BU Research Blog

18 September 2014

BU presents at 5th International Symposium on Security and Military Law 2014 (the ISSML) in SEOUL

Public engagement, REF Subjects, Research themes sbachmann

Sascha-Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor in International Law, was invited to present as a panel member the subject of Hybrid War/Threats/Ecothreats and Armed Conflict at the 5th International Symposium on Security and Military Law 2014 (the ISSML), to be held on September 25-27, 2014 in Seoul and organized by the Office of Judge Advocate General, Republic of Korea Army.

The purpose of the ISSML is to bring together leading authorities of the world including scholars, government officials, and military officers, to provide a meaningful opportunity to discuss, explore, and examine on current international law issues, and to serve as an effective forum of security and military diplomacy for peace and stability of the world.

This year’s ISSML has so far attracted high ranking military officers, government officials, scholars from 22 countries; and confirmed presenters including judge advocates having operational law assignments from US, UK, Australia, and S. Korea, Belgium General Counsel to the Office of Ministry of Defense and an ICRC Assembly member.

Sascha’s work on Hybrid War and Ecothreats has been published in various international and UK journals and is subject of continuing collaborative activities with colleagues and institutions from the UK, US, Sweden and Germany.

17 September 2014

PR practitioners on campus for training

Fusion, Public engagement Tom Watson

In a contribution to the international PR Measurement Week, regional practitioners attended an evening training session in The Media School on September 16.
The public engagement event was organised by Professor Tom Watson and Wessex Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) chair Natasha Tobin, who lectures part-time on the BA Public Relations programme. It was attended by 14 CIPR members, who also gained CPD points for their annual professional training quota.
The practitioners were shown basic media measurement techniques using an Excel utility which Professor Watson has developed. It features in the third edition of ‘Evaluating Public Relations’ (Kogan Page 2014) co-written with former BU lecturer Paul Noble.
“Measurement and evaluation is one of the top PR practice issues and we were pleased to organise hands-on training for regional PR people as part of the international week,” said Professor Watson. “BU has had a long relationship with CIPR since BAPR was started in the late 1980s and so they were natural partners for this initiative.”
Measurement Week has been organised around the world by the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and has the support in the UK of CIPR and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA, which both recognise BU’s public relations courses.

Delegates and Professor Tom Watson (c) at the training session

16 September 2014

PR historians meet in Brussels

Fusion Tom Watson

Plans for future joint research were discussed at a meeting of the European Public Relations History Network (EPRHN) in Brussels on September 12.

The network, which was established with Fusion Fund assistance in 2013, met during the annual EUPRERA Congress and was attended by 15 PR historians from Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and England.

In addition to developing joint bids to national and European funding sources, EPRHN members have been contributing to a PR history book series which is being edited by Professor Tom Watson of the Media School.

Other plans are research into WW1 propaganda and information campaigns, comparative studies, collaboration with researchers in political communication and nation branding fields, and the role of PR during 20th century European dictatorships.

“EPRHN works as a virtual organisation and is gathering momentum. The key to it becoming a sustained network is both funding and outcomes,” said Professor Watson. “At present, there are outcomes in the form of accessible online resources and publications. So more effort is going into research bids when opportunities arise.”

Grand Place de Bruxelles

13 September 2014

BU social science research on ‘Guns, Pride & Agency’

Edwin van Teijlingen

Worldwide, guns are a topic wrought with emotions. While most democratic countries consider guns in private hands a severe risk for public health if uncontrolled, it is not just in the US that licencing laws face resistance that benefit from a political and emotional rejection of state interference (e.g. UKIP’s Nigel Farage earlier this year). But why and how are ‘gun cultures’ built and sometimes sustained, even if they might undermine, an EU-led, much-desired democratisation and peace-building process after violence and war?

Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, social anthropologist at the HSC, addressed this question in her presentation ‘Guns, Pride and Agency—Albanian Ideals of Militancy Before and After the 1999 War in Kosovo’, at the international conference Comparing Civil Gun Cultures: Do Emotions Make the Difference? at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin from August 26 to 28, 2014 (https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/history-of-emotions/conferences/comparing-civil-gun-cultures-do-emotions-make-the-difference). The wider ethnographic research project, on which her findings are based, was also subject of an interview earlier this year, published on a research blog of the London School of Economics: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsee/2014/04/03/ilegalja-terrorists-or-freedom-fighters-an-albanian-tale-from-yugoslav-times/ .

