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European Board Visit a Success!

BU recently hosted a 2 day board meeting of the European Media Management Association (EMMA). The board consists of academics’ from Finland, Sweden, Russia, Portugal and Switzerland and they toured the Executive Business Centre facilities in readiness for the forthcoming EMMA conference hosted by the Media School. Dr John Oliver, from the Media School, is Deputy President of EMMA and he said that “the board have been very impressed with our proposed conference programme and the facilities on offer”.
The BU conference team have fully embraced the idea of Fusion in the programme. As well as presentations from leading media management academics, Professional Practice is represented by leading executives from Virgin Media, UKTV and The Hackett Group. A number of keynote speakers will also be video recorded so that the content can be used for educational delivery. Dr John Oliver said that “this conference provides us with a unique opportunity to develop the field media management at BU and having a conference that embraces fusion will have resonance with both academic and professional practice audiences”.

How is NERC changing its peer review processes?

Guidance

NERC is making changes to its peer review processes to strengthen and streamline the assessment of responsive mode grants.   NERC  has agreed a series of reforms to improve the consistency, quality and transparency of peer review that identifies the very best research proposals to fund.

The following changes will apply to responsive mode research grant and fellowship calls with closing dates on or after 1 October 2013.

Consistency of review number and expertise – For each scheme minimum and optimal number of peer review reports required have been agreed; these are detailed in the assessment process. Decisions will only be made based on lower or higher number of reviews in exceptional circumstances.

The reviews will be provided by a combination of NERC College members and internationally-recognised experts, depending on where the most appropriate expertise exists. Reviewers who consider they have low expertise will no longer be asked to contribute.

Standard grant process – There will no longer be a ‘sift’ to reject uncompetitive proposals during the review process. All proposals will reach the stage where there is an opportunity to respond to review comments. Proposals, reviews and responses will then be assessed by two panel members who will assign a ‘pre-score’ for excellence. The Chair will then prioritise the proposals to discuss at the moderating panel. NERC will aim to provide decisions on the majority of Standard Grant proposals within 20 weeks of the closing date.

Moderating panels – Half of the membership of any panel will regularly attend as ‘Core Panel Members’ and there will be an identified Chair. Flexibility to select members from the College according to the particular proposals being considered will remain. For schemes where multiple panels meet (ie Standard Grants and Fellowships), business will be divided between panels with stable remits. A preliminary panel structure will be announced in June 2013. Applicants will select the panel to consider their proposal during submission.

Feedback – Panel members will be responsible for the content of feedback from panels to applicants. For any proposal discussed, moderating panel feedback will automatically be provided.

Peer Review College – Changes to the NERC Peer Review College from January 2014 are also planned, and its performance will be more actively managed. A membership review and recruitment initiative (call opening June 2013) will take place, to continue to increase the number of established academics and grant holders involved as College members and Chairs. Members will have a lead responsibility for either reviewing or moderating panel activities. Core Panel Members will be identified to work within the new moderating panels.

When will these changes happen? 

From January 2014. The PRC year will start from January rather than July from that point onwards. In the meantime there will be a call for new membership in June 2013.

Fusion funding supports sharing student research at conference, in journal

Fusion

Last week, 35 advertising, marketing and public relations undergraduates presented their dissertation research at the Promotional Communications Annual Conference at the Executive Business Centre.

The event, held 15 May, was part of a Fusion bid by The Media School’s Dr Dan Jackson, Dr Richard Scullion, Dr Carrie Hodges, and Dr Janice Denegri-Knott to expand the conference and open a journal. This is the third year for the conference run by the Corporate and Marketing Communications (CMC) group within The Media School, and with the Fusion funding the organisers were able to expand the conference to include additional students and guests.

“The CMC Student Conference was a terrific success; the presentations were extremely professional, student engagement was very high and the commitment shown by the staff was exceptional,” said Colin Merrett, associate dean for the academic group. He called it “one of the highlights of the year” for CMC.

Industry guests who attended the event echoed the sentiment, calling the work of students ‘thought provoking’ and ‘challenging’. In total some 80 students, academic staff, alumni, and industry professionals attended the conference, which offers students an opportunity to share their dissertation research and for the academic group to showcase research-led teaching.

