Some of the key issues around open access are neatly summarised by PhD Comics in this short animation. It’s from a couple of years ago, but still relevant…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY
Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Some of the key issues around open access are neatly summarised by PhD Comics in this short animation. It’s from a couple of years ago, but still relevant…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY
I have taught at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense on a number of occasions but I continue to be impressed by the enthusiasm and challenging questions the Master’s level students pose. Paris is rich with culture and the education system has many benefits. I am privileged to be part of a growing French research culture that respects skills and knowledge with cutting edge technology in neuroscience.
Eiffel Tower, roof-top.
This complements my experience at Bournemouth University and has enabled me to collaborate on projects that face difficult challenges with respect to ethics and use of expensive technology, namely fMRI scanning. Functional Magnetic Resonance Scanning is notoriously expensive yet the benefits to clinical research are potentially huge.
My study on yawning and cortisol at Bournemouth University [1] has now includes collaboration with three prestigious centres in France: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, Amiens University Hospital, University of Picardy Jules Verne.
I hope to continue my Anglo-French meetings with the assistance of the Erasmus Travel Scholarship scheme in the future, as well as with funding from the French Embassy and the French Multiple Sclerosis Society.
[1] Thompson, S.B.N., 2014. Yawning, fatigue and cortisol: expanding the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis. Medical Hypotheses. Doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2014.08.009.
The project Private Gains and Retailed Literature: pathways to an economics-based account of reading has just won FUSION funding for the coming semester. The project will ask why people consistently spend time and money on literature. What do they hope to gain? Since the opportunity costs are considerable, historically in terms of money and now in terms of time, readers must hope to gain something. On- and offline literature provides unique gains that have otherwise escaped investigation by English studies, which instead has preferred to think of meanings and literary achievement, rather than use.
In terms of finding a discourse to investigate this, it should be remembered that the publishing industry and its delivery of fiction is by necessity predicated on commerce, while the markets for published fiction make up part of commodity culture. The language of private gain, of benefit and loss, which is the heart of commodity culture, is well suited for thinking about general-market reading. And if we can get passed the hijacking of economics by neo-liberalism, or get past neo-liberal reductionism that converts everything to financial indices, we may admit that economics has something to say about the mechanisms of gain, and about a specific type of reading in that commodity-cultural context.
Headed by BU Senior lecturer in English, Dr Simon Frost, and in partnership with UNESCO Chair in New Media Forms of the Book, Prof. Alexis Weedon (University of Bedfordshire) and Prof. Claire Squires, Director of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication (University of Stirling), the project will be working with the JS Group/John Smith’s books to articulate in the language of cultural and media studies the role that books play in that international retail chain’s larger delivery of private gains. In addition, the project will conduct a student-led survey of the perceived benefits of retailed literature, across a number of UK book shops. Together, the student survey and JS study will greatly refine the project’s understanding of the qualities signified in book retail. It will help the project understand why people think books are important.
Theories of literary value based solely on intrinsic value are under extreme pressure these days. How can one argue for investment in the best literature in the face of severe cuts to essential public services? And who is to decide what is ‘best’ – that debate being trapped in the notion of cultural hierarchy. This project instead aims at an explanation based not on l’art pour l’art, nor on the education of readers towards a supposedly more-culturally discerning state, but on the benefits readers obtain from the books they currently have in hand; on the books they currently value.
Enquires should be directed in the first instance to
Dr Simon Frost, sfrost@bournemouth.ac.uk
A research team comprising RAND Europe and Bournemouth University have been awarded a research grant from NIHR to study Community Hospitals. Community Hospitals form an integral part of the NHS in the UK, this study looks at their distinct contribution to patient care. Community Hospitals come in all sorts of shapes, and can be located in rural parts of the country as well as in inner-city areas. In the UK community hospitals differ in the nature and scope of services on offer; some provide maternity care, others (also) A&E services or day-surgery or care for the elderly. There are a range of different models of ownership and management or the level of integration with other services.
The study will also explore what comparable models of community hospitals exist in other countries high-income countries, and what the NHS can learn from it. Community hospitals may offer advantages for selected patients over larger hospitals, but unless we produce the research evidence we would not be able to tell which types of patients would particularly benefit. Community hospitals have a long tradition of providing more integrated care, perhaps something we can learn from to improve other hospital services and hospitals.
