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MASTERCLASS: INTRODUCTION TO GROUNDED THEORY

MASTERCLASS:  INTRODUCTION TO GROUNDED THEORY

14-15 February 2013

This two day Masterclass will be an introduction to Grounded Theory – theory developed from the data.  The masterclass has been designed to suit postgraduate students, academics and professionals who may wish to use grounded theory (GT) in their research but do not yet have full knowledge of the approach.  The masterclass can also be taken as a stand-alone Master’s level unit of study – Contact Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill for details: cehill@bournemouth.ac.uk

Facilitators:

Immy Holloway, Professor Emeritus in the School of Health & Social Care at BU.  Immy is a sociologist and has taught and supervised qualitative research for several decades.  She still actively pursues her interest in qualitative research by supervising PhD students and writing articles and books.  Immy used GT in her PhD before the proliferation of books and articles on GT.

Liz Norton is a Senior Lecturer at BU.  Her professional background is in education and nursing and her current academic interest and work is in public health.  Liz has a particular interest in Glaserian GT and her experience of using GT in practice includes completion of environment and health-related grounded theory studies for MPhil and PhD qualifications.

 Quotes from previous masterclass attendees:

“Their knowledge and expertise felt like a valuable resource open to all”

“Presenters were very experienced . . . particularly high quality and effective teaching methods”

Full details of the Masterclass and the online booking form can be found at: www.bournemouth.ac.uk/masterclass

Reminder – Santander Travel Grants – Deadline for applications: Monday 14 January 2013

PG research

The Graduate School and the Development Office are pleased to announce the launch of a number of Santander Grants.

BU works closely with Santander, who are committed to supporting higher education and as such, are offering 25 x £1,000 grants for BU Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs).  These grants are specifically designed to allow PGRs to travel to at least one university from either the UK Santander Universities Network or to one of the Overseas Santander Partner Universities, to undertake a specific piece of work and build or develop links with international Researchers.

Successful applicants will be expected to participate in general PR activities about their research. This may involve attending events and promoting the benefits of the funding.  *Unsuccessful submissions from the last round of the Santander Scholarship funding (run by the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO)) cannot be resubmitted to this round. Previous unsuccessful applicants can submit new projects/ideas to this round.

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

To apply, please complete the GS Santander Travel Grants – Application Form and submit it by email to the Graduate School (email: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk) by 5 pm, Monday 14 January 2013.

A clue as to what Environment funding will be in Horizon 2020

The EC have published their proposal for the Environment Action Programme ‘Living well, within the limits of our planet’ which is likely to be the base of calls issued under Horizon 2020. It features budget info as well as the outcome of the various consultations to shape this document.  Most importantly, this paper outlines a programme of action for 2020… reading this will give you the key clues as to what will be funded under Horizon 2020.

Research Professional

Guidance

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:

22nd January 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/637298448 

26th February 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/267446504 

26th March 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/518275168 

23rd April 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/255287520 

28th May 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/806064201 

25th June 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/492839664 

23rd July 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/771246561 

27th August 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/398714217 

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.

Royal Society International Exchanges Scheme

Funding opportunities

The Royal Society invites applications for its international exchanges scheme. This offers a flexible platform for UK-based scientists to interact with the best scientists around the world. Funds contribute towards travel, subsistence and research expenses, and can be requested for either a one-off short visit in order to explore opportunities for building lasting networks or for bilateral visits to strengthen emerging collaborations. Activities must be on a subject within the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, agricultural and medical research, and scientific aspects of archaeology, geography and experimental psychology, but excluding social science, and clinical or patient-oriented research.

Applicants must have a PhD or equivalent research experience and hold a permanent or fixed-term contract in an eligible university or research institute for the duration of the project. Collaborations should be based on a single project involving the UK-based scientist and the overseas-based scientist. Collaborations with any country outside the UK are eligible for this scheme.

Applicants may request:

•up to £3,000 for one-off travel lasting up to three months;

•up to £6,000 for multiple visits to be completed within one year, including a maximum of £1,000 for research expenses;

•up to £12,000 for multiple visits to be completed within two years, including a maximum of £2,000 for research expenses.

Closing date: 20 February 2013

For further information, click here.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

 

ESRC: Celebrating impact prize

Funding opportunities

The Economic and Social Research Council invites applications for its celebrating impact prize.

This prize is intended to recognise and reward ESRC-funded researchers who have achieved, or are currently achieving outstanding economic or societal impacts through their research and collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities. There are six categories for this prize: impact in business, impact in public policy, impact in society, international impact, early career impact, impact champion of the year.

A prize of £10,000 will be made to the winners of each category, with a further £10,000 for the department with the impact champion of the year.

The application deadline is 16.00 on 14 February 2013.

For further information please click here.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

 

Erasmus Preparatory Visit Applications scheme open until January

Just a reminder that the deadline for this is coming up at the end of January 2013  if colleagues are interested in visiting potential partner universities in Europe.  The main objective of the action is to help higher education institutions (HEI) to establish contacts with prospective partner institutions with a view to establishing:

•             New inter-institutional agreements (not renewals) relating to student and/or staff mobility

•             Erasmus Intensive Programmes;

•             Erasmus student placements;

•             Erasmus networks;

•             Erasmus multilateral projects;

•             Erasmus accompanying measures.