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

11 September 2014

Communicating thought leadership – (or making known what you think, believe and why it’s important)

Public engagement Jonathan Parker

In a US right-wing on-line journal, artist, Cheryl Pass[1] made allusions to the development of ‘thought leadership’ as representative of a totalitarian world, of that scenario painted so well in Orwell’s 1984. This blog identified the marketization and branding of ‘thought’, using those who have something to say that captures a zeitgeist or something that can be used to influence behaviour and attitude or to exert political control.

Thought leaders may be seen as sinister beings, channelling or herding others by setting the words and terms for engagement which demand adherence. This requires learning the language of ‘newspeak’ or speaking the right words in context, something we note in many of our professions and academic disciplines. Such a definition of thought leadership denotes a lack of control over life except amongst those who have wrested it politically by setting the trends of thought or employing those trends for their own purposes.

The negativity associated with these political analyses of ‘thought leadership’ are reflected also within the personal. When I was asked to contribute to the Making Your Voice Heard event and to speak about being a thought leader I had to question what that meant and how that affected me as a person and academic. At a personal level I do not feel comfortable with an ascription of thought leadership which reminds one of sheep and shepherds, of superiority and, more sinister, of manipulation and control for ends which probably do not reflect altruism.

Talking about engagement with the media and why this can be important as an academic seemed more grounded and the brief to offer ‘more of a practical guide to illustrate why you have built up a reputation for thought leadership, how you did it and also look at how you think it has benefited you’ seemed to make more sense and presented a degree of comfort – if one removes the term ‘thought leadership’.

It is this that I intend to highlight, hopefully democratizing the ‘offending term’ and describing some of the ups and downs of engaging with the media and suggesting things that I wish I had done differently including examples of bad practice/good practice.

In response to the original invitation I rushed off an email and duly committed the cardinal sin of not attentively proof reading. So instead of saying I will allude to the impact of some of my pieces I stated that I would talk about the impact of my pies! What I have done in this introduction and in adding a subtitle is to communicate some of my thoughts about this process as we move towards lunch and, possibly, my ‘pies’ later.

I will use a fairly standard approach to discussing my involvement with the media: 4Ws&H, but not necessarily in that order –

Why do it?

When to do it?

How to do it?

What to do and what not to do?

Where to do it?

Why do it?

A common complaint I hear is I’m just too busy to talk to the media, or there’s no point in doing so. The power of the media in daily life is obvious, however, and if we want to make our voices heard we need to engage, and to do so in the best way possible for our integrity, our disciplines and our beliefs. I often use mnemonics for myself and with my children and this helps me in respect of why I choose to engage with the popular press and other media. A mnemonic used to help me understand why to engage with the media:

‘growing strawberries with rhubarb entirely (without) manure’

Gaining voice

Sharing your knowledge widely

Widely known for particular thoughts, views and areas of knowledge

Representing and enhancing your discipline

Enhancing reputation – university, to peers, students and prospective students, your own – think REF and impact!

Moral imperatives:

By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest – will remain.

The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the themes of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. Aldous Huxley (1958) Brave New World Revisited, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gJANBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT69&lpg=PT69&dq=by+means+of+ever+more+effective+methods+of+mind-manipulation&source=bl&ots=B84w-jQAip&sig=Zyd-qWCWFpDsY_KQxt6Txct2dmE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W6gFVMlR8NnRBdCQgPgE&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=by%20means%20of%20ever%20more%20effective%20methods%20of%20mind-manipulation&f=false.

Aldous Huxley’s depressing but somewhat prescient commentary on his book Brave New World presents a moral imperative demanding that we speak truth to power, that we unveil and unmask mendacity in social life and that we preserve our right and obligation to pursue truths as we see them from our informed perspectives.

Being able to contribute to debate is a privilege but also a responsibility, I believe, of academic office. This moral drive has been important to my engagement with media and popular outlets.

