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NIHR Research Design Service Grant Applications Workshop

The Research Design Service South West (RDS SW) is running a one-day grant applications workshop on 7th November 2013 at Taunton Racecourse, Somerset.

The grant applications workshop is directed at researchers who are considering applying to peer-reviewed funding competitions for applied health or social care research, and is intended to allow them to turn good applications into excellent ones.

If you are interested in attending the workshop you will need to submit an application form and the latest draft of your research proposal by 1pm on Monday 14th October 2013.

For more information and to download an application form please go to http://www.rds-sw.nihr.ac.uk/gaw.htm.

How to create the perfect profile

Guidance

BRIAN

The academic profile in BRIAN can hold a wide range of information about professional activities, publications and (shortly) grants.  As the information in BRIAN is used to populate the profile page which is available to anyone on the web, it is important that there is a minimum set of information that everyone maintains.  This minimum set of information will ensure that everyone’s academic profile contains entries for the same types of data, ensuring a consistent level of information across all profiles within the University.

The profile pages are displayed whenever anyone from inside or outside the University seeks information on a member of academic staff.  The external viewers include other academics who may be seeking collaboration partners, potential students, commercial enterprises investigating research or enterprise possibilities etc.  It is particularly important that those who are potentially being put forward for the REF have full external profiles.

To attain the minimum standard that has been defined for BRIAN, please ensure you have entries in the following areas.

  • Biography
  • Research theme
  • Keywords
  • Qualifications
  • Publications

In line with the new version of BRIAN, we have prepared a document ‘BRIAN – Minimum data requirements‘ containing examples of the information required.  This is especially relevant for the biography where recent examples of engaging biographies demonstrate what can be achieved.

Once the new version of BRIAN is deployed, we will add some more areas to the minimum standard.  These are:

  • Research
  • Grants
  • Photograph

In the new version of BRIAN, you will be able to maintain your photograph yourself.

Academic staff are encouraged to go beyond this minimum level and to record and maintain as much of their academic lives in BRIAN as possible.  We encourage you to use BRIAN as a living academic CV and to ensure that your research information and publications are always up to date.

There is no need to delay in adding and updating your information in BRIAN.  All the information you add to the current version of BRIAN will be carried across to the new version at the end of the month.

At last! Grant records on BRIAN

Guidance

BRIANAnother feature of the new version of BRIAN, when it is released later this month, will be the ability to record details of grants.

What makes a grant suitable for inclusion in BRIAN?  Well, it must have been awarded but you can include those that have been completed.  It is advisable to only include grants that are significant such as those from prestigious funders, of significant value, etc.  Courses and conferences are not suitable and so should not be included. 

The reason for the above is that the grant information that you put into BRIAN will be displayed in the new staff profile pages (live in October). 

Another useful feature is that you can mark a grant as a favourite.  Grants marked in this way appear on the home page of your external profile and have increased visibility.

Grant information can be added to BRIAN in the same way as you add publication or professional activity information.   The mandatory information required to enter a grant consists of: PI name, project title, funder name, start and end date, value and status (awarded, in progress or completed).  Other information can also be captured.  Grants can be linked to other BU staff and also to your publications.

More guidance will be provided at the launch of the new version of BRIAN.  In the interim, please give some thought to any grants that would be suitable for your BRIAN profile.

Academic writing workshop in Bangkok

Fusion, Training

As part of his visit to Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok to plan the FIF-supported conference that will be held in November, Prof Tom Watson of the Media School delivered a well-attended workshop on Academic Writing.

Four leading universities – Chulalongkorn, Assumption, Mahidol and NIDA – sent over 40 academic staff and doctoral students to the workshop held in the host’s Faculty of Communication Arts building on September 3.

“There is a strong push to develop research and publication outputs in Thailand, so the workshop was well-timed to catch that wave,” said Prof Watson. “Our colleagues at Chulalongkorn did a first-rate job in organising and promoting the event.

“The workshop was also excellent public diplomacy by BU to support so many academics in such a targeted manner. It helps build our reputation in Thailand which is sending more Masters and doctoral students to the UK. Previously Australia and the USA were the main destinations.”

The workshop also gave an opportunity to experience one of the venues to be used by the 1st International Corporate and Marketing Communication in Asia Conference on November 18-19.

