Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Research England have this morning published the final guidance for REF 2021 submission. The following documents:
Are available under the publications page of the REF 2021 website: https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/
For further information, and to read the official announcement, please visit the REF news page
The MSc Hotel and Food Services Management has as its focus the rapidly developing international hospitality sector which is both a dynamic and expanding part of many economies. As part of the programme we visited the Institute Paul Bocuse in France to experience the research culture and their approach to food research. We learnt how they
1. train future professionals, to be competent and open to the world of tomorrow, for industry, and academia.
2. lead scientific projects in response to current and future societal challenges.
3. innovate, create new methods, new products, and new services.
We had an excellent visit as reflected in these testimonials;
The visit to the Institut Paul Bocuse allowed me to shape my dissertation topic further. To meet academics working at the cutting edge of food research was inspiring and a very useful opportunity to discuss what my own research might look like. Food for thought!
It is difficult to express my feelings in a few sentences about 3-day-trip in Lyon. It was an interesting and memorable experience to explore the city’s gastronomic heritage and local cuisine as well as gain more knowledge on food services management from PhD students in Paul Bocuse Institute.
Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (both in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences) have been invited to join the scientific committee of the International Conference on Mixed Methods Research [ICMMR-2019]. This year’s ICMMR conference will be held in the School of Behavioural Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam (India) on February 22-24, 2019. The two BU academics will run an online panel discussion session on academic publishing under the heading “Meet the editors.” The advantage of such online session is that BU academic don’t have to travel to India saving time and money as well as the environment. This has benefits for their own work-live balance as well as their carbon footprint. 
BU focuses its global collaborations on three geographical areas, one of these is the Indian sub-continent. Connect India is BU’s strategic Hub of Practice for the Indian sub-continent, bringing together a community of researchers, educators, practitioners and students at Bournemouth University to collaborate with colleagues in India and Nepal.
Experts from universities across the UK have contributed to a new edition of a best-selling textbook which is out this month. This is the fourth edition of Psychology and Sociology Applied to Medicine which is a jargon-free 179-page introduction to psychology and sociology for medical students (and other health care students). The book is published by one of the largest academic publishers in the world, Elsevier in its series of Illustrated Colour Texts.
Seventy-three academics contributed chapters to the book which was edited by psychologist Prof. Gerry Humphris (University of St. Andrews) and sociologist Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Bournemouth University). The contributors are discipline and topic experts and come mainly from the UK but some are from further afield such as Ireland and Australia. Compared to the third edition this latest edition has 45 new authors, who contribute the most up-to-date knowledge on classical psychological and sociological concepts and issues. All chapters have been updated and several have been renamed and revamped to reflect changes in society, and three new ones have been added. The editors are very grateful to Catherine Calderwood, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, for writing the Foreword.
Teaching behavioural and social sciences to students is of vital importance for good health care in the future. This textbook covers topics across the life cycle from birth to death. A range of concepts and issues such as health screening, personality & health, quality of life, self-care, and anxiety are explained in an easy to understand fashion. This makes the textbook excellent introductory text as well as an essential revision tool for students. This textbook for medical students is Bournemouth University’s latest contribution to medical training.
Reference:
van Teijlingen, E. & Humphris, G. (Eds.) (2019)Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine: An Illustrated Colour Text (4th Edn), Edinburgh: Elsevier The book is available as eBook [ISBN: 9780702062995] and as paperback [ISBN: 9780702062988].
Conducting interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary research has become more to the fore in many academic fields. As a result of the steady rise of multidisciplinary research It has been made more explicit in REF 2021 [1]. For example, REF 2021 UoA 2 Public Health, Health Services & Primary Care “recognises the breadth and diverse range of single, multidisciplinary and/or multi-professional research across public health, health services and primary care”, whilst UoA22 Anthropology & Development Studies states that its submissions “can be multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary and may combine social science with other disciplines”.
