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Palgrave Macmillan publish their first open access monograph funded by the Wellcome Trust

You may be aware of the recent HEFCE consultation on the role of open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework.  In this consultation HEFCE asked HEIs whether they agreed that the criteria for open access should apply only to journal articles and conference proceedings for the post-2014 REF or should this be extended to monographs.

The Wellcome Trust, who are committed to open access, has now extended its open access policy to include all scholarly monographs and book chapters written by its grantholders as part of their Trust-funded research – the extended policy became effective for holders of grants awarded after 1 October 2013 and for existing grantholders from October 2014.

Today Palgrave Macmillan have published their first open access monograph, funded by The Wellcome Trust.  Read the full press release here.

Fungal Disease in Britain and the United States 1850-2000, by Dr Aya Homei and Professor Michael Worboys, is now available as a free ebook to download from Palgrave Connect and online retailers such as Amazon Kindle.  It will also be added to the BU Library Catalogue.

 

Horizon 2020 Climate Action calls and info day slides!

The orientation paper for Societal Challenge 5: Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials call has been published!

If you work in this area, reading this document will provide you with the expected main topics of the 2014 work programme so is a key resource at this early stage! The presentations from the info day which recently took place in Brussels are also available for anyone who couldn’t make it.

Demand management works says RCUK

I have heard one of two grumbles over the years over our mandatory internal peer review for Research Council (RCUK) proposals and this can sometimes seem like an ‘additional hurdle’ to get through in making a submission. BU is not alone in having a mandatory review process for RCUK grants and we implemented this, as did others around the UK, on the back of demand management measures initiated by some of the Research Councils (such as the EPSRC who will ban repeatedly unsuccessful applicants from making further submissions for 12 months). To help ensure no one at BU is unable to bid for the calls they wish to, we want to offer this extra support to our academic community in helping them submit the best possible application that they can.

At BU we have seen success rates with RCUK funders increase due to the utilisation of the RPRS. Today Times Higher Education announced that due to initiatives taken by BU and other institutions in reviewing applications before submission, across the board RCUK success rates for funding have risen. The ESRC responsive mode scheme for instance has gone from a 14% success rate in 2011-12 to a 16% success rate in 2012-13.

Helping ensure fewer numbers of lowe quality bids are submitted to RCUK funders facilitates a reduction in administration costs, which can then be redistributed into funding calls. This is great news for the funders and for applicants and potential applicants.

We are reviewing how the internal peer review process works at BU to make it even more useful and ever less bureaucratic to help any RCUK applicants and indeed applicants for any funding bodies. More details on this will be placed on the blog soon!

BOOK yourself into our last FUSION Awareness Session or our Bid Writing Workshop – Get as much help as you can…

Fusion, Training

For those of you who missed out on our valuable Fusion Awareness session yesterday Wednesday the 13th of November do not panic we are holding one more more session on:

Monday the 18th of November at 2-3pm in The Casterbridge Room (THS) Poole House – Talbot Campus

For any questions that you may have on Fusion specifically or for more information on the scheme and application process we would recommend you attend this last session (before the deadline – 13th of Dec at 2pm) where the manager of the Fusion Investment Scheme (FIF) Sam Leahy-Harland will be on hand with some of the Fusion panel committee members to answer your questions and to run through some useful information on applying to the scheme.

We also have some spaces on the Fusion Awareness Workshop Targeting the Fusion Fund with Martin Pickard on:

Wednesday the  20th of November from 9:30 – 12 midday in Christchurch House (CG04) on Talbot Campus 

This Workshop is an ideal opportunity to get some tips and advice from our expert bid writer and to further improve your chances with your own Fusion bid applications 

If you wish to book into either the Fusion Awareness Session on the 18th of November or the Fusion Workshop on the 20th of November with Martin please would you send me an email Dianne Goodman ASAP and I’ll get you booked in.

Don’t delay and give yourself the best chance !!!       