When to do it?

Academics are thinking, or ought to be, all the time – it is the basis of what we do. Those thoughts may well be valuable in and of themselves but it is more likely that they have something to contribute to the worlds which we inhabit and to the knowledge base of our disciplinary areas. Not sharing our thoughts and comments does not help us to extend the debate or to test our ideas.

Any time we are excited or exercised about an issue or topic provides an opportunity to comment, to blog in the newspapers, in disciplinary and higher education media

When we cannot keep quiet and there are moral imperatives to speak out or we discover something that is worth, in our eyes, talking about!

I tend to assume the role of ‘bombastic of Bournemouth’ at times, firing off letters and emails when driven by events, pronouncements and so forth. This is helpful in getting across your views, especially if you learn to sit back and, usually, write a second or third draft before you press the ‘send’ button and talk about pies!

How to do it?

Pragmatism and disciplinary perspectives underpin how you might engage – whatever medium you can use to get your message heard and whatever works best for you in getting your message across.

Given that we are researching, writing and teaching all the time as part of our academic roles there are many opportunities we can take from our academic work that can be simply and quickly made into blog pieces, letters for the popular and professional press.

What to do and what not to do?

Sometimes it is hard not to bash off an email in anger to the editor of a newspaper, the THE or a professional journal, to blog or respond to a blog but it is useful to spend a little time thinking about what you want to say first and WASH:

Write about what you know about (normally!)

Always be prepared

Say it simply

Have a core message to get across and break it down into two or three things you want to say about whatever it is you are commenting on

Do not be concerned that you have to follow a zeitgeist – this is not the case and as an expert in your field you can create the importance and interest; it can also be important to be controversial and play ‘the left field’. However, it is sometimes the case that you would wish to respond to something topical. The comms team are very good at identifying the latter and can help in placing your thoughts.

In terms of a few tips let’s get back to acronyms and mnemonics: be BAD

Beware of journalists – print interviews can be manipulated. Journalists will edit pieces and, unless you ask to see copy before publication, are unlikely to share their work with you – even if you do make a request this may not happen. Sometimes an editor will change what you are trying to say. I was working with a professional body on standards and regulation and whilst more a fan of a light touch was not against regulation. The journalist writing a piece about this only included what he wanted from my comments which suggested to the professional body regulator that I was taking a stand against them. Whilst this created some difficulties it did highlight the work that was being done, my position in it and acted as a catalyst for further discussion http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2010/05/11/social-work-courses-may-face-axe-as-inspections-go-public/.

Radio and TV can also be edited if recorded, doing it live allows you to say what you want but it’s not for everyone. You need to choose the medium that works best for you. Some of the training offered by staff development and marcomms has been very valuable in practicing in a safe environment and sharing stories of encounters with the media.

Adopt a thick skin – people will criticize, insult and sneer, if you are sure of what you are saying, even if you do change your mind later, say it and be damned!

In 2011, following the riots in London, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post. This was inspired by the ‘problem’ of non-judgemental approaches in social work, and a need to adopt a nuanced rather than normative perspective to social issues. It was a deliberately controversial blog and attracted a range of comment from the engaged and questioning, if disagreeing, through to trolling and abuse as a ‘rich boy sadist’ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/professor-jonathan-parker/the-riots-the-pms-speech-_b_927613.html.

It is not only the controversial pieces that can engender passionate comment. A piece that Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and I wrote recently for the Guardian Online concerning the development of social work services in Myanmar attracted a sneering comment that we were seeking to replace one oppressive regime by another http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/aug/19/social-work-myanmar-burma-model.

It is possible to take the comments personally, and few people like to be abused anonymously or otherwise, however, all comment is recognition of your ideas, your name in certain areas and can assist in developing your thoughts further.

Don’t miss an opportunity to comment if you can, but don’t worry if you do miss one. There are ample opportunities. As academics we keep up with our particular niche areas whilst changes in the social and political world have impacts on those areas of work or are affected by them. In this context it is in our interests to comment.

Back to the pies and making your own!

