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International Early Labour Research Group

This has been a busy few months for the International Early Labour Research Group (IELRG), which comprises members from across the globe. We had the opportunity to get together at the International Labour and Birth Research Conference in Grange over Sands this month, where early labour was a strong theme.

The IELRG held a workshop looking at how latent phase labour is defined. This was followed by a symposium on early labour with presentations from the USA and Europe.

The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health at Bournemouth University was well represented. In addition to participating in the workshops, the team had a couple of posters.

Vanessa Bartholomew, clinical academic doctoral midwife, presented her doctoral work on pain catastrophisation. Congratulations to Vanessa for winning both the daily and overall prize for Best Scientific Poster!

Vanora Hundley, Professor of Midwifery, presented a study looking at how perceptions of pain established prior to pregnancy can influence decisions about labour and birth.

The International Early Labour Research Group with be launching a special issue of Women and Birth later this year.

Related BU papers:

Bartholomew V, Clark C, Hundley V, Parris B (2023) Changing the Way We Think About Pain. MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 33(1): 30-38

Clark C, Bartholomew V, Mylod D, Hundley V  (2023) The importance of pain histories for latent phase labour. MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 33(1): in press

Conversation article: Children have been interacting in the metaverse for years – what parents need to know about keeping them safe

Professor Andy Phippen writes for The Conversation about the virtual worlds children access, and how parents can support using them safely.

Children have been interacting in the metaverse for years – what parents need to know about keeping them safe

Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock

Andy Phippen, Bournemouth University

The metaverse sounds like it could be a scary place. Recent headlines have highlighted the dangers to children of the metaverse – a generic term for the range of online virtual worlds, developed by different tech companies, in which users can interact. Children’s charities have raised concerns about its potential for harm.

Recently, Meta – Facebook’s parent company – announced that teenagers would be able to use its VR Horizon Worlds app in North America. In this online environment, users are represented by avatars and spend time in virtual worlds, making use of virtual reality (VR) headsets. Some politicians in the US have already voiced their unease. It is certainly possible that Meta could extend this access to teens elsewhere in the world.

It would be no surprise if parents were concerned about this technology and how it might affect their children. In fact, children are already online in the metaverse – and there are steps parents can take to understand this technology, the risks it may pose, and what they can do.

Avatars and online games

Perhaps the most famous current interactive world aimed at children is Roblox, an online platform that allows users to create avatars, play games, make their own games, and interact with others. Young people play games developed by other users – the most popular is currently Adopt Me!, in which players adopt animals and live with them in a virtual world.

This mix of gameplay, interaction with others, and opportunity for creativity are all reasons Roblox is so popular. While it can be played using VR headsets, the vast majority of interaction takes place using more traditional devices such as phones, tablets and laptops.

Another emerging platform, Zepeto, has a similar model of allowing users to create environments, access “worlds” developed by others, and chat with others within these environments. Some young people will interact solely with their own group of friends in a specific world; other worlds will allow interaction with people they don’t know.

However, there is a rich history of platforms that could be considered, in modern terminology, to be “metaverses”. One is Minecraft, perhaps the most popular platform before Roblox. Launched in 2011, Minecraft is a block-building game which also allows for interaction with other users.

Before Minecraft, there were other platforms such as multiplayer online games Club Penguin (launched 2005) and Moshi Monsters (launched 2008) which, while smaller in scope, still allowed young people to engage with others on online platforms with avatars they created. These games also attracted moral panics at the time.

While new terms such as the metaverse and unfamiliar technology like VR headsets might make us fear these things are new, as with most things in the digital world, they are simply progressions of what has come before.

And on the whole, the risks remain similar. Headsets in VR-based worlds do present new challenges in terms of how immersive the experience is, and how we might monitor what a young person is doing. But otherwise, there is little new in the risks associated with these platforms, which are still based around interactions with others. Children may be exposed to upsetting or harmful language, or they may find themselves interacting with someone who is not who they claim to be.

Parental knowledge

In my work with colleagues on online harms, we often talk about mitigating risk through knowledge. It is important for parents to have conversations with their children, understand the platforms they are using, and research the tools these platforms provide to help reduce the potential risks.

Most provide parental controls and tools to block and report abusive users. Roblox offers a wide range of tools for parents, ranging from being able to restrict who their children play with to monitoring a child’s interactions in a game. Zepeto has similar services.