With three funding strands available for staff there are a wealth of opportunities for both academic and professional support staff to take advantage of:                                                                                                                     

 In the July round:

  • the Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand committee  funded 18 applications in July totalling £73K. 
  •  the Study Leave strand (SL) committee awarded £107K.
  •  the Co-Creation and Co-Production (CCCP) strand was the most popular of the three in round one with 47 applications. A total of £92K was awarded to successful applicants.

 For all the updated strand policy documents, Fund FAQ’s and information about applying, please visit the FIF intranet pages.

 

The BUDI Themes – how you can get involved with dementia research!

Research themes


The Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) continues to expand and build on its excellent start since its launch in May 2012. We are pleased to have recently welcomed three research assistants to the team who are helping prepare grant proposals for various research and enterprise income. On the 24 October BUDI held an away day with 25 staff (7 others were unable to attend) to discuss our strategy for meeting our targets for developing successful research proposals. While we had a successful meeting and are energised to write research grant proposals, the BUDI team would like to extend an invitation to colleagues from across all schools to partner with us in writing bids for research and enterprise income. 

To this end, BUDI will be hosting an informal tea / coffee and cake morning on Tuesday 28 January 2014 in The Retreat, for staff to come and meet the team and discuss their potential collaboration with BUDI on dementia research projects. 

To help staff see where they might work with BUDI, we have summarised the five BUDI themes below. Under each theme we engage in research, and provide consultancy, service evaluation, and education / training services. However for this event, we are looking in particular to partner with colleagues in developing research grant proposals:

Theme 1: Dementia Awareness and Knowledge Translation
This theme is about raising awareness of dementia in the community and translating knowledge into practice. It is about challenging stereotypes and assumptions made of people with dementia. For example, we are holding an ESRC-funded public engagement event on dementia and showcasing the work of BUDI.

For more information, please contact Anthea Innes or Clare Cutler.
http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/dementia-awareness-education-and-knowledge-translation/

Theme 2: Dementia Friendly Environments
This theme is about making sure that the environments in which people live and frequent are designed in a manner that is accessible for people with dementia. For example, ensuring care homes and hospitals are designed to help prevent people getting lost and able to access toilets, gardens.

For more information, please contact Jan Wiener or Mariela Gaete-Reyes.
http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/dementia-friendly-environments/

Theme 3: Improving Services and Care Provision
This theme is about striving to provide the best in health and social care for people with dementia and best support for their carers. For example, working with care homes and community services to evaluate and improve the care they provide so that it better meets the needs and preferences of individuals.

For more information, please contact Samuel Nyman or Clare Cutler.
http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/improving-services-and-care-provision/

Theme 4: Dementia Friendly Leisure
This theme is about working with the leisure and tourism industry to improve the accessibility of services so that they can be enjoyed by people with dementia. For example, helping museums, art galleries, hoteliers, etc. become more dementia friendly to facilitate social participation by people with dementia in their local community and tourist sites.

For more information, please contact Stephen Page or Anthea Innes
http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/dementia-friendly-tourism-and-leisure/

Theme 5: Leadership, Education and Staff Development
This theme is about influencing leaders and managers so that organisations can improve their dementia awareness and effectiveness in serving people with dementia. It is also about developing the knowledge and skills of staff who directly serve people with dementia.

For more information, please contact Rick Fisher or Anthea Innes
http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/leadership-and-staff-development/

We hope that many colleagues will be able to attend the event and foster research proposals together. If you are able to attend, please inform Michelle O’Brien mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk in advance by Monday 20 January for catering purposes. If you are unable to attend but would like to discuss a research theme, please contact the relevant theme lead mentioned above.

 

The BUDI team

Social Work in Palestine

Women's Academic Network

Conference logo

Social Work in Palestine, 2nd conference Palestine-UK Social Work Network
The 2nd National Conference of the Palestine-UK Social Work Network, supported by members of the British Association of Social Work, was held on the 12th November at the Amnesty International Centre off dingy Shoreditch High Street, and was an absolute bargain. For a registration fee of only £15.00 it offered a programme of rare value and threw in a two-course vegetarian lunch as well. It was also one of the most compelling and powerful conferences that I’ve ever had the privilege of attending. One heard with almost disbelief and certainly intense disquiet several level-headed presentations reporting the daily and systematic oppression of the Palestinian people, and the fragmentation of any semblance to normality through the enforced occupation of the territories that has continued for over sixty years.

