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Anybody been to Prison?

I mean in the capacity of a researcher or simialr? Why… because in a final year option I teach called Scoail Communication I am organising a student visit to Dorset based Prisons (Dorchester and Portland)as part of an assessed project. I have the ‘bones’ of the project idea but wondered if others might be able to share brief thoughts on what might be a fruitful angle(s) to take linking prisons to communication issues around marginality and voicelessness – cheers

BRIAN latest

Guidance

Now that the summer has been (did you notice?) and gone, many of you are now turning your attention to your external profiles and how to make them look as impressive as possible to the outside world.  This has meant an increase in queries about how to use BRIAN and so I have created a list of answers to FAQ’s and these can be found in the link below.  Before I get on to this though, have you read the Blog article advertising the ‘Scopus and BRIAN Workshops’ that Matthew Bennett will be running shortly?  If not, click here for more details.

BRIAN FAQ‘s

There are a number of developments that are underway to improve BRIAN and so keep your eye on the Blog for more updates.

My FIF Study Leave Strand Success

Fusion

The University has provided an excellent opportunity for staff to engage in Fusion through the University FIF (Fusion Investment Fund) initiative. I found FIF an excellent chance to take advantage for furthering my research, education and professional engagement with my international partners. Over the years I have developed international links in the US, India, China and Pakistan. These international links have played a significant role in my research activities through joint publications, developing research proposal(s) and submitting for external funding.

I met Professor Ramesh Chinakurli, a professor at PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India in the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) Conference in the US in 2010. Our shared research interests are in the characterisation of aluminium based composites/ electrocomposites, surface engineering, in particular HVOF (high velocity oxy-fuel) coatings and premetallic coated sheets (thrust-automotive industries) and mutual interests in PGT, PGR and U/G students’ research informed education. This provided a catalyst for us to publish 2 conference papers this year, the nomination of Professor Ramesh as BU visiting professor, develop a proposal for external funding (DST-EPSRC) and application to FIF.

Through the BU FIF initiative Fusion will be showcased as a global entity by strengthening existing cross-continent collaboration in education (introducing an international perspective and pedagogy), research (further research ideas to bid for external funding founded on existing work in nano-tribology) and professional practice (existing BU, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore and industrial partners links will be further strengthened). This process will significantly benefit BU students, staff, existing industrial partners, myself and the co-Investigator.

There are two visits planned, a visit to India later in October to conduct joint research in nano-materials for tribological applications and identify further opportunities of collaborations in all areas of Fusion. There will be a visit from an Indian Visiting Professor in November, to participate in teaching activities and research seminars aimed at both staff and students.

The Fusion application has provided an excellent opportunity to further strengthen international collaboration with our Indian partners and showcase our research, education and professional practice activities, resources and capabilities to them. Also further increase collaborative work in terms of all areas of fusion.

Finally I would like to thank Professor Jim Roach and Professor Mark Hadfield who provided their continued support and encouragement for this application.

Clearing and all that

I am in the early throws of writing a paper on the promotional activity of HE’s during this year’s clearing period. My likely approach is to analyse the advertising that took place on University home pages and in the press (all raw data has been captured) taking a perspective in terms of ‘responsible communications’ a theme for next year’s corporate and marketing communications conference. Anybody interested in informal chat or even co-writing something – drop me a line or two.

Media Education Summit 2012 @ BU.

This week, BU hosted the 5th annual Media Education Summit. Over 60 delegates attended from all over the world, to hear a wide range presentations and to take part in themed conversations about the scholarship of learning and teaching in our field.

Keynote speakers included Caroline Norbury, the new Chief Executive of Creative England. She set the scene for the Summit and challenged all media educators to “get out more”!

Next we had Ian Livingstone – remember the Fighting Fantasy adventure books in the 80s? He started the Games Workshop and is now President of the videogame company, Eidos, home of Lara Croft. Ian talked about his NextGen report and the ICT curriculum in schools, which is now gaining quite a lot of traction.

Paul Lewis from The Guardian shared his thoughts on collaboration and what he called “layered journalism”. He used his own reporting of the riots last year in London and Birmingham as a case study, and showed how he used Twitter both as a source and a means to get close to the unfolding story.