 

Working with TV production students in Mumbai and Poole

Fusion, Training

As part of the Fusion Fund Study Leave strand, my company, Sequoia Films, took on ten BU students on broadcast production work experience while at the same time updating my professional practice.

“As a camera specialist in my final year, I was very exited to be selected to take part in this Fusion Project. Having the opportunity to work abroad on an international broadcast project, such as this, was a fantastic experience. Being able to work alongside an industry professional (Sue Sudbury) and see how they operate was fascinating, especially seeing the relationship between filmmaker and contributor, a relationship that I have only ever experienced at a student level. This is something especially useful to me as I hope to work in documentary in the future” –   Oliver Clubb, BA (Hons) Television Production.

  • A cut from the Indian shoot was then screened to international broadcasters (VPRO, NHK, SVT, NRK, SBS) in June at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival. This is the link to the film – password is space2014 http://vimeo.com/68954605. The actual satellite launch has been delayed so the finished film has been too but you should see it on your screens in 2014 or 2015!

It was great to be back in the industry actually practicing what I teach – producing and directing documentaries. I was asked to sit on London’s BVE  EXPO exhibition panel session “Ground-breaking documentaries: techniques for gaining access, dealing with cultural difference and how to approach sensitive subjects to uncover and capture the unknown” – It was great to be on the panel with Jessie Versluys, one of our ex-BATV students, now a BAFTA award winning producer/director, who self-shot Katie My Beautiful Face and most recently, C4’s The Murder Workers. We managed to get in a plug for the TV Production degree at Bournemouth! Afterwards, I was able to be on the BU stand at the EXPO so prospective students really saw Fusion in practice with genuine links between academic staff and industry.

The session was chaired by multi BAFTA-winning Brian Woods (MD of True Vision) and this has led to us working together on developing a new project. Will post about this when have more news.

 

 

 

 

 

Being Creative?

Some would say, me included, that BU has until recently been rather insular and not very well embedded within its region.  We have often viewed with suspicion requests to collaborate and seen our region simply as a source of enterprise income rather than a source of fruitful collaboration.  During the last year we have spent a huge amount of time and effort in changing this and embracing the true concept of knowledge exchange as a real, meaningful and two-way exchange of information.  As a result our influence within the region is growing and we are seen by many key stakeholders as crucial to generating regional economic growth, something which is a mirror of current government policy.  As a Member of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), where I represent both our region’s Universities, I have used my position to promote a more open and accessible HE sector willing to engage and invest in our region’s growth.  The LEP is currently working on its Local Growth Strategy, along with a regional Skills Plan and a strategy to underpin its future management of EU Structural Investment Funds (EUSIF).  Graduate retention and the creation of high skills jobs are keys to continued economic growth within Dorset.  BU believes that the Creative and Digital, along with the Health and Social Care sectors are crucial to achieving this and we are actively promoting these areas along with more traditional ones like advanced manufacturing and big data. 

By way of illustration, in June this year we helped to orchestrate the signing of a regional Manifesto for the Creative and Digital Economy which brought together private and public bodies, as well as the regions’ politicians, in a commitment to support and grow the creative and digital sector.  The long-term vision is to establish Dorset as an international hub for creative and digital businesses.

 A key outcome from the manifesto was the creation of a working group tasked with turning the manifesto’s vision into a reality.   The working group, chaired by David Ford, Chief Executive of Bright Blue Day, is made up of senior representatives from business, the public sector and education.   BU is wholly committed to driving delivery of the manifesto’s vision and we have made a number of commitments (both financial and in-kind) to support the work.  One of these was a commitment of staff time from BU and Samantha Leahy-Harland from OVC is spending half her working week supporting David Ford on taking forward the manifesto.  Currently the team are finalising the brand for the initiative which I hopefully will be able to share very soon.  Another commitment made by BU and Bournemouth Borough Council was to support Matt Desmier, a creative consultant, in the creation of Think Create Do, an online portal to support the creative and digital media economy locally.  Think Create Do will include a jobs board with opportunities for students, a news feed, events diary and a directory of local businesses.  The site goes live in the autumn and I’ll post with more details in due course.  Matt Desmier is of course also behind the annual Silicon Beach Conference [http://www.siliconbeach.eu/index.html], now in its third year, and of which BU is proud to again be a sponsor.  Longer term we hope to support the creation of Dorset’s own creative and digital village.  I will keep you posted and would be happy to discuss our regional agenda with groups of interested staff over the next few months.