This new study builds on the systematic review of community hospitals Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (HSC) undertook with his colleagues in Scotland about a decade ago.1
For further details: http://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/community-hospitals.html
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health
Reference:
Are you eager to have innovative ideas? Are you keen to find an effective method to solve your research problems? Do you want to speed up your research information collection? Cooperated among eight universities and companies around Europe, we are developing a virtual personal research assistant in our new European Commission funded project “Dr. Inventor – Promoting Scientific Creativity by Utilising Web-based Research Objects”.
Dr Inventor aims to develop an intelligent software system utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation. By informing researchers of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, this system will help assess the novelty of research ideas and offer suggestions of new concepts and workflows for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor will be the first web-based system that supports the exploration of scientific creativity via a computational approach, which will overcome a lot of human limitations.
If you would like our system to work the way you envisage to do, please join our user requirement study by finishing a short survey (taking about 5 minutes) at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drinventor. You can tell us how you perform your research tasks, what is the most difficult part in your research, what you wish our system to do to help you. Your feedback will guide our design; your suggestions may steer the way how people undertake research in the next few decades.
Jian J Zhang & Xiaosong Yang
National Centre for Computer Animation, The Media School, Bournemouth University
I have recently returned from an amazing opportunity to go to Scotland and attend the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals Research unit (NMAHP-RU) at Stirling University for two days. I landed at 2200 at Edinburgh airport and was lucky enough to have a fantastic taxi driver that acted as tour guide on the 40 minute drive from the airport to Stirling University pointing out Stirling castle, Edinburgh Bridge and the kelpies monument that was lit beautifully against the dark skyline. I was staying at Stirling Management Centre which is onsite at Stirling University.
Day One
My first day on the 17th was a beautifully sunny and hot one. I had a meeting with Dr Helen Cheyne of the NMAHP-RU who is involved in decision making research, with interests and paper’s on interventions in labour, identifying labour and intrapartum care assessment to name but a few. The meeting was informal and involved a lovely walk around campus which is extremely large with its own woodland area and lake; home to beautiful wildlife. We discussed my study as well as the related work she had done in the field followed by a history of Scotland’s maternity care services and current practices around discussing place of birth. Overall a thoroughly thought provoking and useful meeting, Helen also put me in touch with a fellow Phd student with interests in my study topic who I have been in contact with. We then attended the Research Unit which was large and open planned where I met all of her colleagues, some of which I had meetings with.
Following lunch my second meeting was with Dr Julie Cowie a researcher interested in complex interventions, ehealth and mixed methodologies all related to my study. We sat outside and made use of the glorious sunshine whilst discussing my choice of methods and how to choose the most appropriate decision analysis framework. Again I received a lot of helpful advice and information to support my study, making the meeting an extremely valuable one.
Then came the time to give my presentation; the moment that I had been dreading since I knew I was going on this trip. Luckily everyone had been extremely welcoming and kind and my fears had subsided slightly. The presentation had gone as well as I could have hoped and what followed was a great discussion that yielded useful points to consider. Unfortunately technology wasn’t on my side and the link to the decision support tool wouldn’t open ….. Luckily enough my supervisors had warned me from their previous experience that this could happen and I had taken screen shots to input into the presentation so a massive crisis was averted! The high of the presentation ended my first day at the research unit, I returned to the hotel elated. I made use of their fantastic gym facilities and Olympic size swimming pool!
Day two
Yet another beautifully warm and bright day (I joke not) consisted of further meetings. The first with Dr Purva Abhyankar an expert in the field of decision making and the use / implementation of decision aids within health related settings. She has had numerous publications in the decision aid field and has a wealth of knowledge to access, providing me with a list of area’s to read into and books to further my knowledge. Followed by a meeting with Dr Pat Hoddinott who is a former GP and has a particular interest in the design and delivery of complex interventions such as a decision support tool to support health behaviours around childbirth, we discussed at length my chosen methodology with possibilities of adding some new ideas such as the ‘think out loud’ technique. I left the meetings with my head swimming with new knowledge and a new boost of excitement, ideas to research and consider.
Overall
Walking back to the hotel that afternoon I felt a sense of achievement, I had my first travel experience on my own without have a meltdown, I completed my first presentation to peers that new nothing of my study and left with some encouraging comments and a sense that my knowledge level had doubled with all of their expert advice and suggestions. Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable, thought provoking and memorable trip with not a cloud or drop of rain in sight.