Jon Dovey from the University of the West of England talked about his REACT project, which is a collaboration between UWE, Bristol, Bath, Cardiff and Exeter Universities. Funded by the AHRC, the project aims to bring together arts and humanities researchers and creative economy companies to work on a series of ‘Sandbox’ initiatives. It’s probably the best example of ‘Fusion’ I have ever seen, and has given us all a lot to think about.

The Media School’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) started the Summit in 2008, as a forum to bring together those in the field of media and creative education. Since then we’ve been to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London and we are planning to hold the 2014 Summit outside the UK.

We filmed the keynotes, and they will start appearing on the website soon, if anyone is interested:

http://www.cemp.ac.uk/summit/2012/

Germany’s launches donation site for research funding!

Stifterverband is an association of German research funders who will soon launch Germany’s first crowd-funding site for science in order to connect the research world with the public. It is already available on Facebook and Twitter, and will go live independently in November.

The site allows researchers to post a call for funding for small expenditures (a research trip, a computer, or money to hire an assistant for a few months) and visitors to the site can donate directly to the calls they want to support!

New voucher scheme to stimulate SME innovation

Small UK businesses, from the 24th September 2012 will be able to obtain Government funding to help them develop and grow with the launch of the Innovation Voucher scheme to be managed by the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board (www.innovateuk.org).  The scheme will enable start-up, micro, small and medium-sized businesses to access up to £5,000 worth of advice and expertise from universities, research organisations or other private sector knowledge suppliers.

What are Innovation Vouchers?

Innovation Vouchers are designed to encourage businesses to look outside their current network for new knowledge that can help them to grow and develop. Start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses from across the UK can apply for an Innovation Voucher. A grant of up to £5,000 is available to businesses to work with a supplier for the first time and is used to pay for knowledge or technology transfer from that supplier. The voucher has three key criteria:

  • The idea that you want help with should be a challenge for the business which requires specialist help
  • It should be the first time that the firm has worked with the knowledge supplier
  • The idea should be applicable to one of the three priority sectors – agrifood, built environment or space

Benefits to business

An Innovation Voucher should stimulate a company to explore bringing new knowledge into the business, enhancing its ability to develop innovative products, processes and services and explore new markets.

Examples identified include:

  • Ideas for new or improved products, processes and services;
  • Using design to improve ideas;
  • Managing intellectual property

Innovation Voucher schemes are an ideal way of bringing the University and SMEs together to support activity that can evidence positive impact, provide case material for curricula, and in some circumstances research opportunities. The voucher could also be the forerunner to future bids to the Technology Strategy Board or European competition or grant leading to further shared resource.  The Technology Strategy Board will monitor the scheme’s progress and have indicated that they will consider extending it to other sectors in future.

Would you like to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN? Then come along to one of our workshops!

The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised.  Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.

They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:

1 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus

10 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus

15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus

23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus

31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus

Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link

Kennedy Scholarships 2013-2014

PG research

for postgraduate study at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 Open to: British citizens ordinarily resident in the UK who will have graduated by the time of taking up an award and who have spent two of the last five years studying at a university in the UK.

 Available for Graduate Programmes:

  • Special Student/non-degree
  • Master’s
  • PhD (external finding is welcomed for funded doctoral programmes)
  • Visiting Fellowship – Year of additional research towards UK PhD

 Award offers:

  • Full fees and health insurance
  • Tax free stipend of $2,500
  • Opportunity to be part of a Scholarship Programme valued by the Kennedy family and with distinguished alumni in leading positions in the UK and US.

 Closing date 28 October 2012

www.kennedytrust.org.uk

020 7222 1151

Frank Knox Memorial Fellowships 2013-2014 Harvard University

PG research

Fellowships are available for five graduates, men or women from the United Kingdom, to study for up to two consecutive years in one of the Faculties of Harvard. The value of each Fellowship is at least $26,000 plus tuition and health service fees.

 Information about the fellowships can be found here

 Details of the competition and an application form can be completed online here

 The competition is open to British citizens at the time of application normally resident in the UK who wish to attend the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, Graduate School of Design, Harvard Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health and:

  • Are studying for a first or higher degree & will graduate in the academic year 2012-13; OR
  • Are a UK-registered PhD student hoping for an additional year as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard; OR
  • Have completed a first or higher degree and graduated most recently no earlier than 2008.