To try to convey what this means, Prof. Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian Ambassador claims that every single Palestinian living under occupation suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. We also learned what ‘peace’ has meant for these people over the last twenty years since the Oslo Agreement 1993: 7,000 Palestinians killed, twelve thousand+ Palestinian homes destroyed, a further 250,000+ Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories, and finally, 441 miles of apartheid walls built to corral people into armed, patrolled ghettoes.

Jerusalem, historical home of so many Palestinians, is subject to what Issa Rabadi, Officer of the Palestinian Union of Social Workers & Psychologists, described as an ‘undeclared war of ethnic cleansing’, where apparently the goal of the occupational authorities is that the Palestinian population should not exceed 15-20% by the Year 2020. To this end, one third of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem are at risk of being demolished on the official grounds that these are illegal lodgings, with a predicted peak of destruction of homes due in 2014. Yet, apparently gaining legal rights to live in Jerusalem for resident Palestinians is so complex and protracted a process (lasting decades in many cases) that ‘Kafkaesque’ hardly begins to describe it.

The most distressing stories, unsurprisingly, referred to the detainment and torture of Palestinians; particularly those accounts concerning Palestinian children. Many of these child prisoners are as young as 12- or 13-years-old, and are arrested normally on the charge of throwing stones at the occupying forces. This was exemplified by the experiences of speaker, Mohammed Abu al Reesh, who was arrested on two separate occasions in his recent boyhood and subjected on both occasions to brutal physical maltreatment and psychological intimidation throughout this time. Mohammed’s story was by no means exceptional, rather than the reverse. In addition to physical abuse children may also be placed in solitary confinement for up to a month where the only contact is their interrogator. Arrested and imprisoned children are not normally permitted to see their families and even accessing legal support is achieved only with great difficulty. In the case of Mohammed, within a fortnight of being released from his last sentence, he enrolled at university, eventually gaining a BA in media studies with the ambition, now achieved, of becoming a journalist in order to better inform the world of human rights violations taking place in the territories.

So where does social work feature in this catalogue of utter wretchedness? The Global Agenda for Social Work, which seeks to unite social work educators and practitioners universally in the promotion of this year’s theme ‘Promoting social and economic inequalities’, directly resonates with the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Palestinian social workers live and work under the same high levels of daily oppression and insecurities as the communities they courageously serve. They are unsupported by State legal systems or by Israeli fellow social workers, who to-date appear ominously aloof to the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. As lecturer, Barry Levine of Glasgow Caledonian University, also pointed out, any international criticism of state tactics is very likely to result in accusations of anti-Semitism, which effectively serves to stifle debate and to muddy attempts towards a clearer understanding of what constitutes discrimination and oppression in the territories.

Despite this, the Palestine-UK social work network is actively seeking collegial links with anyone interested in the Palestinian plight to further the goals of the Global Agenda and to constructively work towards peace. To this end, plans are being made to hold the next conference in Jerusalem, where hopefully UK social worker academics and practitioners will be able to witness the situation for ourselves; and equally importantly, show solidarity with social work colleagues internationally.

Hurry the FIF up! 4 weeks until the deadline!

Funding opportunities, Fusion

 

 

 

If you haven’t already sent in your application, don’t panic! There’s still time. With three funding strands available for staff there are a wealth of opportunities for both academic and professional support staff to take advantage of:                                                                                                                             

 In the July round:

  • the Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand committee  funded 18 applications in July totalling £73K. 
  •  the Study Leave strand (SL) committee awarded £107K.
  •  the Co-Creation and Co-Production (CCCP) strand was the most popular of the three in round one with 47 applications. A total of £92K was awarded to successful applicants.

