Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Dr Richard Shipway who discusses the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games and how his research has been used by local councils to improve the delivery of the games in the area.
To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!
In looking at Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth we cannot ignore recent regional evidence, links to 2 documents which set the scene
The LEP prospectus http://www.dorsetforyou.com/media.jsp?mediaid=164554&filetype=pdf
The South West Regional Economic Indicators http://economy.swo.org.uk/publications/economic-indicators/south-west-regional-economic-indicators/
At a recent Media School meeting attendees asked us to outline some of the common funders, so here is a general overview of those funders with a Media flavour both domestic and further a field. Part One concentrates on the key UK funders and in the next few days we’ll post information on potential EU funders and schemes.
The two primary research councils for media-focused research are the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) which are responsible for funding the vast majority of arts and humanities in the UK. The success rates for the AHRC are the highest of all RC’s (see the recent blog article) and it offers standard grants, networking grants, collaborative doctoral awards and early career research grants.
The RCs also focus on particular initiatives to address issues of intellectual and wider cultural, social or economic urgency, these schemes tend to have higher success rates than the standard grants so are always worth consideration. Information on AHRC initiatives can be found here.
An overview – AHRC Early Career Research Grants:
Early Career Research Grants are intended to assist new researchers at the start of their careers in gaining experience of managing and leading research projects. They look to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research.
They also enjoy higher success rates than standard grants, there are no set submission dates, projects can last up to 60 months and should cost between £20,000 and £200,000 fEC.
To be eligible as an early career researcher you must be within eight years of the award of your PhD or equivalent professional training or within six years of your first academic appointment.
Further information on all opportunities can be found here – AHRC ESRCs
The British Academy supports excellent ideas, individuals and intellectual resources in the humanities and social sciences. In particular, the Academy enables UK researchers to work with scholars and resources in other countries, sustain a British research presence in various parts of the world and help to attract overseas scholars to the UK.
An overview – International Partnership and Mobility Scheme:
Aims to support the development of partnerships between the UK and other areas of the world where research excellence would be strengthened by new, innovative initiatives and links. Awards are for research partnerships between scholars in the UK and scholars in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, South Asia, or East Asia.
Partnerships might include a range of related activities, and mobility should form an integral part of proposals. Workshops and seminars should form an integral part of the programme. The main purpose of the funding is to cover travel and maintenance costs, although costs related to other eligible activities will be considered. Partnerships including a training element and involving scholars in the early stages in their career will be looked on favourably.
Grants are offered up to a maximum of £10,000 per year for a period of one year or three years. The submission deadline is 8th February 2012.
Further information can be found here – British Academy International Partnerships
In addition to these big UK funders, there are also some smaller more focused funders which may appeal to the interests of specific research groups within the school. For instance conference grants offered by the The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) could be of interest to the Narrative Research Group – information can be found here MHRA.
This issue of Natural Resources Forum considers the relations between sustainable development and the “green economy” and it matches our Green Economy & Sustainability research theme (isn’t that great?)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/narf.2011.35.issue-3/issuetoc
It features seven articles which provide an insight to the following questions. ‘Under what constraints will a green economy have to take place if we are serious on addressing climate change? What can past technological transitions teach us about the feasibility of a green energy transition? How can institutions (in a broad sense) foster more sustainable outcomes? What types of financial instruments could be mobilized to promote greener economies?’ (Le Blanc, 2011).
A previous issue of Natural Resources Forum (Fulai et al. 2011) addresses another interesting the question “Is the concept of a green economy a useful way of framing policy discussions and policymaking to promote sustainable development?”
For those interested and passionate about the Green Economy like me, it provides great ideas and suggestions for further debate.
Enjoy the reading and feel free to email me for discussion.
Elena
Wow! We’ve been monitoring engagement with the blog now for four months using the fabulous Google Analytics tool. The stats below are based on the period 25 July to 29 November 2011 (128 days).
On average during this period the blog received 16,017 unique visitors, each spending approximately 1.42 minutes on the site. The blog is generally much busier on weekdays attracting between 250 and 500 unique visitors each day. In total there have been over 40,000 page views.