 Applications close 23.59 on Sunday 28 October 2012.

 Enquiries regarding the Fellowships are welcome. Please call Annie Thomas on 020 7222 1151.

Rufus Stone reviewed in The Qualitative Report

Patricia Leavy, well-known author and innovator, has reviewed Rufus Stone the movie for the on-line qualitative journal, The Qualitative Report.  Entitled, “A Review of Rufus Stone: The Promise of Arts-Based Research” the review is available for download.

Patricia is an independent Author, Researcher and Commentator who lives in Kennebunk, Maine USA. Among her 11 books she is the author of Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice (Guilford Press), Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research: Using Problem-Centered Methodologies (Left Coast Press) and the research-informed novel Low-Fat Love (Sense Publishers). For more info please visit her website.

Just some of her responses to Rufus Stone the movie:

  • Rufus Stone is both an incredible short film and it embodies all that is best about arts-based research.
  • I am absolutely blown over by how good Rufus Stone is.
  • The film is not only a glaring look at how homophobia and intolerance can shape people’s experiences, but it is also a film very much about looking at who we are, how we became who we are, and how we allow our lives to unfold.
  • Anyone of any age and background can sit and watch this film, understand it, learn from it and emotionally connect to it.
  • This film was as good as most Oscar-nominated shorts, and vastly superior to many.  In my opinion, it was just about as good as a short film gets.

“If research is intended to teach, illuminate, shed light on topics of import and challenge our assumptions, Rufus Stone is an exemplary piece of research”.

FP7 Social Sciences & Humanities ‘Global Europe 2050’ Report Published

Research Professional gave a great summary of the FP7 Social Sciences and Humanities ”Global Europe 2050′  foresight report. This report is the output of an EC expert group; it presents and qualifies three scenarios that identify the main pathways Europe could follow over the next few decades:

1. The ‘Nobody Cares’ scenario, where Europe is in a ‘muddling through’ process;

2. ‘Europe under threat’, where Europe is faced by an economic decline and protectionist reactions; and

3. The ‘European Renaissance’ where the EU continues to enlarge and become stronger with more efficient innovation systems.

Any bets on which way we go…?!

Radio coverage of dementia research in Dorset

Dementia has received a good bit of local coverage on BBC Solent over the last three days. This kicked off with a panel discussion featuring people with dementia talking about their experiences of living with dementia on Saturday ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00xrth3 Feature starts 1hr 4minutes into the show)

On Sunday morning dementia continued as a topic for discussion with the issue of how to make churches dementia friendly (available to listen to at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00xrtlx (Feature starts 1hr 44 minutes into the show)).

Then on Monday morning Bournemouth University Dementia Institute were given the opportunity to talk on the News Hour about the low rate of diagnosis of dementia in Dorset and to highlight key findings from a project focusing on Dementia Friendly Tourism that Anthea Innes and Stephen Page have been leading that is currently being written up for publication. (feature starts 42 minutes into the show
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00xrtsw).

The whole notion of ‘Dementia Friendliness’ is one that is catching on in the UK and beyond with Dementia Friendly Communities being supported by the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge. The dementia work at BU embraces this concept and is actively applying it not only to the tourism and leisure research mentioned above but in our overall approach to our research and education work.

Beyond the Office?

News from the PVC

What’s in an office?  Furniture, a favourite mug, pictures of ones’ family, a pile of unanswered correspondence, a stack of marking and a shelf or two of books?  Some of us are lucky enough at BU to have our own office, others have to share, while others prefer to work at home on a corner of the dining room table or in a room the more pretentious of us call a study.  Besides my office I have a work room at home too.  It’s in the roof and you can hear the rain on the skylight, a sound I find delightful and elemental – nature’s music.  We justify these spaces by the need to ‘think’ and that creative thoughts need peace and quiet or that we need our academic possessions around us.  Maybe this is all true, but I very rarely refer to the books on my shelves these days, since it quicker now to look online and most of my academic library is stored on my hard drive.  Yes I value the calm, the routine of going to my office, the isolation from distraction it provides but it is exactly that, isolating.