 For all the updated strand policy documents, Fund FAQ’s and information about applying, please visit the FIF intranet pages.

 

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland. Please direct all initial enquiries to the Interim Fusion Administrator, Dianne Goodman, at Fusion Fund.

The Teaching Exchange Workshop Goes International

Training

Developed by Bournemouth University’s Dr. Anna Feigenbaum alongside Dr. Mehita Iqani, the Teaching Exchange Workshop was designed to foster a space for collegiate interaction and sharing experiences of the challenges and opportunities involved in teaching. Piloted at five Universities across the country in 2010-2011 through support from the Higher Education Academy, the Teaching Exchange Workshop offers colleagues a chance to work through departmental issues including curriculum development, diverse student expectations, and teaching time management.

Participating institution, the London School of Economics and Politics, said the workshop activities “got colleagues thinking creatively and learning from each other. These could be applied by any department wanting to improve teaching practice and make best use of their staff’s experience and knowledge.”

On November 8, 2013 Dr. Feigenbaum was invited to South Africa to facilitate the first international Teaching Exchange Workshop at Wits University in Johannesburg. Drawing on successes of the pilot workshops in the UK, the Wits workshop featured new participatory exercises for generating innovative assignments that bridge practice and theory, and for problem-solving challenges associated with teaching in a time of 24/7 email and social media access.

As a low-cost and high productivity model for teaching quality enhancement, Dr. Feigenbaum and Dr. Iqani are keen to see the TE Workshop continue to grow both nationally and internationally. To learn more about the Teaching Exchange Workshop, you can download a free TE Workshop handbook. You can also read a sample of pilot study results published in the Journal of Further and Higher Education.

Congratulations and Good Luck

News from the PVC

October saw an increase in activity for bids being submitted and a number of awards were won with congratulations due to Schools for winning research grants, consultancy contracts and organising Short Courses.

For ApSci, congratulations are due to Adrian Pinder for his consultancies with Natural England, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, and Aluna Foundation, to Paola Palma for her contract with English Heritage, and to Jonny Monteith for his consultancies with Churchfield Farm, Roofing Cladding & Building Ltd, Sembcorp Bournemouth Water Ltd, Anesco, and Sherborne Castle Estates.  Good luck to Adrian Pinder, Roger Herbert and Adrian Newton for their consultancy to New Forest National Park Authority, and to Grants Academy member Amanda Korstjens for her application to AHRC investigating the feedback loops between our diets, societies and bodies.

For the Business School, good luck to Tim Ford, Mark Painter and Dean Patton for their consultancy to RBS Group, to Grants Academy member Max Lowenstein for his application to Socio-Legal Studies Association, to George Filis and Hossein Hassani who have submitted individual applications to the British Academy, to Aroean Lukman for his contract to the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science, to Juliet Memery and Dawn Birch for their application to British Academy of Management, and to Huiping Xian and Julie Robson who have submitted individual applications to the British Academy of Management.

For DEC, congratulations to Hongnian Yu and Shuang Cang (ST) for their Erasmus Mundus award with the European Commission, to Bob Eves and Siamak Noroozi for their Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Consolor, to Biao Zeng and Jian Jun Zhang (MS) for their contract with Hunan Tianpei IT Ltd for a match funded student, and to Zulfiqar Khan and Mark Hadfield for their contract with Future Energy Source.  Good luck to Katherine Appleton for separate applications to the MRC and ESRC, to Sarah Williams for her application to NIHR, to Simon Thompson and Jian Jun Zhang (MS) for their application to the British Academy identifying yawning in neurological disorders by facial capture techniques, to Jan Weiner, Samuel Nyman and Anthea Innes (HSC) for their application to Alzheimer’s Research UK, to Jianbing Ma who has applied to the Royal Society, and to Tania Humphries-Smith, Nigel Garland, Mark Hadfield, Clive Hunt and Philip Sewell for their EPDE conference with the Institute of Engineering Designers.