I would like to thank the NMAHP-RU and all those that took the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me and again to Santander for the funding to make this trip possible.
A new Erasmus Fusion Investment Fund for staff mobility and networking was awarded to Dr Clive Hunt, Lead Academic – Design and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology. This follows a recent Erasmus partnership agreement between BU and the University of Applied Sciences (FHWS) in Schweinfurt, which is situated in Franconia, Germany – one of Europe’s oldest wine-growing regions and described as “a land of wine and beauty” by the Franconian Tourist Board.
As reported in a previous blog, the educational focus of FHWS is on design and engineering with a strong business/industrial focus. Clive’s visit to Germany, which has now taken place, was for a period of five days and included six hours of teaching as well as networking with two of FHWS’s industrial partners – ZF and Bosch and Siemens Home appliances (BSH). ZF is a worldwide leading supplier of dampers and clutches to the automotive industry and BSH’s product portfolio, which most will be familiar with, spans the spectrum of modern household appliances from stoves and ovens to small appliances like vacuum cleaners and coffee machines.
From visiting these companies, as well as talking to staff and students at the university, it became very clear that the mind-set of the German industrial sector was such that it saw an active role in undergraduate development. Prof Dr Marcus Schulz of FHWS, explained that the German industrial sector saw placement students as being particularly valuable in helping to solve business problems and he commented that “the university’s industrial partners actually compete for students!” Companies provide undergraduates with a five month placement opportunity as well as providing almost all students with a final year project (thesis).
To further the strategic partnership between our two institutions, Clive’s visit included meetings with the University’s Vice President, Prof Dr -Ing Bernhard Arndt as well as Prof Dr Uwe Sponholz, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Engineering. Developing joint research projects as well as encouraging student mobility between our two institutions is clearly a priority of FHWS and this aligns to the Faculty of Science and Technology’s (SciTech) own interest in furthering research and academic collaboration. From the beginning of next academic year FHWS will be delivering its courses in English which will provide SciTech students with an opportunity to study part of their degree abroad, providing units at BU can be aligned with theirs and delivery problems in terms of timing, etc., can be overcome.
One area in which FHWS is keen to develop its research is around creativity and ideas generation by engineers and their managers and the university has recently developed one of its teaching spaces into a “Creative Cube” for this purpose. This room consists of a 70” touch screen computer, webcams, video cameras, an ambience ceiling with 40,000 LED’s, iPads, notebooks, relaxing chairs, a device that changes the smell of the room as well as having walls that are magnetic and which can be written on. If there are any colleagues, here at BU, who would like to get involved in a joint pedagogical research project between ourselves and FWHS, that considers how learning is impacted upon by the environmental conditions of a teaching space then please get in touch with Clive (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk).
Despite ankle fractures requiring surgery being so common, patients are managed in many different ways and there is debate over whether patients require prolonged periods immobilised in plaster or whether being able to actively move/use the ankle might be advantageous. £350k has recently been awarded to Poole Hospital and collaborators by the National Institute for Health Research’s Research for Patient Benefit scheme to find out!
The Dorset office of the South West Research Design Service based within Bournemouth University’s Clinical Research Unit were contacted in late Spring 2010 about the potential study and have therefore been involved in all aspects from the outset. Several members of the Clinical Research Unit are co-applicants and committed to the delivery of the trial.
As the Research Design Service project lead, Zoe Sheppard helped facilitate the grant application bringing in statistical support, patient and public involvement advice, qualitative research expertise, health economic expertise, costing and research and development advice liaising with finance and research and development departments as well as the Peninsula Clinical Trials Unit. In addition to inputting into specific aspects according to their expertise, all co-applicants also extensively commented on the overall design and proposal, meaning a wide-ranging input.
Two previous drafts were submitted to the mock funding committee. Six extensive written reviews were received from lay reviewers and methodologists as well feedback from the chair/panel members.
So if you would like support with a grant application for health research, please get in contact as early as possible – we look forward to working with you!