CMC students can choose to write a traditional dissertation of 10,000 words or write a research paper in the style of an 8,000-word journal article and deliver a 20-minute paper at the student conference. The 35 students who presented at the conference make up 17 per cent of the dissertation students on the three degree programmes. That’s the highest proportion of student take-up of this option for the dissertation.

“The quality of what I have seen in these dissertations is some of the best I have seen,” said Dr Heather Savigny, who joined BU at the start of the academic year.

The research that students presented ranged from asking questions about how second-generation African immigrant women negotiate culture and identity through hair care rituals to the impacts to pub and restaurant brands as a result of negative word-of-mouth online to whether advertising today represents a return of a sexist visual culture.

“I thought the best papers could have claimed space in some international conferences,” said Prof Barry Richards of CMC.

Now, the team turns its attention to the inaugural issue of The Journal of Promotional Communication. Once the dissertations are marked, the team will shortlist the top research papers and begin the (by all accounts based on the presentations from last week) arduous task of choosing seven papers to appear in the journal.

After the first edition is published, the journal will begin accepting submissions from undergraduates and postgraduates from BU and beyond. The journal represents a variety of disciplines, such as marketing, advertising, PR theory, consumer culture and behaviour, political communications, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and management.

Fusion Diary: High-Speed Train to China Universities

Fusion

7:55am, 14th April.

BA168 landed in Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I was sponsored by Santander Fusion Investment Fund and would visit 4 top China Universities in five days. In order to board a high-speed train to Beijing, I only had five hours to have a shower, unpack my luggage, eat a Chinese lunch and then drive through Shanghai, a metropolitan city with a population of 20- million. The distance is less than that from Bournemouth to Brockenhurst. The traffic is as same as Oxford circus and Regent Street.

China High-speed Train

Mission nearly impossible. But I made it. With the help of a Chinese high-speed train, I travelled 914 miles in less than 6 hours and arrived in Beijing in time. Efficient trains like these can also be built in other countries with the help of a third rail train equipment manufacturer and many other engineers and contractors.

Next morning, I visited Renmin University, a Chinese equivalent to LSE, and gave a talk in the Psychology Department. Remin’s Psychology Department, established in 2008, is a fast-paced booming institute and has 30 staff members in total, similar in size to BU Psychology. Internationalisation was a highly frequent word I picked up from our conversation.  During my talk, I showed them the photos of Bournemouth University with beach and sunshine as well as telling about our research and courses. I met Prof Du Peng (his surname first in the Chinese way), the university research director, and Prof Hu Ping, the deputy head of Psychology Department. The discussion was successful and fruitful. and afterwards, in accordance with tradition, they hosted me a delicious Chinese lunch dinner, rather than the usual sandwiches and tea that we might have here.

 

Office of the President, Peking University

After saying blesses and goodbye to my kind hosts, I walked back to Peking University. Before moving to England I had spent eight years in Peking University. This was the second time I came back in the last ten years. I wandered on the  campus which was crowded with classical Chinese architectures and modern cars. There was no meeting arranged for me this time but it was lovely to be back visiting my old haunts. and to meet with old friends, all of whom have previously studied or worked in the UK. In Chinese they are called haigui, which means coming back from overseas. It is interesting that most of them are working in universities and public sector now.

My next journey on another high speed train meant travelling about 750 miles in 6 hours to Xian, the ancient Chinese capital in Han and Tang dynasties.  Since I last visited as a teenager the city has been expanding faster and more massively than I could ever have imagined. Again, it was a great opportunity to catch up with older friends before visiting  Shaanxi Normal University, a prestigious national university. I was welcome by Prof Wang Yong Hui. Prof Wang is the Deputy Head of Psychology School. We have been friends since we studied in Beijing. Now we had the opportunity to share what we have done in each other’s research areas over the years.

To be continued…..

Santander Mobility Awards

PG research

I am delighted to announce that Santander have very generously provided the Graduate School, as part of the fusion fund, a further five £5k scholarships for postgraduate research students (PGRs).

These awards are intended to support PGRs to undertake study, research and/or network activities at a Partner Institution from within the UK Santander Universities Network and/or one of the Overseas Santander Partner Universities.  Awards made will cover only direct costs (travel; subsistence; training or development costs) and all applications will need to include a precise breakdown of costs

To be eligible to apply, applicants must be registered at BU on a postgraduate research degree irrespective of mode of study (full-time / part-time) or funding status (BU studentships / externally funded / self-funded) and must be a national from one of the countries listed within the Santander Scheme.  Please see the Policy document for further details.