For HSC, congratulations are due to Anthea Innes and Michele Board for their successful Erasmus LLP with the European Commission, to Anthea Innes, Michele Board, Sarah Hambidge, Samuel Nyman and Jan Weiner for their ESRC Festival of Social Science application ‘Dementia in Dorset – what does this mean for you?’, and to Lee-Ann Fenge, Maggie Hutchings, Jen Leamon and Anne Quinney for their ESRC Festival of Social Science application ‘Promoting dignity through understanding narratives of care’, and to Anthea Innes for her contract with Quantum LifeCare.  Good luck to Sara Crabtree and Gail Thomas for their application to Wellcome Trust, to Jonathan Parker and Sara Crabtree for their application to the British Academy, to Luisa Cescutti-Butler for her short courses to Great Western Hospital NHS Trust and to Eastbourne District General Hospital, to Vanora Hundley, Edwin Van Teijlingen and Ann Luce for their application to the British Academy, and to Anthea Innes for her Wellcome Trust application.

Congratulations to the MS for Jian Jun Zhang, Jian Chang and Lihua You for their successful European Commission application for user centred computer animation techniques, they also, together with Xiaosong Yang, successfully secured a second European Commission application for ‘Dr Inventor’, to Stephanie Farmer for her consultancies with Borough of Poole and also Tribal Education Ltd, which the latter was joint with Anthony Minto, to Liam Toms for his consultancy with Doppelganger Productions, and to Rebecca Jenkins and Grants Academy member Mike Molesworth for their consultancy with Work Research Ltd.  Good luck to Barry Richards and Roman Gerodimos for their application to AHRC, to Chris Pullen for his application to the British Academy, to Roman Geromidos for his submission to The Spencer Foundation, to Jian Chang, Hongchuan Yu and Jian Jun Zhang for their Royal Society of Medicine application researching smart mobile production of computer animation, to Jamie Matthews for his application to the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, to Lihua You and Jian Jun Zhang for their Royal Society application, and to Julian McDougall and Ashley Woodfall for their application to NESTA.

For ST, congratulations to Lisa Stuchberry and Jon Hibbert for their contract with Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group (NHS), to Richard Gordon and Mike Evans (ApSci) for their consultancies with the British High Commission Nigeria and also with the British Embassy, and to Ehren Milner for his consultancy with Dorset County Council.  Good luck to Grants Academy member Alessandro Inversini for his ESRC application on strategic and tactical use of tourism technologies in developing countries, to Andrew Adams for his British Academy application, to Grants Academy member Debbie Sadd for her Leverhulme Trust application, to Charles McIntyre for his consultancy to Winchester Council, and to Ehren Milner for his consultancy to Bath Museum Partnership.

Professional services staff can apply too….FIF-tastic!

Funding opportunities, Fusion

Not only does the Fusion Investment Fund provide opportunities for academic staff at BU, there are also options for professional services staff:

Staff can apply to Erasmus which is most appropriate for enabling academic and professional staff based at higher education institutions (HEIs) to spend a period of training or teaching between 5 working days and 6 weeks in a European HEI or enterprise.  Under training mobility, the purpose is to allow the staff members to acquire knowledge or skills relevant for their current job and their professional development and to help create cooperation between organisations. There are also opportunities to invite staff from enterprises to Bournemouth University to give presentations and provide teaching. Professional staff can undertake training at a European educational institution.

Another option is to apply to the standard element of the Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand. Non-academic staff must be able to demonstrate through their application how their travel will benefit the academic process within BU and particular focus should be placed on the creation of sustainable collaborative networks of academics or professionals linked to specific outputs or partnership developments. 

 For more information please read the relevant policy documents and information available on the FIF intranet pages.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and the Interim Administrator is Dianne Goodman. Please direct all initial enquiries to Fusion Fund.

FIF says ‘If you prefer to stay put, let the professionals and/or academics come to you!’

Funding opportunities, Fusion

Did you know that under the FIF you can invite an academic or professional to BU in respect to the development of projects or to provide training which is linked to any aspect of Fusion?