 

The preparatory visit grant may be used to visit:

•             Either one or more prospective partner higher education institutions (the visited HEIs do not need to have an EUC);

•             Or an enterprise or organisation.

Preparatory visit grants may also be used to participate in a partner-finding “contact seminar” organised by a National Agency. In addition, preparatory visit grants may be awarded to enterprises or other organisations for the purpose of helping them to establish consortia for the organisation of Erasmus student placements.  Usually a grant is awarded to just one person per visit, but in exceptional cases two staff from the same institution can be awarded a grant to undertake a visit together.  Only one visit per potential project will be funded. 

  • PV mobilities can take place any time from now up until April 2013
  • The British Council must receive the application 6 weeks prior to the date of departure.
  • Minimum duration – 1 day
  • Maximum Duration – 5 days
  • All activities must end by 30 April 2013 at the latest.
  • Application deadline – 31 January

To apply, you need to complete the Erasmus PV Application Form. There is also a Erasmus PV Resource Pack to help you and more information is available on the British Council website . You can send also any queries relating to Preparatory visits by email.

HSC Student receives Graduate Scholar Award at University of Berkeley Conference.

PG research

 

Sheetal Sharma, HSC presented at the Science in Society conference (SiS) at Berkeley University in November 2012 where she received a Graduate Scholar Award http://science-society.com/the-conference/graduate-scholar-award

As a PhD student presenting it’s an opportunity to practice for the inevitable viva and a chance to reflect on your work, as there’s always a question you do not expect. For instance, I had a few questions on cultural aspects of my PhD mixed-methods evaluation. That helped me prepare for my transfer viva, where I was asked on the cultural context of the health promotion intervention, specifically in a country context, run by Green Tara Nepal: http://www.greentaratrust.com/ The plenary was the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues http://www.bioethics.gov/cms/node/778 on ethics and morality of science.

Conferences can be competitive, in the sense, you need to be accepted. Secondly you also can compete for a ‘free space’ and in this instance you were able to compete to be a chair. At SiS, graduate students were invited to, through a very formal application process, to be chair of session. Although it means you won’t attend certain talks, the trade-off is worth is as one is forced to think of questions or how to manage, and be critical and aware of several issues of research.

Being ‘forced’ to be critical led to my planning more what aspects I want to present to the audience. This conference was concerned with the science of health, its epistemology and helped me think of how to discuss the development of theory. As in a PhD viva one might need to answer ‘new knowledge to the field’ how the theory or models proposed are better than competing theories.

I was also lucky to visit Howard University, where I spend time researching cultural ‘appropriateness’ of health programmes, specifically should postnatal care be done again at 40 days. For my PhD evaluation of the Green Tara Nepal that the cultural sensitive aspect led to its increase in health services uptake. I encourage those interested to visit their work as they are ranked school in the top 20% of social work programmes. The World Bank and USAID frequently have invitations to talks, the ones I attended highlighted the focus of women in development, what role programmes can play to develop rural areas; as it is women in Nepal who ‘stay’ in the villages to farm and care for the family as men migrate abroad or to the capital city Kathmandu.

This experience helped me begin the reflection of what my evaluation means, whether in a policy context or the epistemological context; on my return I spoke to my supervisory team. Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell and my external supervisor Dr. Padam Simkhada (University of Sheffield) who encouraged me to on this basis strengthen my writing for my discussion on what the research done has meant.

 

Changes to the Freedom of Information Act: A step in the right direction for research?

Guidance

As you may already be aware, under the Freedom of Information Act, Universities are counted as public authorities and therefore need to respond to requests for information. In the age of transparent, open research this should not necessarily be problematic – however, it does raise considerable issues with regards to research in progress. The development of excellent research is dependent on rigorous analysis and peer review; so requests for data that has not been through this process can be problematic. For example, controversial topics such as research on climate change may be misappropriated by media sources, or members of the general public could respond to unverified findings on research relating to public health. It does not take a huge amount of imagination to understand how this could have dire consequences both the individual researcher and their HEI. Thus, Universities UK have highlighted this as an issue and have been campaigning for exemption to unpublished research findings. The opportunity to make changes has arisen through the process of post-legislative scrutiny.

Last week, Vivienne Stern, Head of Political Affairs at Universities UK has recently reported that in response to the Justice Committee:  “The Government has accepted the recommended new exemption for unpublished research”.  Notably, the report states that Government is “minded to explore options for providing that time taken to consider and redact information can be included in reaching the cost limit”. If you are interested in reading further, you can find the full report here

This serves as a timely reminder that research data can be subject to Freedom of Information requests. If you are approached for a Freedom of Information Act 2000 request, you should contact our Legal Services department and see the appropriate webpages here. Jisc also holds useful additional information about the Freedom of Information Act which you can find here.