We recently received a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from a reporter at Research Fortnight asking (in summary) how many of our Research Council (RCUK) outputs were made Open Access in the last year. The request highlighted that there is a lot of confusion about what is required from academics with RCUK grants in terms of Open Access. So, almost a year on from when the policy was published and spurred on from the FOI request I thought it was worth recapping on what the policy is and how we should be adhering to it. The full policy is available on the RCUK website. However, the key elements are as follows:
When
In April 2013, Research Councils UK (RCUK) launched their revised policy on Open Access with more gusto and clearer targets then ever before.
Aim
Current and future research fundamentally relies on access to the findings and ideas that come out of publicly-funded research. Research Councils UK (RCUK) fully support the concept of universal access so that everyone can benefit from this knowledge. Their policy on Open Access aims to achieve immediate, unrestricted, on-line access to peer-reviewed and published research papers, free of any access charge and their vision is for all users to be able to read published research papers in an electronic format and to search for and re-use (including download) the content of published research papers, both manually and using automated tools (such as those for text and data mining), provided that any such re-use is subject to full and proper attribution.
Scope
The policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles (including review articles not commissioned by publishers), which acknowledge Research Council funding, that are submitted for publication from 1st April 2013, and which are published in journals or conference proceedings.
The policy does not (currently) cover monographs, books, critical editions, volumes and catalogues, or forms of non-peer-reviewed material. However, RCUK encourages authors of such material to consider making them Open Access where possible.
Such works should be published in academic journals that comply with the policy. A Journal may comply with the policy through two routes:
It must make the work immediately and freely accessible online under a CC-BY licence. An ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) may be payable. BU has a central fund to cover these costs – the Open Access Publication Fund.
The journal must allow deposit of the full and final text of the work (as accepted for publication including all changes arising from peer review) in a freely accessible online repository and without restriction on non-commercial re-use. An APC will not be payable. BU encourages researchers to deposit all articles upon acceptance in our instititional repository BURO via BRIAN.
The choice of route to Open Access remains with the researchers and BU, both ‘gold’ and ‘green’ routes to Open Access are acceptable. However, the policy preference is for immediate Open Access with the maximum opportunity for reuse (i.e. ‘gold’).
Works covered by the policy must acknowledge the funding source(s) using the standard format . They must also, if applicable, include a statement on how the underlying research materials – such as data, samples or models – can be accessed.
Implementation & Compliance
RCUK recognises that the journey to full Open Access is a process and not a single event and therefore expect compliance to grow over a transition period anticipated to be five years. The expectation is that:
Jonny, an HSC PhD student based at AECC has recently returned from the University of Warwick where he gave an oral presentation of his PhD findings, at the BritSpine conference. This was an opportunity to present his research on spinal manipulation and neck pain to eminent clinicians and researchers, and field questions from none less than the President of the British Association of Spinal Surgeons and the Chair of the United Kingdom Spine Societies Board – sigh of relief when they appeared to be happy with his answers!
This is the first time Jonny has presented his findings to a spine-research expert audience and this resulted in invaluable feedback that will inform not only future presentations, but his thesis too. It was only through the award of a Santander Mobility Award that Jonny was able to attend this prestigious conference – many thanks to the Graduate School and Santander Universities for making this attendance possible.
Jonny’s thesis is entitled, “An observational study of changes in cervical inter-vertebral motion and the relationship with patient-reported outcomes in patients undergoing spinal manipulative therapy for neck pain”. He is supervised by Professors Alan Breen and Jenni Bolton, (AECC) and Dr Sarah Hean at BU, and the thesis is due for completion in the summer.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in whether spinal manipulation changes inter-vertebral motion, you might like to check out the conference abstract which was published in the European Spine Journal 23(Suppl 1): S128.
Dr Roger Herbert from the Faculty of Science and Technology has been successfully awarded Fusion Investment Funding for the Bio-Beach project, in collaboration with Bournemouth Borough Council’s Coastal Activity Park.
The project will see academics from the Faculty of Science and Technology combining their ecological and engineering knowledge in order to pump-prime research on sustainable coastal development and improve public engagement in the marine environment. The team (made up of Dr Roger Herbert, Dr Bob Eves, Dr Ben Thomas, Dr Rick Stafford, Dr Genoveva Esteban, Dr Luciana Esteves & Ben Thornes) will be designing, making and installing novel structures to selected groynes and other structures on Boscombe Beach to provide refugia for marine organisms and to fulfil a variety of research aims.