Successful applicants will be expected to participate in general PR activities about their research and provide a short report based on the research activity. This may involve attending events and promoting the benefits of the funding. 

For further information, please read the GS Santander Travel Grants – Policy

To apply, please complete the GS Santander Application Form and submit it by email to gsfunding@bournemouth.ac.uk by 5 pm, Monday 1st July  2013.

 

 

BU REF2014 Open Forum

Research assessment

In June, after the REF Academic Steering Group have met, there will be a series of BU REF2014 Open Forums. These forums will provide the opportunity for REF eligible staff to find out more about the provisional thresholds for the BU REF2014 staff selection process and to ask relevant questions about them.

Please find details of the events below:

Talbot Campus

Date : 10 June 2013

Time : 10am to 11am

Venue : Coyne Lecture Theatre, the Thomas Hardy Suite, Poole House

Lansdowne Campus

Date : 13 June 2013

Time : 9am to 10am

Venue : EB306, the Executive Business Centre

You can attend either one of the forums and there is no need to pre-register for these events.

Please feel free to get in touch with me (pengpeng.ooi@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Julie Northam (jnortham@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you wish to find out more.

 

BU EU template wording available

I’m often told that generic BU and School information would be helpful when drafting EU proposals. I am pleased to inform you that some generic and School specific information is now available on our I drive which we hope will be useful as a starting place for you I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\European Related\General Templates

Fusion Investment Fund – 2013/14 round one now open to applications!

Funding opportunities, Fusion

 


 

The Pro Vice-Chancellor is delighted to invite you to apply for this round of the Fusion Investment Fund. It provides fantastic opportunities for you to grow as a researcher, an educator and practitioner and there are a range of options for you to choose from, depending on your needs. Three funding strands are available for staff at BU:

Co-Creation and Co-production strand (CCCP)

Study Leave strand (SL) – There are three elements of this: Academic Study Leave, Internal Secondments and Industrial Staff Placements.

Staff Mobility and Networking strand (SMN) – There are also three elements to this strand: Standard, Erasmus, Santander

Successful bids will need to have benefits to the student experience at the core and be able to demonstrate how this will occur, so hitting the Education point in the BU Fusion triangle is important. For all the updated strand and policy documents, Fund FAQs and information about applying, please visit the FIF intranet pages.

The Fusion Investement Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and is administered by Natalie Baines. Please direct all intial enquiries to Natalie Baines.

 

 

 

Reminder Fatter Forgetter Friday 24th May

Just a quick reminder about this week’s seminar on Friday

‘The fatter forgetter’, the relationship between appetite and cognition.

 

May 24th  11.30 – 12.30. Room 302, Royal London House.

You are invited to an interesting seminar looking at the relationship between appetite and cognition, delivered by Dr John Rye from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. I met John when vising Canada in November following a successful fusion bid, and I am delighted he was keen to deliver such an interesting seminar here at Bournemouth University.

 

Dr John Rye is currently an associate clinical lecturer in the department of Rural Family Medicine, at the Universisity of Saskatchewan, Canada, He also provides GP coverage for Nipawin , Blaine  Lake and Big River as well as looking after long term care residents in Prince Albert and is part of the rural dementia group. He was formerly in family practice in Prince Albert. He has been part of the palliative care team in Prince Albert since its start in 1991, and shared on it at IHI in Nashville. He is currently on the board of the Rose Garden Hospice, a project for residential terminal care. He went to Canada from England in 1984 with his wife Christine who is a certified palliative care nurse and president of the PAParkland Hospice Palliative Care Association.

 

If you are interested in attending please let Michele Board, Associate Director BUDI, know to book yourself a place. mboard@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

New to BRIAN?

Training

If you are new to BU, have missed the Brian training sessions or just need a refresher, the BRIAN team is looking to run some training sessions for academics to help you gain the most from BRIAN.  The session covers how to set up and maintain your BRIAN profile,  how to ensure your details are correct, how to request a photo is uploaded, how BRIAN links to your external staff profile and lots more. 

These are hands-on sessions being run on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses or one-to-one.  To register your interest, please email the BRIAN team (BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk).