 

2 elements of the Fusion Investment Fund provide support for inward mobility:

The Standard element of the Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand supports UK or overseas travel and subsistence in pursuit of any aspect of Fusion – research, education, and/or professional practice – with no minimum or maximum duration. Awards made will be between £1k and £10k. Particular focus should be placed on the creation of sustainable collaborative networks of academics or professionals linked to specific outputs or partnership developments. 

The Erasmus element of the Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand provides opportunities to invite staff from enterprises to Bournemouth University to give presentations and provide teaching.

For more information please read the relevant policy documents and information available on the FIF intranet pages.

 The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and the Interim Administrator is Dianne Goodman. Please direct all initial enquiries to Fusion Fund.

Why the RPRS is more than just another BU hoop in submitting a proposal

Undertaking internal peer review (the RPRS) at BU became mandatory for all Research Council UK (RCUK) applications over a year ago in response to many funders demand management measures (which include banning applicants with two unsuccessful proposals within a time frame from applying to that funder for 12 months). The European Commission will also bring in demand management measures for all European Research Council grants under Horizon 2020.

But the RPRS is more than just a mandatory hoop for RCUK grants. In fact, most of the applications we receive are on a voluntary basis for a range of funders and schemes and those who have undergone it once, tend to use the scheme several times because of the value it adds.  Indeed an analysis of recent RCUK submissions to the RPRS found that it has a 44% success rate when the proposals are sent off to the funder and with some finders such as the ESRC having a 15% success rate in 2012 – that is not a bad statistic!

The RPRS has been described by applicants as a ‘very valuable service’ giving a ‘positive’ experience. Not only are the comments helpful in further refining the bid, but the peer support helped eradicate the loneliness which often accompanies writing a proposal ‘[The RPRS] is a great support when writing bids – it can be a lonely business sometimes.

If you haven’t used the RPRS yet, why not give it a go for your next proposal?

 

BUDI – Hot in Malta

In October, five members of the BUDI team attended the annual Alzheimer’s Europe International Conference 2013, hosted on the very beautiful (and very hot) Island of Malta. This annual conference attracts practitioners, academics, carers, people with dementia, medical professionals and clinicians from all over the world.

This year Bournemouth University was represented by the BUDI team who were accepted to present four oral presentations (Ben Hicks, Clare Cutler, Anthea Innes and Derek Eland) and one poster presentation (Clare Cutler) showcasing some of BUDI’s innovative projects (Technology Club, Tales of the Sea, Malta Hospital Care, (Don’t) mention Dementia and War and dementia).

In addition to the presentations, BUDI was also invited to exhibit the (Don’t) Mention Dementia project in the main foyer of the conference suite. The exhibition attracted many people who filmed and photographed the exhibition.  Some people were physically touched by the stories and enquired about how this method could be replicated in other countries to give people with dementia a voice.

On the last day of the conference our very own Anthea Innes was invited to provide the closing conference key note speech. Anthea’s presentation touched on many of the challenges faced by people living with dementia and stressed that there is still much important work to do to make our societies dementia friendly to enable those living with dementia to live well with dementia. Whilst the presentation focused on the hard times ahead, it was concluded with a wonderful feel good message (provided by the voices of High School musical) that ‘we are all in this together’! This got a lot of laughs and was a great way to end the conference.

 

Above and beyond presenting we were given the opportunity to network with world leading dementia specialists at the annual INTERDEM evening meal and the Alzheimer’s Gala dinner (which had a very good band although you couldn’t really understand what the singer was saying, but never the less, you could hum along to the tune). The Gala dinner was preceded with a special visit to the Maltase Presidents summer palace, where the delegates were taken around sections of the very old and very beautiful house and gardens.  

After much hard work presenting, networking, and profiling BUDI and BU, we ended the conference with an evening relaxing on the beach and a bit of a boogie in a local bar!

 

Since being home we have started following up contacts made at the conference and look forward to some potential collaborations.

 

Clare Cutler, BUDI Project Manager