Potentially, these structures will transform the groynes into intertidal reefs, with features designed to increase biodiversity; extending the intertidal range of marine organisms up the beach for the public to see. Next month we will be working with the AspireBU team and two local schools, Avonbourne School and Harewood College, who will be getting involved with the project. They will be designing and making their own structures to increase biodiversity on the groynes and will be monitoring their creations after installation to see how many organisms have colonised them.
Caroline Belchamber, a part-time physiotherapy lecturer, Doctor of Professional Practice (DProf) student and private practitioner has successfully been awarded Fusion Investment Funding for six months study leave enabling her to finalise her doctorate.
Caroline currently has a contract with a local hospice developing a breathlessness clinic for people with chronic lung conditions. She also holds an honorary contract with another local hospice, where her research is being carried out. Caroline identified the need for further research following her MSc research in 2002 on rehabilitation in the context of palliative cancer care. She observed the need to determine service users and health care professionals’ understanding of the benefits of physiotherapy and whether the profession is meeting National Standards and best practice recommendations in the area of supportive and palliative cancer care. Caroline’s case study research uses a mixed qualitative methods approach to identify the extent to which physiotherapy palliative cancer care service provision meets best practice recommendations. Caroline’s research has been funded by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) Charitable Trust and the Association of Physiotherapists in Oncology and Palliative Care (ACPOPC). It was also given the support of the Dorset Cancer Network Service Improvement Facilitator in 2009. It is anticipated that Caroline’s work will place BU at the forefront of this evolving area of practice.
Caroline is supervised by Professor Elizabeth Rosser and Dr. Caroline Ellis-Hill
Following the internal launch at BU on the 14th February 2014, BU Researchers at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) launched the Copyrightuser.org at The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Creative Economy Showcase.
The event was held at Kings Place, London, on Wednesday 12th March 2014. The Showcase demonstrated the outputs and innovations of AHRC investments in the Creative Economy through presentations, workshops and exhibitions. The sectors exhibited on the day, included fashion, design, video games, architecture, broadcasting, archives, digital technologies and dance.
Amongst the various funded initiatives showcased on the day, Copyrightuser.org held a prominent exhibition stand and exhibited the website which was complemented by large posters, bookmarks and myth/reality cards (illustrated below) which explained the most common myths about copyright.
This high-profile event was attended by over 450 delegates and included policy-makers, business leaders in the creative industries, knowledge exchange practitioners, directors of research in universities, senior representatives from partner organisations in the Creative Economy, other strategic funding agencies in the sector, representatives from the AHRC’s investments in the Creative Economy and other stakeholders.
Keynote speakers included amongst others Sebastian Conran (Designer), the Hon David Willetts (Minister of State for Universities and Science), Ed Vaizey MP (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries) and Professor Rick Rylance (CEO, AHRC).
Highlights from the day can be streamed here.
Copyrightuser.org was funded by the BU Fusion Investment Fund in 2012 and was developed by the Business School’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) in collaboration with Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP). Following the success of the Fusion Funded project, the CIPPM-led team went on to secure RCUK funding provided by CREATe in August 2013 to extend the scope of the project. Phase II of the copyrightuser.org is now underway.
The launched online resource aims to make UK copyright law accessible to creators and members of the public. This 1-minute video captures the concept behind the Copyrightuser.org project.
Using quantitative and qualitative methods the site aims to provide answers to the most pressing concerns that creators and the public have about copyright law. To achieve these aims, interviews with creators where conducted and a video for each creative sector was produced demonstrating their thoughts and questions about copyright, see the musicians video here for example. Secondly, 200 frequently asked questions posted by users online were sourced, analysed and coded down to the 20 most common.
The Copyrightuser.org has so far been received very well as evidenced by the positive feedback from various organisations, individuals, legal professionals and the creative industries.
During the launch, the website received 232 visits; and has now received over 1,558 visits to date.
Please also visit our twitter page – @copyrightuser to keep up with the Copyrightuser.org developments.
The copyrightuser.org team consists of:
Dr. Dinusha Mendis (Principal Investigator & Co-Director CIPPM)
Mr. Bartolomeo Meletti (Lead Multimedia Producer and CIPPM Research Assistant)
Ms. Hayleigh Bosher (PhD Candidate (Copyright) and CIPPM Research Assistant)
Professor Martin Kretschmer (Principal Investigator & Director CREATe)
Dr. Kris Erickson (Co-Investigator, CREATe).