Congratulations and Good Luck

April had a high level of activity around bids being submitted and awarded, with Schools winning consultancy contracts, research grants and organising Short Courses.

For ApSci, congratulations are due to Pippa Gillingham for her award from the Royal Entomological society, to David Parham for his contract with English Heritage for SWASH post-excavation, to Emilie Hardouin for her award from The Fisheries Society of the British Isles, to Mark Maltby for his consultancy with Central Bedfordshire Council, to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy with Barbara Farquharson, to Richard Stillman for his consultancy with Natural Resources Wales, and to Miles Russell for his short course introducing Roman Britain.  Good luck to Luciana Esteves for her application to the Royal Society, to Paola Palma for her contract to English Heritage, to Anita Diaz and Demetra Andreou for their individual applications to the European Commission and also to Anita for her application to the EU Lifelong Learning Programme, to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy to the Forestry Commission, to Fiona Coward for a short course introducing World Prehistory, and to Kate Welham for a short course introducing Archaeology.

Congratulations to the Business School for Andy Mullineux’s AHRC award on responsibilities, ethics and the financial crisis.  Good luck to Yasmin Sekhon for her British Academy application, to Ruth Towse and Maurizio Borghi for their joint application to AHRC, as well as Maurizio’s second application to AHRC, to Hiroko Oe for an application to the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, to Fabian Homberg for his application to the SWIFT Institute on gender diversity in the finance industry, to Isaac Ngugi and Gordon Liu for their application to ESRC, and also to Juliet Memery, Dawn Birch, Chris Chapleo and Jeff Bray for their application to ESRC on the perceptions of the High Street retailing experience.

For DEC, congratulations to Hongnian Yu for his successful European Commission award for RABOT, and to Marcin Budka for his consultancy with Western Union Financial Services Inc.  Good luck to Sarah Bate and Nicola Gregory for their application to the British Academy on the role of eye movements in the recognition of moving faces, also to Jane Elsley and Andrew Johnson for their individual applications to the British Academy, to Christopher Richardson for his short course on Digital Economy and Assurance for UKUD International Education Consultants, to Simon Thompson and Biao Zeng for their contract to Chongqing University, to Katherine Appleton for her application to The Humane Research Trust, to Siamak Noroozi, Philip Sewell and Mihai Dupac for their application to Remedi.  There were a number of applications to the European Commission, and so good luck goes to Hongnian Yu for his two applications, as well as Zulfiqar Khan for his, and Abdelhamid Bouchachia and Hammadi Nait-Charif for theirs.

For HSC, congratulations are due to Keith Brown for his KTP with Dorset County Council, to Caroline Ellis-Hill for her short course Masterclass on action research, to Jane Murphy and Joanne Holmes for their short course on nutrition for older people living in the community, to Clive Andrewes for his short course from the Strategic Health Authority, to Edwin Van Teijlingen for his short course for a Masterclass in interviewing in semi-structured interviews, to Sarah Hean for her contract from Offender Health South West, and to Anthea Innes for her contract with the Alzheimer’s Society. Good luck to Jonathan Parker for his application to the British Academy, to Rosie Read for her application to NORFACE, to Vanora Hundley, Zoe Sheppard and Jennifer Leamon for their application to National Institute for Health Research, to Peter Thomas for his contract to Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, and to Les Todres and Caroline Ellis-Hill for their contract to the Burdett Trust for Nursing for a strategy for improving ‘what matters to people’ to enhance dignity in care.

Congratulations to the Media School for Liam Toms and Mike Molesworth for their individual consultancies with Work Research Limited, and to Janice Denegri-Knott for her two consultancy contracts with Work Research Limited, to Laura Hampshaw and Matt Northam for their short course with the RBCH on WordPress, to Sofronis Efstathiou for a conference with SKILLSET, to Stephanie Farmer for her consultancy contracts with the National Trust and Grapevine Telecom Ltd, and to Heather Savigny for an annual conference for Media and Politics Specialist Group.