However, doing multidisciplinary research is not without its problems (and barriers). In a paper accepted today we reflect on some of these issues [2]. The co-authors are Bournemouth University’s Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Nirmal Ayral and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada (Public Health Institute, Liverpool John Moores University) and BU graduate Dr. Pratik Adhikary (Green Tara Nepal). We all are Public Health researchers, with very different educational backgrounds and training, reflecting the diversity of and interdisciplinarity in the field. Several of us have a first degree in Education or Health Education, but one has a first degree in Sociology. Whilst four of the five authors have Master degree in Public Health and/or Health Promotion, two have a Master in Education. Most of us have a Ph.D. in Public Health, but again one of us has a Ph.D. in Sociology. Our paper ‘Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward’ has been accepted by the journal Health Prospect [2]. The advantage of this journal, which is part of the NepJOL family is that it is Open Access and hence freely available for anybody working in Public Health across the globe.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
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Congratulations to Dr. Nirmal Aryal and Dr. Pramod Regmi in BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences on the acceptance of their latest paper ‘Adolescents left behind by migrant workers: Call for community-based mental health interventions in Nepal’ [1]. This paper has just been accepted by WHO South East Asia Journal of Public Health. This academic journal is Open Access and published by the Regional Office for South-East Asia of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Delhi, India. Co-authors of this scientific paper are: Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH); BU Visiting Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University);and Dr. Pashupati Mahat from CMC-Nepal (Center for Mental Health & Counselling- Nepal).
The paper argues that there exists an increased risk of mental health problems in Nepali adolescents, especially those left-behind by migrant workers. There is a paucity of research on mental health intervention among adolescents in low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Nepal. The paper calls for more and better community-based mental health intervention in Nepali adolescents including the special group of left-behind adolescents. Doing this work in Nepal, a country with a very high proportion of its population working abroad will have a broader implication for a other low-and middle-income countries. This article is a welcome addition to BU’s growing publications on migrant workers and health in Nepal [2-11].
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A few months ago Dr. Ann Luce (Faculty of Media & Communication) and I were interviewed by the US-based organisation Catalysta TM on the issue of the portrayal of childbirth in the media. This week Catalysta released the podcast which is available here! 
The online interviews with a journalist and podcast producer in the USA was based on our publications around the topic, such as our highly cited BMC Pregnancy& Childbirth paper ‘“Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media ‘ [1] and our 2017 book Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media published by Palgrave Macmillan [2], as well as papers in UK midwifery journals [3-4].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References
Last week we presented key findings from 
our various research projects on health and migration in Nepal. The research meeting was held in a hotel in central Kathmandu. More than seventy people turned up, in fact more people than had registered so the kitchen had to add to the lunch buffet at short notice. The chief guest was the Deputy Speaker of the Nepal’s Federal Parliament, Shivamaya Tumbahangphe. Dr. Tumbahangphe was the first female MP in Nepal with a PhD (in Political Sciences). She is speaking on the photo right, standing next to BU’s Dr. Bibha Simkhada.
The event was organised jointly with Liverpool John Moores University, Green Tara Nepal, and POURAKHI Nepal. the latter is an organisation of women migrant workers established in 2003. 
It aims to ensure the rights of women migrant workers and their families in the entire process of migration. The organisation focuses its work on women migrant worker’s concerns regarding issues that arise at the different stages of migration, namely pre-employment, pre-departure, employment and post-arrival periods through support programmes.
Nearly one-seventh of the world’s population is now living in a location different from the one in which they were born. Some 3.5 million Nepali are working as migrant workers in the Gulf countries, Malaysia, and India, contributing nearly one-third of the Nepal’s gross domestic product. Despite Nepal’s long history of work-related migration, the national dialogue has only recently become more prominent. Migration has become a political as well as a social issues, for example, we see migration mentioned in the national media on a daily basis. Our meeting was reported on TV and in an English-language newspaper The Himalayan Times on January 6th (to read article click here!).