The team is further assisted by a Production Team consisting of Marco Bagni (Art Direction, Design and Animation), Sar:co (Music and SoundFX), Davide Bonazzi (Illustrations) amongst others and an Editorial Board consisting of Professor Maurizio Borghi (Director, CIPPM); Professor Ruth Towse (Co-Director, CIPPM); and Professor Ronan Deazley (Professor of Copyright Law, University of Glasgow) amongst others.
Dr Tim Breitbarth (Sport Academic Group) has been successful with his recent bid for Fusion/EU funding for teaching exchange visits to partner institutions in Groningen, The Netherlands, and Cologne.
At German Sport University Cologne Tim – who is also Programme Leader MSc Sport Management and Coordinator Internationalisation Sport at BU – will teach at their high-profile Masters in Sport Management over four days. The Masters attracts about 200 applications per year from within and outside Germany, but only 30 students are allowed into the course. The visit to Sport’s Erasmus partner institution Hanzehogeschool Groningen will include tutoring of international groups of students who participate in a multi-day management game.
Besides teaching commitments, the trips will help to move along joint research and publication projects with his European colleagues, such as editing the Special Issue on sport and social responsibility of Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society. In addition, they have been cooperating on conference and workshop organization and will once again co-lead a track at this year’s European Association for Sport Management conference.
Also, Tim and his BU colleagues were successful in securing internal funding for the first time in order to take the Sport Management and Sport Management Golf final year cohorts to a four-day intense international student management game in Cologne in late March, which he co-organises.
Hence, collaboration with, arguably, the world’s largest and renown sport university, has been in full swing with also two BU students on study exchange in Germany in semester 2 and PhD student Emma Mosley receiving training at their specialised Institute for Sport Psychology thanks to a Santander award.
The Festival Impact Monitor (FestIM) is a Fusion supported project that is intended to develop the following:
1) An approach to evaluating the impact of events using data from social media.
2) Reusable Learning Objects that can guide future researchers seeking to apply social media data.
3) Individuals with experience in conducting research with social media data
Overall, the project intends to develop approaches to evaluating festivals using online narratives of event stakeholders. FestIM can deliver significant benefits for funders of events and event organizers as understanding the characteristics of online audiences can help them create new types of sponsorship products to fund event activity . Further, it enables the evaluation of social impacts, an area that is difficult to assess using conventional qualitative and quantitative approaches. Finally, for events located over a large geographical area, the costs of evaluation can be prohibitive. FestIM can provide a cost effective alternative to traditional evaluation approaches. To achieve the second and third objectives, the FestIM project is working with a group of Level H dissertation students. At this stage in their research, these students have completed their literature review and secondary data analysis of online engagement at festivals. FestIM provided the opportunity for these students to deliver their research at the International Festival & Events Association of Europe conference in Nice, France to an audience of academics and industry professionals. The team is shown below along with Dr Phil Long, Associate Dean and IFEA Member and Dr Debbie Sadd and Dr Nigel L. Williams of the FestIM project.
The students listed below presented their research to festival organisers from across Europe and the USA and by all accounts delivered a fantastic performance:
Sarah Ardin: community conversations which examines the impact of small rural and urban festivals using social media.
Emma Craig: evaluating the impact of Notting Hill Carnival using social media.
Ryan Kulikowski: the use of Social media as an engagement tool by Festival support organizations
Courtney Lee: the core FestIM process itself and its application to the Love Luton Festival
Doreen Mbagwu: the engagement of the Nigerian and Ghanaian community with Notting Hill Carnival
Rogan Sage: Glastonbury as a platform for engagement with social issues
Jasmine Waddell: post purchase evaluation of Festivals using Glastonbury as a case study.
Above: Courtney, Rogan and Ryan presenting at the main conference.
In addition to presenting their academic research, the students had the opportunity to get an exclusive look behind the scenes of the Nice Carnival which was celebrating its 130th birthday. They participated in workshops with the leading carnival historian Annie Sidro and met the Deputy Mayor of Nice. They then attended the major events of the weekend including a Battle of the Flowers, Main carnival procession and Rock and Roll 10 mile road race. It wasn’t all work as the students were able to take a quick hop down the coast to see Monte Carlo and Monaco. The students will continue to develop their research and will present their completed dissertation findings in our workshop in July at the School of Tourism.