Using BRIAN to record your research activity

Guidance

BRIANWhen the new version of BRIAN is released later this month, a new Research field will be included.

The research field is intended to be used to capture information on your research projects, themes, areas of interest etc.  Use this field to provide up to date information on your current activities and future plans such as conference presentations, attendance etc.

It is important that you update your research information on a regular basis to ensure your profile page contains the most recent information.  Bi-weekly/weekly updates are ideal.  The research information will appear on the front page of the new staff profile pages so it will be easily visible outside BU.

The maximum number of characters for this information is 2,000.

Here is an example of how a research entry could look:

I am currently conducting a research study examining the use of digital imagery in news reporting during times of crisis.

My most recent book, Great Expectations, was published by Chapman and Hall, in June 2013.

My overseas work is largely based in Peru where I am involved in the evaluation of a community-based project funded by Amantani.  This involves connecting communities, and in particular, school aged children with global changes.  I will be visiting Lima and Arequipa in October ’13 to continue with my research and hope to establish a network with Guayaquil in Ecuador.

I am organising a conference to be held on 13th November 2013 on the ‘Transparency and accountability of journalism’.  Applications for papers to be submitted will be open on 1st October.  More details can be found here: www.journo.conf@BU.ac.uk

If you are interested in journalism in countries in conflict then please contact me for potential collaboration opportunities at joe.bloggs@BU.ac.uk

If you have time in the next couple of weeks, please prepare your research entry so that it can be pasted into BRIAN when the new Research field becomes available.

New look BRIAN

Guidance

When the new version of BRIAN is released on 23 September 2013, you will notice several improvements in the look and feel of the application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRIAN continues to provide information on your publications and professional activities,  With the new version, we will also be introducing the ability for you to enter information on significant grants that you have won.  Look out for more information on grants on Wednesday.

The new BRIAN homepage includes a new navigation menu on the left side of the screen.  The My Profile options presents the information in BRIAN in a CV format and importantly includes the ability to upload and maintain your own profile picture.  You will only be able to upload one picture at a time but you can change your profile pictures as often as you wish. Explore allows you to search the information in BRIAN and save searches for re-use.

We will be showcasing some of the new features of BRIAN in a series of posts this week.  We will also be organising some training in BRIAN on both campuses in early October to help any new or existing BRIAN users get to grips with the application and how it can help you.

If you have any comments, feedback or items you would like us to feature on the blog, please contact us at BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Tomorrow we will explain the changes being made to the recording of your current research activities in BRIAN.

Great potential for cross-School collaboration

Guidance

At BU, we subscribe to Research Professional, which enables you to find out what funding opportunities are available as soon as they’ve been published by the funder.  Research Professional have just launched a new ‘Expressions of interest’ feature which allows you to register your intent to apply for a funding opportunity.

You may think, what’s in it for me?  Well, this feature will list all users from BU who have already expressed interest in the call, which opens up the potential for cross-Collaboration of Schools.  It can also show you the possible level of demand from BU for a call and will be particularly useful when a call has a quota for each institution.  This will allow us to see who may apply and put in place processes to deal with quota calls (there may be a need for internal peer review if BU are only allowed to submit one application).

It couldn’t be easier to use either.  When viewing a funding opportunity you will find the “Express interest” button in the right column and just simply click this.  Clicking on this button will display your name in the right-hand column. This will be visible to other users at your institution, alongside a contact button allowing them to email you. All users from your instituion who have expressed interest in the funding opportunity will be listed here.

 

 

 

 

 

Expressions of interest will also be listed in the ‘Our institution’ section.  On our institution home page, you will find the ‘Expressions of interest’ tab.  Here you will be able to see the funding opportunities you have expressed interest in, as well as any expressions of interest from others at your institution, listed in chronological order.  Each Group has its own ‘Expressions of interest’ tab, listing expressions of interest made by members of that Group.

If you wish to revoke your expression of interest, view the relevant funding opportunity in the ‘Funding section’.  The ‘Express interest’ button will have changed to a ‘Revoke interest’ button.  Clicking this button will remove your expression of interest; it will no longer be displayed either on the opportunity itself or in the ‘Our institutin’ section.