As a parent, understanding these tools, how to set them up and how to use them is one of the best ways of reducing the risk of upset or harm to your child in these environments.

However, perhaps the most important thing is for parents to make sure their children are comfortable telling them about issues they may have online. If your child is worried or upset by what has happened on one of these platforms, they need to know they can tell you about it without fear of being told off, and that you can help.

It is also best to have regular conversations rather than confrontations. Ask your child’s opinion or thoughts on news stories about the metaverse. If they know you are approachable and understanding about their online lives, they are more likely to talk about them.The Conversation

Andy Phippen, Professor of IT Ethics and Digital Rights, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Congratulations to BU social work academics!

Congratulations to Dr Sally Lee and Dr Lou Oliver on the publication of their important edited collection Social Work Practice with Adults published by SAGE. This excellent book brings together practitioners, academics and, innovatively and most importantly, people who use social work services. The book includes chapters by several BU social work authors in addition to the editors, notably, Jenny Bigmore, Ros Dray, Orlanda Harvey, Stefan Kleipoedszus, Mike Lyne, and Jonathan Parker, and congratulations go to all involved.

 

The book places people who avail themselves of social work at the centre, demonstrating the commitment of the editors and authors to changing lives for the better. It also represents a phenomenal teaching text for students learning to practise.

 

Well done everyone!

Drumming for health event – 10th May 2023

Coffee Morning

Please join us at our next ADRC coffee morning on May 10th from 11-12:30 (arrival at 10:45 in reception).This is an in-person coffee morning which will be taking place at our Executive Business Centre at Lansdowne Campus.

In this session Caroline, Lyndsey, Michelle and Kim will join us to share their work on the impact of drumming on health and wellbeing. During the session they will share the findings of their research focused on drumming with people with dementia, before inviting you to take part in a drumming session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Places are free but if you would like to attend please email adrc@bournemouth.ac.uk to book your place.

 

 

 

CSHV – International guest lecture on ‘Pacing Adult Womanhood: Young Women, Aspirations, and Expectations in Newly Independent Kosovo’

The Centre for Seldom Heard Voices is delighted to invite you to a special international guest lecture featuring social anthropological research on ‘pacing adult womanhood’ in precarious situations, here through the case study of young women’s situation in Kosovo. Dr Rozafa Berisha (Manchester/ Prishtina), currently visiting the social anthropology sister programme in the Social Science and Social Work department through our Erasmus+ K107 programme in partnership with University of Prishtina, Kosovo, will present her research on Thursday, 27th April, 15:00 to 17:00 in EB-206. All interested staff and students welcome! More details are available in this poster: Rozafa Berisha poster

Conversation article: Social media now trumps traditional family networks in Libya – my Facebook survey reached 446,000 women

Abier Hamidi writes for The Conversation about her PhD research around HIV awareness in Libya…

Social media now trumps traditional family networks in Libya – my Facebook survey reached 446,000 women

Connected: Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform in Libya with more than six million users.
Prostock-studio via Shutterstock

Abier Hamidi, Bournemouth University

When I told my family and friends I intended to pursue a PhD researching HIV awareness among married women in Libya, my home country, the reaction was not encouraging: “You’d be lucky to even get members of your family to respond,” said one.

They weren’t being unnecessarily pessimistic but rather managing my expectations, considering I was not only researching HIV awareness in a conservative country often perceived oppressive, but I was also looking to recruit women.

Historically, Libyan women have been placed under severe social and cultural constraints that rendered them difficult to reach. Libya is shaped by and works within a patriarchal society where simply approaching women on such a taboo topic as HIV/Aids – which in Libya is often associated with immoral practices such as pre or extra-marital sex, substance abuse and homosexuality – made the research even more complex.

I knew that the lack of confidentiality and the fear of being stigmatised were going to be a problem. So I needed a method that would provide a platform whereby the women can respond to the survey without prying eyes.

This is where the power of online surveys comes in. Using an anonymous, self-completed questionnaire reduces the effect of the topic’s sensitivity and helps reduce people’s fear of the possible social stigma attached to those self-disclosures.