53% of visitors find us via internet search engines. The top search terms led readers to our blog over the past four months are:
37% of visitors are direct traffic, i.e. via the web address, the BU Staff Portal, or the Daily Digest email. This is excellent as it shows that you lovely people who work at Bournemouth University are using the blog – hooray!
10% of visitors are referred to our blog by external sites. Our top referring sites are:
At present 32% of visits to the blog are made by returning visitors and 68% are made by new visitors.
Our visitors to date have come from 142 different countries (see the map below). The top ten countries viewing the blog are:
Within the UK most visitors are based in:
Our 10 most accessed pages to date are:
This is all excellent news 🙂 We’re always open to receiving feedback about the blog – please email us at any time with any comments, suggestions, etc, or add a comment to this blog post.
If you would like access to add your own stories and posts to the blog then email me (jnortham@bournemouth.ac.uk) and I’ll get you started!
We last reviewed the visitor stats on the Blog in August – you can read that previous post here: Does Anybody Read this Blog? Yes!
As highlighted in yesterday’s blogpost, funding for Horizon 2020 will now be structured around three priority areas. Below outlines in more detail the areas included in this:
I. Societal Challenges
This will be in response to EU policy and will focus on 6 areas:
The emphasis will be on bringing together a critical mass of resources and knowledge across different fields, technologies and scientific disciplines in order to address challenges and activities will cover the full cycle from research to market, with a focus on innovation-related activities, such as piloting, demonstration, test-beds, support for public procurement, social innovation and market take-up of innovations. Finally, social sciences and humanities shall be an integral part of the activities to address all the challenges.
II. Excellent Science
This will reinforce and extend the excellence of the EUs science base in order to make the EU research and innovation system more competitive on a global scale. This will be funded under 4 programmes:
These activities are focused on building skills in the long term and on the next generation of science, technology, researchers and innovations and providing support for emerging talent from across the whole of the European Union and associated countries, as well as worldwide.
III. Industrial Leadership
This aims to speed up development of the technologies and innovations that will underpin future businesses and help innovative SMEs to grow into world-leading companies. It consists of three specific objectives:
Horizon 2020 will take an integrated approach to the participation of SMEs, which could lead to around 15% of the total combined budgets for all specific objectives on societal challenges and the specific objective on ‘Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies’ being devoted to SMEs.
The ‘Societal Challenges ‘ theme and Marie Curie Actions found in the ‘Excellent Science’ theme are most relevant to BU staff and therefore Wednesday and Thursday’s blog posts will focus on these respectively.
This week BU is proud to launch a new round of the BU Fusion Fund to support staff innovation around the fusion of education, research and professional practice. Details and the application process for the fund are set out in the attached documents and the fund forms part of BU’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) Strategy.
The idea is to support innovative ideas which lead to employer, business or industry engagement enhancing core BU activity of research and education. Availability of funds are modest in the first year (although build in subsequent years) but the key is to provide an opportunity for staff to explore innovative ideas around Fusion. Ideas for new courses, enterprise ventures, industry secondments, or employer engagements can all be explored by this fund.
It is designed to enable staff to develop new ideas and innovations around FUSION!
The deadline for the next call is 13 January 2012 – good luck!
Available documents:
You can access the BU2018 Vision and Values website here: BU2018 website
Just a reminder to you all about our fantastic two EU funding opportunities which were launched last week and already generated much interest.
The BU EU Academic Development Scheme (EUADS) is for all newbie’s in EU research, comprising of an amazing training and mentorship programme and a personal budget to help you create a proposal. The deadline for this scheme is 13.01.12
The BU EU Networking Fund (EUNF) is for anyone who wants to travel to network with potential partners. There isn’t a deadline for this but the funds are limited so be quick and don’t miss out!
More details on both schemes as well as application forms can be found in my previous blogpost.
On the afternoon of the 14 December 2011 we will be launching the Fusion Seminar series with an event focused around launching the eight BU Research Themes.
The event will combine time for cross-BU networking within these themes, with sessions led by theme champions focusing on defining the challenges in education, research & practice within each theme.
The draft programme is now available here: Fusion event 14/12/11 DRAFT programme
You can register for the event and sign-up for the themes most relevant to you using the form below.
Love PHD Comics? Then come to the screening of The PHD Movie, hosted at BU on Monday 5 December!