Research Professional

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional.  To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional 

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional.  They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional.  The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat.  Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  You can register here for your preferred date:

24th September 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/882372120 

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

VS-Games 2013, the fifth outing of the International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications will be hosted at Bournemouth University, UK between the 11th and the 13th of September 2013

 

VS-Games 2013, the fifth outing of the International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications will be hosted at Bournemouth University, UK between the 11th and the 13th of September 2013.

With the conference organized in previous years at locations such as Coventry (UK), Braga (Portugal), Athens (Greece) and Genoa (Italy), it will take place, for 2013, at the Kimmeridge House building of Bournemouth University, situated at the main Talbot campus of the institution.

The development and deployment of games with a purpose beyond entertainment and with considerable connotations with more serious aims is an exciting area with immense academic but also commercial potential. This potential presents both immediate opportunities but also numerous significant challenges to the interested parties involved, as a result of the relatively recent emergence and popularity of the medium. The VS Games 2013 conference aims to address this variety of relevant contemporary challenges that the increasingly cross-disciplinary communities involved in serious games are currently facing. This will be achieved by, amongst other ways, the comprehensive dissemination of successful case studies and development practices, the sharing of theories, conceptual frameworks and methodologies and, finally, the discussion of evaluation approaches and their resulting studies.

All accepted VS Games 2013 papers, full, short and posters, plus workshop ones, will be included (perpetually) in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library after the completion of the event. The conference is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. Also, the authors of the best papers will be invited to write an extended version for inclusion in the Elsevier Entertainment Computing journal and IGI Global’s International Journal of Game-Based Learning. Authors of selected technical articles with a focus on computer graphics will be invited to submit extended versions of their works to be considered for publication in Elsevier’s Computers and Graphics Journal.

As BU has been the main financial sponsor of the conference, all BU members of staff and research students are invited to attend VS Games 13 free of charge (you will need to display your staff card at the registration desk).

If you have a passing interest in game design and serious games, a very multi-disciplinary proposition in themselves which can offer impact/public engagement benefits for all kinds of scientific disciplines, then please by all means join us and sit through the talks! You may well find this sparks off new ideas for you in terms of your own research field and output and how computer/video games can be used to support and/or enhance it.

A full programme and more details can be found on the official conference website at http://www.vsgames2013.org/

International Day of the Disappeared 2013

Dr Melanie Klinkner studies the use of forensic science for investigation and prosecution of atrocities such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Here she talks about the International Day of the Disappeared.

Today serves as a reminder of the number of people around the world who are missing as a result of armed conflicts. We remember the families who face a daily struggle to understand what has happened to their loved one.

Dr Melanie KlinknerEnforced disappearances have been and continue to be used by oppressive regimes in an attempt to dispose of political opponents secretly and to instil fear in the population. Article 2 of the Convention for the Protection for all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006) defines disappearances as ‘the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law’.

The Red Cross work tirelessly to reunite families where possible and organisations such as the International Commission on Missing Person support identification of bodies.

In the aftermath of conflict and gross human rights violations, there is an overwhelming need of the families is to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones and, where the worst has happened, to receive their human remains as an absolute proof of death and to facilitate burial and commemoration rituals.

This need is mirrored in international human rights and international humanitarian law development, which has advanced the recognition of victim rights of national or international crimes and human rights abuses. The Basic Principles encompass the need for victims and their families to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones and demands that the bodies of those disappeared are recovered, identified and buried.

Melanie works alongside Ian Hanson and Paul Cheetham in the School of Applied Sciences, who have developed standard operating procedures for forensic investigation of mass graves. These have been used internationally in judicial and humanitarian contexts, bringing those responsible for atrocity crimes to justice and providing much needed answers to families.

Read more about the Red Cross

Dr Melanie Klinkner’s profile

International Commission on Missing Persons

BFX Final Films 2013

BFX, Bournemouth’s excting new Visual Effects and Animation Festival, has finished after 6 weeks and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.  The 10 competing teams have finished their films – and they are awesome!