Family Rituals 2.0 is a multidisciplinary project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and seeks to understand how work-related travel affects participation in family and home life. It is particularly interested in how ‘mobile workers’ keep in touch with family while work takes them apart, and the role technologies play in sustaining such communications.
The research team at Bournemouth (Prof Adele Ladkin, Dr Marina Marouda) has successfully completed the first stage of this research that involved talking to a range of employers to obtain organisational views on mobility and work-life balance. Our organisations came from diverse sectors, including tourism and hospitality, transport, logistics/haulage, media and NGOs.
For the second stage of the study we are looking to acquire the views of people who travel for work. For these purposes, we are conducting interviews with mobile workers to learn about their experiences of working away and how they use communication technologies to keep in contact with family during periods of absence.
Interested to take part?
We are seeking to interview people in all types of jobs that involve travel, whatever their occupation – from engineers to lorry drivers, aircrew to corporate CEO’s. We offer research participants up to £50 in Love2Shop vouchers as a thank you for their time and help.
For more information please visit our website http://familyrituals2-0.org.uk/
If you wish to take part please contact Dr Marina Marouda at mmarouda@bournemouth.ac.uk
Dr Simon Thompson, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, and Professor Siamak Noroozi, Chair of Advanced Technology, both of the Faculty of Science & Technology, have been awarded the BU Fully Funded PhD Studentship to improve the design and fitting procedure of prosthetic eyes in children with retinoblastoma. It will involve an exploration of skill-based and technology-based procedures to achieve psychological and technological recommendations for the National Health Service.
Retinoblastoma is a disease close to home. My daughter was diagnosed at only 9 months old which resulted in losing one of her eyes to cancer. Thankfully, nearly 2 years on, she is cancer-free and developing healthily like any other child and thanks to the care of the Royal London Hospital/St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Like a number of parents who have faced adversity through their children, it has changed my perspective on life considerably. When presented with a new and different type of challenge last week, I could not resist. On 1st March, I was invited to raise money for Children with Cancer, by abseiling the Spinnaker Tower in Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth. This was a rather daunting challenge as I had never climbed or abseiled before and was not particularly keen on heights.
Soaring 170 metres above Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent, the Spinnaker Tower is taller than the London Eye, Blackpool Tower and Big Ben and has already established itself as a national icon.
The moment I took my second hand off the railings of the safety deck, I felt the immensity of the height and the distance below me. I thought if my daughter can get through cancer, then I can get through this. Luckily, it was a brilliant day and the ropes proved helpful. Looking up at the Tower the next day, I could not quite believe what I had achieved.
The research we are conducting is crucial to those affected by retinoblastoma. Prosthetics are fitted to the range of age groups and also for reasons other than cancers, including facial injuries and maxillofacial diseases. Therefore, it is important to produce guidelines on good fitting and manufacture for the benefit of patients. Recruitment to the project begins in April this year.
Anyone wishing to sponsor the abseil event is invited to send their payments, payable to Children with Cancer, to Dr Thompson or directly to the Charity.
http://www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk/Appeal/donate
On Friday 14 February 2014, the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) launched the Copyrightuser.org
Copyrightuser.org is an independent online resource aimed at making UK copyright law accessible to creators and members of the public.
The project was funded by BU’s Fusion Investment Fund (FIF) in 2012 and was developed in collaboration with CIPPM and the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP)
The online resource is applicable to anyone who uses copyright – whether it be in education, music, film, gaming, artistic work etc.
The objective of the portal is to inform creators on how to protect their work; how to license and exploit it; and how to legally re-use the works of others.
As such, it is a useful tool for creators and also for the general public in understanding the issues surrounding copyright law.
The 1-minute video on the landing page of copyrightuser.org further demonstrates what this online resource is about.
Following on from the success of the research carried out as a result of the support received from the FIF, the CIPPM-led team went on to secure RCUK funding provided by CREATe, University of Glasgow in August 2013 to extend the scope of the project.
The work on Phase II of copyrightuser.org is now underway.
The copyrightuser.org team consists of:
The team is further assisted by an Editorial Board consisting of Professor Maurizio Borghi (Director, CIPPM); Professor Ruth Towse (Co-Director, CIPPM); and Professor Ronan Deazley (Professor of Copyright Law, University of Glasgow).
We invite you to visit copyrightuser.org and welcome your feedback.