The PHD Movie is being shown at universities around the world and premiered at UCLA in Los Angeles in September. It has also been shown at Harvard University, Yale University, University of Sydney, CERN, and multiple screenings at the Max Planck Institute.
In the UK the movie is only scheduled to be screened at UCL, Oxford, Glasgow, Cranfield, Bristol, Imperial College, York, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Brunel and Bournemouth!
The PHD Movie is a live-action adaptation of the popular online comic strip by Jorge Cham (www.phdcomics.com). It was filmed on location at and was produced in partnership with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The film introduces audiences to the unique and funny culture of Academia and follows four graduate students (Cecilia, Mike, Tajel and the “Nameless Grad Student”) as they struggle to find balance between research, teaching and their personal lives with humor and heart.
The Movie was produced and directed by and stars real PhD students and researchers.
The Bournemouth screening will be held on Monday 5 December between 5pm-7pm in the Screening Room (W241), Weymouth House on the Talbot Campus.
It is free to attend!
Places at the screening are limited so complete the booking form below if you’d like to come along.
This week I will be bringing you a summary of the most important information contained in the draft Horizon 2020 proposal (FP7s replacement). Today focuses on the background to Horizon 2020 and its overall objectives and aims, which will help you to understand the rationale behind the new funding structures which will be detailed throughout this week on the blog.
Horizon 2020 has an arching overall primary objective to generate excellent science in order to strengthen the EU’s world-class excellence in science whilst fostering industrial leadership to support business and tackling societal challenges, in order to respond directly to the challenges identified in the Europe 2020 strategy by supporting activities covering the entire spectrum from research to market.
Funding will complement these three primary aims, but each will incorporate at least one of the more specific aims outlined in Horizon 2020. These are to:
Tomorrow’s blog post will detail the areas of funding proposed within Horizon 2020….
Martin Pickard from GrantCraft came to the university last week to deliver grant writing workshops focusing on applying to the research councils. Martin has an excellent track record of helping universities win funding and provided some top tips on how to prepare a better application. His main aim was to encourage participants to start thinking of applications as a sales document – how to make an impact with every part of the application and convince the funder to ‘buy’ the research. Fundamentally your research doesn’t change but it’s how you package it that matters.
One of the things that Martin advised was that when you give your applications to colleagues to review ask them to give you 10 reasons why they wouldn’t fund it. You may not agree with everything they say but it gives you some constructive feedback and can help you think about whether you have fully defended your project. The people reviewing your application for the funder may not be as close to the field as you and everyone has had those comments from reviewers where you wonder if they have a clue. Don’t give your reviewers a chance to think, give them all the answers even if you think it’s obvious.
The other big message from Martin’s sessions was that you need to think about what the overarching problem is that your research is addressing and make that clear from the start. This is bigger that just the research need that you are addressing and you need to think outside the box! Once you start to think bigger, about where your research fits within other research, with practitioners and within society, it makes the section on impact much simpler because the message is there throughout your application.
And finally give yourself enough time…to think about it, prepare several drafts and get feedback from colleagues.
Martin is coming back in the new year to deliver a few more sessions. In January he is running a session aimed at staff preparing their first research grant and in February he is running two sessions on EU funding – one particularly looking at the Marie Curie scheme and the other at EU funding in general. If you’re interested in attending these sessions please contact Susan Dowdle from the Research Development Unit.
Dear all,
I would really like to encourage full engagement with the fusion day on December 14. The development of the health, wellbeing and ageing theme is up to us – we can harness what we are good at and how research expertise knits together across the uni and present this as our BU interpretation. This is just the beginning and yes we will need a series of events to form together as a community – this will be one of the questions on Dec 14th – what now?
I feel that this theme has a very good pedigree with some excellent talent and is in the white hot area of the fusion triangle! – it is now giving it a voice and direction.
Horizon 2020 is the replacement of FP7 – Europe’s largest funding programme, managed by the European Commission (EC). In 2014, FP7 will end and Horizon 2020 will be the primary mechanism through which to seek EC funding.
A confidential draft paper was released this week which details the proposed direction of Horizon 2020. Every day next week I will post important summaries of sections of the document most relevant to you so you can get a head start on preparing for Horizon 2020:
A new report that will serve as a blueprint for effective leadership in social work and social care has just been published by the Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BournemouthUniversity.