You can watch all of the films here: http://www.bfxfestival.com/bfx-final-films-2013/

There has been a great variety of work, completed in such a small period of time and with only 6-7 machines between them to work and render on – so their time keeping had to be spot on.  Most of these students haven’t even graduated yet.

Truly astonishing what they have managed to produce.

If you like what you see, leave a vote on Youtube; for a bit of fun we have a ‘ Best Film – Public Vote’ category.

Once again thanks to all the feedback and mentoring from lecturers at the NCCA, Arts University Bournemouth and artists from Framestore, Double-Negative, The Mill, MPC, Realise Studios, Hibbert Ralph Animation, Outpost VFX and Cinesite.

If your interested in making similar films, or how the creative industries work – check out our September Festival in Bournemouth 

The BFX Festival is organised by the VFX Hub, funded by BU’s HEIF grant.

Money, Money …. Money Makes the World go Around?

News from the PVC

Now even I know that this is a line from a song – we have established previously my lack of musical education I think?  According to Google it is a song in the musical Cabaret and perhaps made famous by Liza Minnelli?  Who knows, but the line chimes (forgive the pun) with a point raised by a colleague in a recent promotion forum I was chairing; why does everything revolve around money?

I have been reflecting on this, as I do about most things, and think it deserves a fuller answer.  The context was that in any senior promotion discussion the amount of money one brings in becomes relevant whether it’s through educational innovation or research and why should this be true?  Why should it be up there with for example producing written output or delivering top quality education?  We have Performance Indicators within BU2018 that focus on money.  For example, we aspire that by 2018: every academic should generate at least £18k of Research and Knowledge Exchange (RKE) income; every Professor should be associated with at least one and half post-docs; and that every academic should supervise at least one PGR student.  As a community we dedicated ourselves as part of BU2018 to maintaining a similar sized student body and to increasing the proportion of postgraduate students to around 40%, something that will require a lot of portfolio innovation.  Let us be honest, all these PI’s revolve around generating income and we all need to play a role in bringing the cash in, so in this context cash does matter and yes it does make our University World spin.

However there is a huge but here; it is not about the income itself but about what it allows you to do that matters.  Some of you will have heard me use the line about ‘being a time lord’ before but, however corny it might be, it is the real justification for why academics need to work together to generate RKE income.  As academics we are limited by time, it is the elephant in the room whenever we talk about work load planning, it stalks us daily in our working lives.  But the way to cheat the clock is to build a team; a team of research students, of post-doc’s or visiting academics.  If you build a team then you cease to be limited by the clock but by inspiration and imagination!  That is why RKE income matters, because it allows you to build that team, to live beyond the clock!  That is why we have income targets around RKE not for the sake of the cash itself.

It is the same with education.  Innovation around new courses, units and delivery models ultimately brings in more students especially in the deregulated parts of the market (e.g. ABB+, international, postgraduate and CPD).  That income allows us to recruit more academics, to invest in better estate and, therefore, a better experience for our staff and students. Check out https://www.ilisters.com/cyprus/property/for-sale/in-troodos for properties in Troodos.  So yes income does matter, but not for the sake of cash itself, but what that cash allows us to do.

By way of example, a few years back I ran a small consultancy operation out of BU in the field of contaminated land.  Not an area that particularly interests me but one in which I could generate income for BU, part of which was invested back into my research.  In fact that income helped finance my work in East Africa, leading to my footprint paper in Science, and ultimately to my current NERC grant which finishes this September.  The income I generated helped me to get promotion and more importantly fulfil one of my most cherished research ambitions.  So yes income does make our University World spin and we all have a role to play.  The Grants Academy is there to help you get started and the staff of the Research Development Unit are there to help, so why not help to make our World spin this coming year?

BU Professor published in 20th Anniversary edition of leading journal

Steve Letza, a Professor in Accounting and Finance within the Business School , has been honoured to feature in the 20th Anniversary issue of Corporate Governance: An International Review; a leading journal at the forefront of research in this area. This special edition consists of articles from the past decade that have had the highest number of citations per year, and thus have been widely used in academic research.

Steve co-authored the article Shareholding Versus Stakeholding: a Critical Review of Corporate Governance alongside Xiuping Sun and James Kirkbride in 2004 and it offers a new perspective on the subject; identifying the need for organisations to adapt to the changing environments they operate in. 

Congratulations Steve!