[1] Cheryl Pass “‘Thought Leaders’: Orwell’s 1984 Moves To The 21st Century”, Freedom Outpost, October 11, 2012 http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/10/thought-leaders-orwells-1984-moves-to-the-21st-century/

8 September 2014

September: A good month for CMMPH publications

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health started well this September with four publications in academic and practitioners’ journal. Starting with final-year student midwife Joanna Lake who just had an article published in The Practising Midwife.¹

Secondly, BU midwifery staff Jen Leamon and Sue Way together with HSC Visiting Fellow Suzie Cro also have had an article published this month in the same journal.²

Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, a midwife from Switzerland who spent time at BU as an international visitor (see http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/07/02/latest-hsc-midwifery-paper-in-open-access/) had her paper published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth this month.3

And last, but not least, Wendy Marsh, based in HSC’s Portsmouth office had a paper in the September issue of the British Journal of Midwifery.⁴

Congratulations,

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

References:

Lake J., 2014. Witnessing the art of woman-centred care by and exceptional mentor. The Practicing Midwife. 17(8), 24-26.
Leamon J, Way S. & Cro S., 2014. Supervision of midwives and the 6Cs: exploring how we do what we do. The Practicing Midwife. 17(8), 41-42.
Grylka-Baeschlin S., van Teijlingen, E. & Mechthild, G.M., 2014. Cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women: a prospective survey in two countries. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 14:277 www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/14/277
Marsh, W. 2014. Removing babies from mother’s at birth: Midwives experiences. British Journal of Midwifery. 22(9):620 – 624.

3 September 2014

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visits to Universitat de València

Fusion bangele

Dr Bernhard Angele from the Faculty of Science and Technology has been awarded funding from the Santander strand of the Fusion Investment Fund to establish working relationships and collaborations with the Universitat de València (UV), Spain, a Santander Partner University. Bernhard has accepted an invitation by Professor Manuel Perea of the Faculty of Psychology and he will travel to Valencia on the September 15th for an initial three-day visit to give a talk, meet the members of Professor Perea’s research group, and set up a number of pilot studies.

Professor Perea will make a return visit to BU at the start of next year in order to present a talk here and meet with BU staff and postgraduates. Bernhard will make a second visit to Valencia in July 2015 and attend a symposium on Psycholinguistics hosted by the Faculty of Psychology. The primary goal of these visits will be to set up a research partnership and to initiate a number of pilot collaborative projects, which will involve both staff and postgraduate students at BU and UV. These pilot collaborations will establish a foundation for jointly seeking grant funding from the national and European research councils. Ultimately, these projects are hoped to lead to a long-term collaboration between the two universities, opening up possibilities for staff and student exchange as well as joint PhD supervision and making Universitat de València a partner in BU’s internationalisation effort.

UV is one of Spain’s leading academic institutions and was founded more than 500 years ago. Its 55,000 students are distributed across three campuses. The Faculty of Psychology is consistently ranked as one of the top three Psychology research centres nationally and one of the top 50 research centres in Europe. UV has a strong international orientation and participates in many international exchange programmes and networks.

For more information, please contact Bernhard Angele (bangele@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Image credit: “Universitat valència vella” by Felivet – Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

3 September 2014

Report on Fusion-funded internal secondment to BUDI

Fusion snyman

I was awarded Fusion funding to spend the last six months working in the BU Dementia Institute (BUDI) on an internal secondment. This time has come to an end and a formal report has been submitted reporting on how the objectives have all been achieved. Here I’d like to share what I personally found to be most useful from the secondment.

I had several tasks to complete over the six months but the bulk of my time was spent on writing research grant proposals. In particular, I took the lead on an application for a project to develop and validate a novel intervention to help older people with dementia who have recently experienced a fall-related injury (currently under review with the National Institute of Health Research, Health Technology Assessment programme). The secondment was invaluable for writing this proposal in two ways. First, the sheer volume of work to be completed in writing the proposal demanded many hours of my time. Second, there were several aspects I had to get to grips with during the proposal writing including NHS sponsorship, arrangements for intellectual property, involving patients in our decision-making, etc., that the secondment provided the ideal environment to master all of this. This was great not only for completing the proposal but gave me the tools to subsequently write a different proposal for a different funder very quickly to meet the tight deadline.