For the School of Tourism, congratulations go to Nicky Pretty for her contract with Godolphin Company, to Crispin Farbrother for his short course in wines, to Lisa Stuchberry for her contracts with Bournemouth and Poole College, Borough of Poole, and Holburne Museum, to Jon Hibbert for his contract with Liz Lean PR Ltd, and to Richard Gordon for his conference on International Disaster Management.  Good luck to Keith Hayman and Simon Thomas for their short course to Hall & Woodhouse Ltd, to Nicole Ferdinand and Mary Beth Gouthro for their contract to King’s College London to research Carnival Futures: Notting Hill Carnival 2020, to Neelu Seetaram and Stephen Page for their application to the British Academy, to Miguel Moital for his application to the European Commission.

Finally, congratulations to Colleen Harding in HR for her award from the Leadership Foundation for HE for transformative approaches to career progression for academic staff aspiring to leadership roles, and good luck to Bogdan Gabrys, Hongnian Yu, Dimitrios Buhalis, Ross Hill, Keith Phalp, Ben Parris, Kate Welham, Alexander Pasko and Dean Patton for their EPSRC application for a Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Science.

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER! Apply for the Society of Biology’s Science Communication Awards 2013!

Two weeks left to apply for the Society of Biology’s Science Communication Awards 2013!

 

www.societyofbiology.org

 

The awards recognise outstanding outreach work carried out by both young scientists and established researchers to inform, enthuse and engage the public. The competition is open to bioscience researchers from UK universities and institutes and there are two categories of award:

New Researcher – Prize £750

Established Researcher – Prize £1,500

Further details are available on the website and the deadline is midnight 31 May 2013

www.societyofbiology.org/scicomm

Contact Karen Patel karenpatel@societyofbiology.org directly with any questions.

 

BU KTP Associate presenting a paper at the KTP Associates’ Conference in June

Are you interested in exploring the possibilities of KTPs? Then, the KTP Associates’ Conference will provide an excellent networking opportunity for current and former KTP Associates, their academic and industrial supervisors and all those involved with, or who would like to be involved with, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.  Also, we can proudly confirm that one of BU’s own KTP Associates will be presenting a paper at the conference in June…..

Celia Beckett, is a HSC – KTP Associate based in Five Rivers Child Care Ltd.  The subject of the paper is her pilot study that is identifying ways of improving the assessment of the psychological needs of children who are looked after in residential care. Working with other leading experts in this area, she is hoping that the scheme will result in improved interventions and outcomes for looked after children. If successful with future funding, Dr Beckett is hoping to roll this scheme out further for children in foster placements and to evaluate its effectiveness. This project is addressing the standards identified in the NICE guidelines for improving outcomes for this group of children, who are at very high risk of emotional and behavioural difficulties.

We wish Celia the best of luck with her presentation at the conference!

The conference will be held at the University of Brighton on Thursday 13th June – if you would like to attend, please book your place via the University of Brighton’s website.

BU English Lecturer Gives Keynote Address at Paris Conference

Dr Hywel Dix was invited to give the keynote address to a conference held by the Société d’Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines, Paris Diderot University in February. The conference was about British literature and culture of the last four years and Dix was selected as the keynote speaker following the successful critical reception of his recent monographs After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain and Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain.

His keynote paper was entitled ‘The Retrospective Stage: late career fiction and autobiography.’ In it, he opened up the concept of ‘contemporaneity’ in literary and cultural studies to critical interrogation, arguing that many of the most canonical figures in contemporary cultural production are chiefly associated with work produced years, or even decades, earlier. The effect of this is a recurring pattern whereby cultural figures often receive less critical acclaim for work produced late in their career than earlier on. Perhaps this is by definition true: we are prone to think of contemporary culture as something current rather than something coming to an end.

Using the examples of A.S. Byatt’s Children’s Book and Graham Swift’s Wish You Were Here Dix used the keynote to argue that a number of prominent contemporary British writers have reached a kind of retrospective stage in their careers, symbolically returning to the styles, themes, and techniques of their earlier work. He further argued that the process of having earlier become identified with particular characteristics gives rise to a conflict between originality and habit beyond which the individual writer or cultural producer cannot travel. As a result of this conflict, the kind of fiction produced at the late career stage becomes profoundly meta-fictive and self-referential so that in effect throughout this stage the writers are always returning to and remaking the same work for which they had become celebrated at the earlier stages as if for the first time.

It is anticipated that this paper will be the start of a broader project on the idea of lateness, the belated and contemporaneity in contemporary cultural studies.