But online surveys have their limitations. In Libya, these include poor telecommunication infrastructure, especially away from the large cities, as well as the high cost of internet access and the relatively poor service there. But the fast-growing smartphone market is encouraging and facilitating internet use in the country. According to the most recent available figures there were 3.14 million internet users in Libya in 2023 – approximately 45.9% of the population.

My questionnaire included five main sections. I asked for some limited demographic information (age, city, educational level, employment status). There were also sections on HIV/Aids related knowledge, responsents’ perceptions of HIV risk, their attitude toward HIV and where they sourced healthcare information. I took particular care to ensure that I was gathering the maximum amount of information while remaining sensitive to Libya’s religious and social contexts.

Armed with approval from the university’s research ethics committee, I sent out a recruitment post with the questionnaire, mainly to family and friends in the Libyan diaspora in the UK and the US. The principle aim of this pilot study was to ensure that the wording, language and questions were understandable and that the mechanics of the survey functioned correctly. Within a month I’d received more than 168 complete questionnaires, which reassured me that sharing the survey with family and friends and asking them to forward the link to their various social and family networks would be the ideal approach for my main research on Libyan women in Libya.

What is ‘wasta’?

Libya has a population of around 7.1 million which is heavily skewed towards large networked tribes and well-established families, meaning the degree of separation across the whole of society is quite small. This has traditionally meant that the best way to get things done is by using these big family or tribal networks. This is known as “wasta”.

Wasta is a common practice of calling on personal connections for assistance. It’s a social norm in most Arab countries, defined by one academic as “a personal exchange system between members of society that is entrenched in the tribal structure of the country”. The concept has been tied to a tribal tradition which obliges those within the group to provide assistance in the same network.

I have a large family in Libya which straddles two different tribes, as well as family friends, so I was confident that wasta was the best approach to take. I sent the link to all the members of my wasta network through WhatsApp and asked them to forward it onto their friends and extended family. I also posted on Twitter and reached out to various Facebook pages. I only needed 323 complete questionnaires and I was confident that method would yield the best response.

Days went by and I only had a handful of responses. Much of the feedback I received from family members was worrying. People said they had exhausted their networks without much success. Clearly, recruitment using wasta wasn’t working. So I decided to fall back on my experiences of working in marketing and created a targeted post, aimed at “women, ages 18-65+ living in Libya, married, divorced, separated and widowed”. In direct contrast to wasta, this didn’t rely on who I know.

Social media has grown massively in popularity as a research tool in recent years. So, bearing in mind that Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Libya, with more than 6 million users, I created a Facebook page with the title, in Arabic: دراسة النساء الليبيات المتزوجات (Research on Libyan married women). I linked in papers I had published in the past (also in Arabic) and the recruitment poster below.

A graphic showing an Arab woman holding a Libyan flag with two young people.
The recruitment poster used by the author in her Facebook recruitment campaign.
Abier Hamidi, Author provided

I launched the post and the response was immediate, with replies and completed questionnaires and supportive comments coming in fairly rapidly to start with. But within a few days the response rate slowed down and still I wasn’t anywhere near my response target. Then I realised my mistake. The initial post targeting women who are married, divorced, separated or widowed hadn’t taken into account that the majority of women didn’t tend to include their marital status on Facebook. This meant I was only reaching a small percentage of my target audience.

I removed the status and the reach shot up. In six months, my post reached 446,906 women in Libya. The stats were impressive: 59,422 engagements, 1,549 reactions and 703 comments. I received more than 1,000 completed questionnaires.

In the end, this showed me that while for certain things, wasta can yield results, for an issue such as this, Libyan women wanted to ensure their anonymity and the confidentiality of their responses. Social media, which doesn’t mandate use of real names or photographs, was able to offer this in a way that extended family and friends, naturally, never could.The Conversation

Abier Hamidi, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BU PhD student publishes in The Conversation

international, Publishing, Student Engagement, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations the Abier Hamidi, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) whose PhD work was published in The Conversation this week (24 April) under the title Social media now trumps traditional family networks in Libya – my Facebook survey reached 446,000 women.  Her piece in The Conversation on the recruitment of female participants for a PhD study in a rather patriarchal society brings together issues of anonymity, gender, and wider social culture.

This is Abier’s PhD research is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health and the Global Engagement Lead in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

IMIV MRI Research Project Scheme 2023

BU Challenges, NHS

The Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation (IMIV) is pleased to announce the launch of the IMIV MRI Research Project Scheme 2023.