I would therefore recommend internal secondments to colleagues who may have interests relevant to institutes / research centres outside of their school. It provides an opportunity to contribute to BU outside your immediate school and an opportunity to develop tools to not only achieve the task at hand but take back with you and use after the life of the secondment.

Those interested in an internal secondment to contribute to BUDI’s research and / or education should contact Professor Innes in the first instance.

Dr Samuel Nyman

BUDI and Department of Psychology

2 September 2014

Make Your Voice Heard event reminder – some spaces still available

News from the PVC, REF Subjects, Research themes, Training John Fletcher

It’s not enough just to do cutting edge research. We also know that we have to share it and pass on our findings or even our views about matters that are important to society. Such profile-raising can help attract future research funding, raise our standing and that of BU and, with an eye on REF2020, help achieve impact.

Talking to journalists, using social media and updating blogs or websites does not come naturally to all of us and can be seen as just another demand placed on people who are already struggling with a busy schedule.

The communications department at the University have offered to make it easier for us to get our voice heard. They are hosting an event entitled Make Your Voice Heard to explore how to do this with impact and effect.

Taking place next week on 10 September 2014, we will discuss important topics, such as how academics can enrich the media and how to balance different stakeholder wants and needs. There will also be opportunities to acquire some practical tools, tips and techniques.

Ultimately, it would be great to see more of our staff sharing their unique and valuable perspectives on matters important to society and raising the profile of BU in the local, regional and national scene. Whether that’s through informed comment or sharing research outcomes, the communications team can help us do it more effectively.

‘Make Your Voice Heard’ runs from 9:00 – 14:00 on Talbot Campus and lunch will be provided. It is open to all researchers, from PGRs to Professors.

You can see the full schedule and book your place by following this link to the Eventbrite page. If you would like to find out more before booking, please contact Sarah Gorman (Corporate Communications Assistant).

1 September 2014

Flipping healthcare and research for service improvement! An inspiring FIF networking project

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Post-award skeen

The idea for ‘flipping’ comes from education. It refers to the concept of students watching key content before they come to the classroom. Then when they do come together, they do so to grapple with and apply what they’ve been taught. This concept has been translated into healthcare by the CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Maureen Bisognano. Instead of ‘what’s the matter?’ the flipped question becomes, ‘what matters to you?’. Put another way, healthcare needs to move from a system that does things to patients to one that works with them to achieve best results. These flipped changes imply that we need to work differently to improve things.

Realising we needed to do things differently with the traditional research-based Master’s dissertation is where we were three years ago. In a previous BU research blog we have written how, over the years, we struggled with the relevance of this type of dissertation to professional practice, in particular social work services. That was why we designed the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work’s service improvement programme, which uses an academically robust, practice-based, service improvement methodology with a focus on professional judgement. Towards the end of this Fusion Investment Fund networking project we realised that we’d flipped research for service improvement.

Uniquely, our service improvement programme fuses service improvement focused education and research with professional practice and is now used across nearly all the School of Health and Social Care’s Master’s Framework. As a result, increasing numbers of students from a health background have been accessing the programme. Recognising our need as two social work lecturers to further understand, share and engage with the culture and strategic intent of key health organisations around the topic of service improvement, we created a series of high-level networking opportunities with organisations including:

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Boston)

The Beryl Institute (Dallas)

The Health Foundation (London)

NHS Improving Quality (Leeds)

As well as meetings with Maureen Bisognano and Jason Wolf (President of the Beryl Institute), we followed up a number of local contacts in the UK and the US to see first-hand how their way of doing service improvement works out in practice. Therefore, as a result of this networking project, we have widened our national and international networks considerably. And yes, we submitted a peer-reviewed journal article too; yes, we’ve written 5 blogs; and yes, we’ve updated our unit guides and improved the way we teach the programme; yes, we’ve fed back what we’ve learnt to others; and yes, we’ve thought of many ideas for future research projects – in one sense, these are not the main returns of enacting a project like this. The key benefit has been the inspiration to do these things. And that has come from being willing to learn from others.