I have worked in shared offices, in fact I wrote my PhD and a book more recently in one and have shared offices at times throughout my academic career.  The power of concentration overcomes most distractions, although I myself am a distraction to others, muttering to myself as I write, re-casting sentences by reading them out loud, getting up to pace and then sit down to write some more.  But to be office-less is perhaps a step further?  I supervise students from the US and I am always surprised when a deadline approaches and they reply ‘off to the Starbucks to work’.  And work they do deliver, with music in their ears, coffee to hand, in the middle of the bustle of daily life; I am not sure I could do this?

But in truth what is actually stopping me from trying?  You see people commuting on the train, working hard, making me feel guilty as I idly stare out of the window.  How can they work in such conditions?  I often rationalise it unfairly by saying ‘well they are not doing anything creative or that requires deep thought’, but this is just nonsense.  In truth you can work anywhere given a focus.  I just prefer to run to the isolation of my office and as a result I am less productive and perhaps more isolated.

The recurrent theme here is isolation;  your office isolates you from the world around, a defence mechanism to keep out the hassle and the distractions, but there is a down side.  Over the last year or so in my current role I have tried to find ways of keeping in daily contact with academics throughout BU to be a conduit for their concerns and to listen to their needs.  In truth, I am always interested in and keen to talk about research – my own if anyone will listen, but chiefly other peoples if they are prepared to tell.  So this Wednesday I am about to abandon my office for a month – an office sabbatical if you like – as an experiment into being office-less and to try to enhance my own level of engagement.  Wherever possible my meetings have been switched out of the Office of the Vice Chancellor and between times I will hang out and try to work in the coffee shops and open access spaces across both campuses.  The purpose, well to see what it is like to be office-less for a start, to fight the isolation provided by ones office and ultimately to see if it enhances my accessibility to the people I represent – the academics that make our University strong.  So when you see me about, huddled in the corner of the coffee shop, feel free to stop and talk!

Support for your funding proposal from the RDU

Guidance

Why is the internal peer review of research proposals important?

  • The competition for research funds is high and is likely to increase.  Research Council funding presents a particular challenge – with the ESRC having one of the lowest success rates.
  • In recent years funders have expressed their growing concern over the number of poor quality research proposals they receive, with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) taking the action to implement a ban on submissions from unsuccessful candidates who fail repeatedly and requesting evidence on steps institutions take to improve academic skills in producing research proposals.
  • Internal peer review has been credited with producing higher quality research proposals and increased success rates and is a process encouraged by the Research Councils.

What is the RPRS? 

  • It is a university-wide scheme, that manages the peer review of funding applications, and supports academics while they are developing or finalising their proposals.

Who reviews the applications?

  • The Peer Reviewers are a selection of BU academics who have a considerable track record in successfully gaining research funding, who sit on funding panels and who review research proposals for funders.
  • We select two reviewers to review your proposal.

Who can apply to the RPRS?

  • The service is open to anyone at BU and for any type of research funding.

What kind of feedback can I expect?

  • Peer reviewers will provide feedback on the proposed research in terms of topic selection, novel value, clarity of ideas proposed and advise on how the proposal can be further strengthened. They may also provide the names of potential collaborators where applicable.
  • The Research Development Unit will provide feedback on general structure and style, clarity of ideas, timescales proposed, estimated costs, potential funders, eligibility for funding schemes, and any potential ethical issues.
  • Feedback will be delivered within 3 weeks of submission – often before.

How do I submit an application?

  • Contact RKE Operations to obtain a rough costing for your proposal. RKE Operationswill guide you through the process
  • Send in a Word or PDF version of your electronic submission draft (such as Je-S) and submit to Caroline O’Kane
  • The Research Development Unit will undertake review of the proposal and forward to 2 experts
  • You will receive feedback within 2-3 weeks

Remember

  • Please allow sufficient time in your proposal development to allow for the  mandatory internal deadline of five working days for the submission of Research Council bids via the Je-S system.
  • This also applies to applications made via the E-Gap2 and Leverhulme Online e-submissions systems (affecting applications made to the British Academy, the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust).

Who can I ask for further help?

  • Caroline O’Kane in the Research Development Unit manages the RPRS and will answer any questions you have.