Under the scheme, two innovative MRI research projects will each be awarded up to 100 hours of scanning time on the IMIV’s state-of-the-art 3T Siemens Lumina MRI scanner.  Applications for the scheme are now open.

  • The focus of the scheme is on multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional projects, and priority will be given to projects with a clinical partnership.
  • All research projects must have a Bournemouth University researcher as lead or co-lead applicant.
  • Projects must be able to demonstrate how they will lead to peer-reviewed academic outputs and external funding applications for further MR imaging studies.
  • Up to 100 hours of scanning time will be awarded to up to 2 research projects. The award will not cover any additional expenses related to scanning, or other aspects of the project.
  • Projects will be expected to start in the 2023-24 academic year.

Applications close on Friday 7th July 2023. 

For further information and an application form, please email imiv@bournemouth.ac.uk

Funding Development Briefings and UKRO visit

Funding opportunities

UKRO visit to BU

Before going to remining funding development briefings for the rest of this academic year, I would like to remind about UKRO Session for BU academics on 26 April 2023 at 12:30.

All BU staff are invited to participate. You can find more details, including agenda, in my previous blog; Zoom link to join the event has been sent to Heads of Departments. If for any reason you cannot get the link, please email me directly and I will send it over to you.

You can still book short individual meeting with BU European Advisor (subject to availability) until Monday mid-day.

Funding Development Briefings

After Easter break, we are making some changes related to weekly funding briefing sessions.

From now on, RDS funding briefing sessions will take place fortnightly. Every second briefing will include academic drop-in sessions for academics willing to ask specific questions to pre-award team members or simply to meet people and have a conversation with those providing bidding support. We will also welcome ideas about how to better organise briefing-like sessions for the next academic year.

Funding spotlights, as part of briefing sessions, will be organised once per month. There are many recordings and presentations from previous briefing sessions available on Brightspace and briefings’ Teams channel. We aim to update pre-award Brightspace content to make it more user friendly in terms of finding exactly what academics are looking for.

Please note – briefing session on 26/04/23 (UKRO annual visit) starts at 12:30 and will be held using Zoom.

We will evaluate results of this approach and analyse feedback from academics to design briefing sessions for the new academic year starting in September 2023. The last briefing session of this academic year will be held on 19 July. Here is the schedule of remaining briefing sessions:

26/04/23 – briefing + spotlight: UKRO annual visit (starting at 12:30)
10/05/23 — briefing + academic drop-in session
24/05/23 – briefing + spotlight: AHRC (subject to availability of AHRC presenter)
07/06/23 – briefing + academic drop-in session
21/06/23 – briefing + spotlight: Marie Curie Fellowships
05/07/23 – briefing + academic drop-in session
19/07/23 – briefing + spotlight: Royal Society

Here is the link for joining remaining briefing sessions (except 26/04/23): Click here to join the meeting

New book on Kinky Sexual Subcultures

A new book exploring kinky sexual subcultures, by BU’s Liam Wignall, is out now.

Recent social and attitudinal changes related to sex and sexuality have allowed people with kink interests to explore kink in new ways; kink is no longer underground and secretive, and instead it is normal to see somebody reading Fifty Shades of Grey on public transport and see more examples of kink in mainstream media (such as the popular Netflix show How to Build a Sex Room. There is also an abundance of information online about kink (including tutorials on how to play safe; discussions of consent; online forums and kinky social networking sites). As such, people are engaging in kink in new ways like the use of marital aids including this Quality bullet vibrators.

Kinky in the Digital Age documents the impact of these attitudinal and technological changes. The book brings together over 6 years of ethnographic data and 74 interviews with kinky gay and bisexual men to provide a rich insight into how kink subcultures operate in contemporary society. Importantly, the book showcases how the internet has transformed how gay and bisexual men explore kink and incorporate it into the sexual and social identities.

The book also provides a detailed story of how a relatively new kink subculture, pup play, has developed, taking full advantage of the internet and the ability to connect easily with others, as well as newer iterations of kink that focus on the more playful elements of the activities. The growing popularity of pup play is explored, as well as how people can explore different aspects of themselves through a pup identity.

Kinky in the Digital Age is available now from all reputable book stores.