For all those on the edge of applying for a Fusion project, go for it! It’s been an inspiring few months and we’re grateful for the widening of our networks and related opportunities. We even learned how to tweet…wonders will never cease!

Dr Steven Keen

skeen@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202 962028

Dr Lynne Rutter

lrutter@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202 962019

1 September 2014

Educational Research Workshop and ‘Drop-In’ times in CEL

Publishing, REF Subjects jmcdougall

To launch the new cross-BU educational research group, a workshop will be held in the new Centre for Excellence in Learning space (PG30a) on Thursday October 2nd, from 9.30 to 12.30.

The session will firstly offer an overview of educational research journals and conferences, funding opportunities and REF criteria (including the provisional BU strategy for entering the education UoA). Secondly, participants will have the opportunity to work together to share research, ideas and / or plans, with the aim of generating some collaborative approaches.

Please come along if you have educational research to share, are starting out in educational research, need advice on getting started or are just interested. There will be no obligation to join the research group.

In addition, I will be basing myself in the CEL space for people to ‘drop in’ and chat about educational research one Friday a month. The next one is Friday October 31st (10 – 3).

Once the group is established, further meetings and workshops will be arranged through CEL.

For some context / detail, have a look at this provisional overview and strategy Education UoA position paper and / or contact me – julian@cemp.ac.uk

27 August 2014

BU helping to evolve security and privacy by design

Shamal Faily

On Monday, BU researchers co-organised a workshop on Evolving Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering (ESPRE) at the 22nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2014) in Karlskrona, Sweden. The workshop brought together practitioners and researchers from around the world, who shared their thoughts about how security and privacy can be incorporated into the design of software as early as possible, without compromising productivity or sacrificing innovation. The RE conference series is one of the premier conferences in software engineering, and the ESPRE workshop is the successor of several successful secure software engineering workshops. Shamal Faily (SciTech) organised this workshop, together with colleagues from Germany (University of Duisberg-Essen), South Korea (Ajou University), and the USA (Carnegie Mellon University).

The workshop began with a keynote talk from Professor Angela Sasse (UCL), who described some recent research examining how companies build security into products they develop, and the need to change the discourse around usability and security. Three technical paper sessions followed, before the workshop was concluded with an invited talk by Aljosa Pasic (Atos Research & Innovation) on some of the market trends and business challenges in security engineering. Further information about the workshop itself can be found at http://espre2014.org .

We’re grateful to the Faculty of Science & Technology for co-sponsoring this workshop, and to all the workshop attendees for sharing their work.

27 August 2014

CMMPH professors to present at GOLD Perinatal Online Conference

Festival of Learning Edwin van Teijlingen

Bournemouth professors Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen have been invited to present in the international online conference run from Canada. The GOLD Perinatal Online Conference (14^th Oct. -1^st Dec. 2014) is a continuing education conference for health care professionals working in maternity care. Focusing on care during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period, GOLD Perinatal is aimed at nurses, midwives, physicians, lactation consultants, doulas, and other health care workers providing care to women, infants and families.

Vanora will be speaking about ‘Early Labour: Should we be telling women to stay at home?’ Although midwives frequently encourage women to labour at home for as long as possible, many women often seek hospital admission because they are anxious and would like more support. Vanora examines the evidence surrounding early labour in hospital and ask whether we should be telling women to stay at home.

Edwin will be presenting a sociological way of looking at the way society views and socially organises pregnancy and birth. He examines the medical-social model of childbirth to help health care professionals and expected mothers and their families to make sense of world around them.

For more details on the conference see: http://www.goldperinatal.com/.

Prof. Vanora Hundley & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

26 August 2014

Royal Academy of Engineering’s Pathways to Growth SME training scheme

Funding opportunities jcodling

Pathways to Growth is a scheme operated by the Royal Academy of Engineering to encourage and support capacity building for engineering and technology SMEs in the UK. This year, they are intending to offer funding to around 20 SMEs, depending on the grant amount requested (which can be one of £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000).