What this debate also reminds us of is the importance of ensuring that we only go public with research findings when they have been through the rigorous standards assessment and review associated with academic research. Colleagues that have worked with me know that when we are discussing public engagement initiatives, I often ask them some detailed questions about the underpinning research. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the academic engaging with the public to ensure that their statements can be underpinned by appropriate research and is crucial to bear in mind, no matter how tantalising early findings may be! If you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me or Julia Hastings-Taylor, Research Development Officer (Research Conduct).

Royal Society Mullard Award

Funding opportunities

This award is made to individuals whose work has the potential to make a contribution to national prosperity. 

The Royal Society Mullard Award is made biennially for “an individual who has an outstanding academic record in any area of natural science, engineering or technology and whose work is currently making or has the potential to make a contribution to national prosperity in the United Kingdom”. The award is aimed at early to mid career stage scientists, engineers and technologists.

The award was established following a gift by Mullard Limited. It was first awarded in 1967.  The medal is of silver gilt and is accompanied by a gift of £2,000 and a travel grant of £1,500. The winner is called upon to deliver a lecture at the Society. 

Nominations

The 2013 call for nominations is now open and will close on the Friday 8 February 2013.  To submit a nomination (self-nominations are allowed), please download a nomination form  and send it to innovationgrants@royalsociety.org.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

 

JSPS Summer Programme opportunity for Researchers

Funding opportunities

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) is the leading research funding agency in Japan, established by the Japanese Government for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science. Our Summer Programme provides the opportunity pre and post-doctoral researchers to receive an orientation on Japanese culture and research systems and to conduct collaborative research activities with leading research groups at Japanese Universities and research institutions over a period of 2 months during the summer.

Value of award: Return international airfare, maintanence allowance (534,000, JPY), domestic research trip allowance (58,500 JPY) and overseas travel and accident insurance policy are provided.

Eligibility: Applicants need to be a UK national or permanent resident and should be of graduate student status (Master or PhD) or be a recent PhD holder (within the last 6 years) and should be based at a UK university or research institution. Eligible research fields are not limited.

Applications should be sent to the British Council Tokyo. Application guidelines and form are available on their website here: http://www.britishcouncil.org/japan-science-research.htm.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

Application Deadline: Tuesday, 15th January 2013.  Fellowship to take place during fixed period: 11 June to 21 August 2013

Erasmus Preparatory Visit Applications scheme still open!

Just a reminder that the deadline for this is coming up at the end of December 2012 if colleagues are interested in visiting potential partner universities in Europe.  The main objective of the action is to help higher education institutions (HEI) to establish contacts with prospective partner institutions with a view to establishing:

•             New inter-institutional agreements (not renewals) relating to student and/or staff mobility

•             Erasmus Intensive Programmes;

•             Erasmus student placements;

•             Erasmus networks;

•             Erasmus multilateral projects;

•             Erasmus accompanying measures.

 

The preparatory visit grant may be used to visit:

•             Either one or more prospective partner higher education institutions (the visited HEIs do not need to have an EUC);

•             Or an enterprise or organisation.

Preparatory visit grants may also be used to participate in a partner-finding “contact seminar” organised by a National Agency. In addition, preparatory visit grants may be awarded to enterprises or other organisations for the purpose of helping them to establish consortia for the organisation of Erasmus student placements.  Usually a grant is awarded to just one person per visit, but in exceptional cases two staff from the same institution can be awarded a grant to undertake a visit together.  Only one visit per potential project will be funded. 

  • PV mobilities can take place any time from now up until April 2013
  • The British Council must receive the application 6 weeks prior to the date of departure.
  • Minimum duration – 1 day
  • Maximum Duration – 5 days
  • All activities must end by 30 April 2013 at the latest.
  • Application deadline – 31 December 2012 and 6 weeks before the date of travel

To apply, you need to complete the Erasmus PV Application Form. There is also a Erasmus PV Resource Pack to help you and more information is available on the British Council website . You can send also any queries relating to Preparatory visits by email.

RBS & FIG offer over £100,000 to the UK’s most enterprising students

Funding opportunities

Competitions from RBS and FIG invite enterprising students to enter for cash prizes and investment opportunities

The RBS EnterprisingU competition has launched for the second year, with £40,000 worth of prizes!

The annual competition, created by Find Invest Grow and sponsored by the RBS Group, offers a unique online platform for students to “road-test” their business ideas, while building the framework for a professional business plan at the same time.

It is open to students and graduates of the past 5 years:  they don’t have to be economics grads with business experience – anyone can enter. The platform enables students to explore the viability of their business idea, by asking the right questions and building the appropriate framework.

Investors will be reviewing and judging entrants to decide on the 20 semi-finalists who will be selected to attend the training workshops.  The 10 finalists will be pitching their business ideas to a room full of investors, with the chance of winning prizes of £25,000, £10,000, and £5,000.

The competition is now open, at: http://www.rbsenterprisingu.com

Encourage your students / recent graduates to apply!

The deadline for completed entrants is midnight on 19th July 2013.