and funding bids I aim to complete by 2019 – just before REF2020, so forward planning helps to ensure I stay on track!

By Dr Deborah Gabriel, Lecturer in Politics, Media and Marketing Communications in the Faculty of Media and Communication.

Creative Skillset – news & updates – August 2015

Business Engagement

theme - creative-digitalView all of these stories and more in full:

News

* Trailblazer apprenticeships on the way: Help build your ideal apprentice

* Tick talent takes jobs: Why to Pick the Tick as we celebrate our graduates’ success

* Film and TV Launchpad: A stellar line-up for our Tick graduates

 Opportunities

* Are you in the 500?: Digital companies can pledge a vacancy for the Tech London 500 talent pool

* Film Trainee Finder: Film placements open!

* The Old Vic 12 hit Hiive: New competition for directors, playwrights, producers, and designers

 Events

* Edinburgh TV Festival: We’re sponsoring with inspirational diversity sessions

* Into Film Festival: Open students’ eyes at over 2,500 free screenings for 5-19s

* Open Doors Meetups: 16-24? Find your digital career at our next company-hosted meetup

About Creative Skillset