Ideally looking for SMEs in engineering and technology with a high growth potential. The training doesn’t have to be focused on engineering, it can be on whatever best suits the needs of the company to support its growth . In addition, a number of the successful applicants will also be offered membership of the Enterprise Hub and mentoring from a relevant Fellow to further support their growth potential.

If you are working with a, or have worked with a company that best fit the following criteria they could be considered for this scheme.

Engineering and technology SMEs, and
Have high growth potential if they had some additional training/mentoring support, and
Where they would not be able to fund this level of training themselves

The scheme is in its first year of operation, which means there may be limited awareness out there this year, so applicants could stand a good chance of success! The closing date for applications is 4 p.m. on 23rd September.

In the first instance please contact Jayne Codling in R&KEO – email jcodling@bournemouth.ac.uk or phone ext 61215 to register your interest and to receive more information.

22 August 2014

Yawning In Paris – Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Grants Academy, Post-award, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Research themes Simon Thompson

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.

Sacre Coeur, roof-top; Gare du Nord, r.

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.

Modernism - or the Aliens have landed!

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.

21 August 2014

Surgical Appliance Design funded through Fusion investment Fund

Festival of Learning, Fusion, Public engagement Nigel Garland

Dr Nigel Garland and Dr Zulfiqar Khan have been awarded funding through the Fusion Investment Fund, Co-Creation stream, to develop a novel Surgical appliance for the Cardiac Intervention Unit at Royal Bournemouth Hospital. The device is a left arm radial support to assist in Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for the treatment of Coronary Heart Disease. Approximately 65% of patients can be successfully treated using the right arm, however, this rises to 90% when the left arm is also accessible during procedure.

Solutions will initially be designed by 1st and 2nd year undergraduate Design Engineering students of the Faculty of Science and Technology. Students will be working in mixed groups to develop concept prototypes using a combination of virtual design tools, physical space models and additive manufacturing techniques. Dr Garland and Dr Peter O’Kane of RBH will then take the design forward to full working prototype. The outcomes of this project should be available for showcasing along with the advanced methodologies deployed during the student learning process and product development.

20 August 2014

Why read? FUSION funding to provide literature with an economics-based understanding of reading

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Publishing sfrost

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

12 August 2014

Reflections on an Oasis

Fusion, Women's Academic Network Jonathan Parker

Our final blog concerning our Fusion Investment Funded study leave, ENABLE: Establishing Sustainable Research Networks and Building Learning Environments, is written with very mixed feelings in mind.

For seven months we have worked across Southeast Asia to develop and establish links and research collaborations, teaching and education partnerships and to rediscover our passion for social action as ‘professional practice’ associated with our disciplines. The work has been intense, tiring, sometimes frustrating, but always illuminating and productive. It was a wrench to leave.

The return journey began with raised anxieties, heightened a couple of weeks earlier by the awful shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines aeroplane following the same route (although by then re-routed), and exacerbated when we were separated into two distinct travelling units, Jonathan with one child and Sara with the other, because the previous university travel firm booked tickets as two separate families! To make matters worse only Jonathan and Isabel’s tickets showed up and we had to wait to secure the other tickets. We were then given seats at opposite ends of the aeroplane and had to wait again for re-seating. The flight began well enough and was fairly smooth, only briefly punctuated by a somewhat antisocial ‘ramming’ of chair in front into one of our legs with particular force by someone who thought ‘turn off your electronics’ meant send texts to your friends!

However, we landed in one piece and breathed a sigh of relief, or possibly resignation, until, as in our usual practice of each taking one of the children through immigration the UKBA officer asked Jonathan rather sternly ‘where is the child’s mother?’ and when indicating where Sara was the officer proceeded to say that children have to be seen with their mother because mother’s are in general the carers of children and if present they have to be with the child. ‘Red rags and bulls’ often appear to Jonathan in unjust situations and he, as usual, took issue with this, but whilst we all got through immigration clearance more quickly, the officer insisted that his rather warped and myopic view of British law and custom was now right. Oh dear! We wondered what had happened in the seven months we had been away and whether we were entering Gormenghast!