Entitled ‘Leadership and Management Development for Social Work and Social Care: Creating Leadership Pathways of Progression’, the ground-breaking report is co-authored by Professor Keith Brown, Director of the Centre, and Jane Holroyd MBE on behalf of Learn to Care, the body which represents workforce development managers from all local authorities in England.
The report provides the UK’s first framework for establishing an effective Leadership and Management pathway in social work and social care. It addresses the major concerns and recommendations identified following the Peter Connelly case by the Social Work Reform Board (2009) and the Munro Review of Child Protection Services (2011) in terms of the call for a clear leadership and management strategy for front line social work managers.
This new framework has been developed over the past 18 months and has involved rigorous testing and piloting. A new underpinning theory and approach, Self-Leadership, which critically emphasises the quality of thinking and developing the abilities to manage self as part of improving personal and organisational performance, has been developed by Professor Brown and Jane Holroyd. Holroyd suggests this model is applicable to all professions, whatever their managerial position, as all professionals will be leaders within their own sphere of influence.
The report also highlights the critical role of assessment and evaluation to demonstrate that individuals have reached the required levels of competence and that a return on the investment is evidenced.
Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, has hailed the framework as enormously important for the future of long term care in the UK.
“Reputationally for Bournemouth University, this is an incredibly important breakthrough. What we are currently doing with social work and social care training is teaching without testing and training without measuring the impact,” he said.
“As a state, we are spending millions and millions and not questioning the effectiveness of that spend”.
The Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University is at the leading edge of post qualifying social work education in the UK. It works with over one third of all local authorities in England and over 70 major employers, including training social workers within the armed forces.
The Centre’s portfolio of courses are designed to raise standards in social work practice and help those in social work and social care demonstrate their competence to work within complex situations with the most vulnerable in our society.
Of particular note, this leadership framework has been developed to meet the requirements of the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework and it is anticipated that this will be of real value, especially as we see increasing integration between the NHS and Local Authority community services in the coming months.
You can order a copy of the publication by emailing kbrown@bournemouth.ac.uk
Sessions for the BU Researcher Development Programme in November/December 2011 are as follows:
Managing your Thesis workshop (Part 2) Using MS Office 2010 to manage your thesis and other documents facilitated by Su Kensley
Research Ethics Professor Holger Schutkowski
Researchers must Write Professor Matthew Bennett
Academic Writing Sue Mitchell (external)
These sessions are primarily aimed at new PGRs however all PGRs and ECRs are welcome. Prior booking is essential on some sessions where places are limited.
While the draft Work Programme for the Nanosciences, Nanotechnology & New Materials Production (NMP) 2013 hasn’t been released yet, we do have some insights into what it may look . It has a whopping budget as this chart indicates and has many exciting potential funding areas which you can view a summary of in this PDF: NMP – Areas of Funding.
We are looking for a volunteers to represent BU and to attend Engage 2011: Making an Impact next week.
Engage 2011 is the annual conference of the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement and will be held on Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 November in Bristol. Delegates can choose to attend for one day or both days.
Further information about the event (including the programme) can be found here: http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/engage-2011-making-impact
Your attendance will be fully funded by the RDU. If you’re interested in attending contact me (jnortham@bournemouth.ac.uk) as soon as possible and I’ll arrange it for you.
Public engagement is a hot topic in the world of HE at the moment! Over the past 12-18 months in particular there has been a huge push to increase the volume and quality of public engagement. The main reasons for this push have been the increased prominence of the research impact agenda, the need to demonstrate the societal value of research, and accountability to the public purse. In return for contributing to society through public engagement, universities have much to gain and the benefits of this public engagement activities are felt by the university, its staff and students, and the wider public.
BU will be focusing a lot of energy and passion on public engagement in the near future! Attending Engage 2011 is an excellent opportunity for you to find out all about public engagement and to champion it in your Schools.
BU staff can login below:
First paper by PhD student
Update: ESRC Festival Info Session Rescheduled to Wednesday 23 April 11am-12pm
Prof. Jonathan Parker on social welfare
Nepal Family Cohort Study dissemination event
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Horizon Europe info days 2025 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.
Research Information Network