But, back to the project itself! Our four key objectives have been met throughout the project, with varying degrees of success and changing morphologies:

1. Establish a sustainable research network promoting social sciences and interdisciplinary research at BU:

We have made contacts with individual academics, departments and universities across Southeast Asia, notably Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Utara Malaysia, alongside contacts with Massey University in New Zealand, Hong Kong University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Myanmar Institute of Theology.

We have given names and contacts to people abroad and within BU to follow up. Research projects are being developed, publications are in train or planned for the future.

2. Develop research streams of locally specific or cross-cultural relevance:

Our research, completed with the Orang Asli as part of the Tasik Chini Research Centre, has culminated in numerous publications being submitted, developed and developing, wide dissemination across many fora, and establishing on-going research links.

3. Engage and promote educational initiatives via guest lectures/research seminars, developing joint postgraduate research supervision and educational initiatives promoting student mobility:

We have presented lectures and seminars, provided postgraduate supervision and contributed to curriculum planning and development discussions, as well as negotiated an important credit transfer scheme (although uptake has been delayed until we can find students both able and willing to go on this exciting opportunity!). Professional papers have been written and submitted.

4. Engage in discipline-specific activities in relation to social work:

a number of discipline specific activities concerning social action and development have been undertaken, including curriculum planning, assisting in education developments in Myanmar and in Malaysia in reference to the new (to be implemented) standardised Malaysian Diploma Social Work, alongside contributing to NGO development work.

Overall, during the study leave period, there has been 57 outputs, also including on-going work and connections to be completed over time. The 57 outputs included:

6 books (3 published)
14 book chapters (11 published or in press)
12 peer reviewed papers (9 published or in press)
3 professional papers
1 book review
16 conference presentations/open lectures etc.
10 blogs
6 media presentations

During our time away we have worked across five countries: Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR, Australia, Myanmar and Cambodia in order to carry out our research or present it, along with capacity-building missions for professional, social work training. We have undertaken respectively between 24 to 28 flights (trying, when one of us dislikes flying) and stayed in some extraordinarily interesting as well as very grim places during our fieldwork, resulting in abuse from miscellaneous assortments of blood-sucking insects (outsized mosquitoes, the usual bed bugs and fever-inducing leeches) bedding down with us or boisterously noisy lizards, both small and decidedly large, showering us with ordure from above.

One of us was joyfully returning ‘home’ to pioneering fieldwork in Southeast Asia and the other was equally rapturous to be introduced to it. We have developed a new appreciation of the diversity of international driving styles when finding it not unusual to be driven by taxi in the wrong direction through chaotic Yangon in the middle of two long lines of equally erratic cars heading in the right direction – towards us. Above all, we remember the various wonderfully funny, kind, clever, intriguing and endlessly good-natured people we me: all our participants, our various helpers, interpreters, drivers, guides and advisors, the academic staff and students who welcomed us so warmly, the inspiring NGO workers and service users; not forgetting the local café owner in Penang, who wept when we left before running to get her camera for group photos to remember us by.

Also, we will always remember just how much our children, Isabel and Milly grew and developed in stature (in all ways possible): learning the research process, engaging with children amongst the village communities, and themselves collecting valuable data and compiling magnificent school projects on their adventures and experiences. The children put up with a good deal with great fortitude, willingness and humour (or when the going got tough – heavy irony), easily comprehending the importance of the work undertaken; albeit, as 10 year-old Milly gravely commented in her write-up later, ‘fieldwork has its dark side’! Indeed, so impressed were we with them that they will be contributing their experiences and acting as co-authors to the forthcoming book on the Tasik Chini area.

Alongside the outputs, the work is now to capitalise on the study leave by the development and submission of funded research projects. Currently, these include gendered rituals in professional working, problematizing research ethics and learning disabilities, understanding religion as resistance, and gender in higher education.

The study leave represented a life-giving oasis, somewhere to wash and attend to our own sacred cattle as in the photo from Cambodia, and we gratefully acknowledge the help and supported afforded us by Bournemouth University and our two main host universities in Malaysia (UKM and USM). We would encourage other academic staff to apply for study leave and we think that the productivity of our period of study leave indicates how important this can be to both individual academics but also to the greater good of Bournemouth University.

Jonathan Parker & Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Category / REF Subjects