The BU team comprises: Dr Pramod Regmi (FHSS Lecturer in International Health), Dr. Nirmal Aryal (Post-doctoral Research Fellow), Dr. Bibha Simkhada (FHSS Lecturer in Nursing), and in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) Dr. Catherine Angell and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. The team is complemented by Liverpool John Moores University’s Prof. Padam Simkhada (who is also Visiting Professor at BU), Dr. Pratik Adhikary (BU graduate based at Green Tara Nepal) and colleagues at Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, India.
Last year BU signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Kathmandu, Nepal. This week Dr. Bibha Simkhada, Lecturer in Nursing, Dr. Shanti Shanker, Lecturer (Academic) in Psychology, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) delivered one-day workshop on qualitative and mixed-methods research approaches. The workshop was very well attended by MSc students, not just from MMIHS, but also those from several other colleges and universities.
MMIHS is part of BU’s latest bids for ERASMUS Higher Education Student & Staff Mobility between Programme and Partner Countries (Key Action 107) – International Credit Mobility. Bournemouth University’s strategic plan known as BU2015 has as one of its pillars our desire to “enrich society by having a significant impact on challenges world-wide“. Through Fusion BU aims to (a) have a positive impact world-wide on the challenges facing society; (b) ensure staff, students and graduates enrich society as active citizens in their communities; and (c) strengthen our shared impact through worldwide partnerships. Expanding and developing the existing BU-MMIHS partnership is a excellent stepping stone for the ERASMUS application.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Call For Papers: 1st International Workshop on Key Enabling Technologies for Digital Factories
in conjunction with CAiSE 2019 at 4th June 2019, Rome, Italy
Conference Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ket4df2019
The workshop supported by EU H2020 FIRST project
Scope
———————
This workshop seeks at providing the opportunity for inspiration and cross-fertilization for the research groups working on technological solutions for digital factories and smart manufacturing. We welcome innovative papers from academic and industrial researchers covering a wide range of topics of interests in computer science and computer engineering fields.
Topics of interest
———————
The topics include but are not limited to:
* Digital Platform Interoperability for Digital Factories
* Internet-of-things for Smart Manufacturing
* Digital Factories and End-to-end supply chains
* Peer Manufacturing
* Model-based development in Digital Factories
* M2M interaction
* Information Systems for Sustainable Value Networks
* Information Systems Engineering for Additive Manufacturing
* Manufacturing Enterprise Architecture Engineering
* Big Data Technologies and Analytics for Smart Manufacturing
* Cloud, Fog, Edge Computing and other programming techniques in Manufacturing Systems
* Data Mining, Machine Learning and AI in Smart Manufacturing
* Data-driven decision making in Industry 4.0
* Real-time Computing in Smart Manufacturing Environments
* Proactive and Autonomous Computing in Digital Factories
* Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems and Digital Twins
* Context-aware and Adaptive Systems in Smart Manufacturing and Digital Factories
* Digital Security, Privacy and Liability
* Business Process Modelling, Analysis and Engineering
* Business Impact of Information Systems for Industry 4.0
* Advanced user interfaces for Industry 4.0
* Virtual and augmented reality for smart manufacturing
Important Dates
———————
Paper submission:
February 1st, 2019
Acceptance notification:
February 22nd, 2019
Camera Ready Copies and copyright forms:
March 1st, 2019
Workshop:
June 4th, 2019
Having had the pleasure of announcing the last BU publication yesterday, today we received an email that our paper ‘Design errors in vital sign charts used in consultant-led maternity units in the United Kingdom’ has been accepted by the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia. This paper is led by FHSS Visiting Faculty Gary Smith and Richard Isaac and has as co-authors Vanora Hundley, Lisa Gale-Andrews and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as two further BU Visiting Professors: Mike Wee and Debra Bick.
Congratulations to Orlanda Harvey on the publication of her paper ‘Shades of Grey’: The Ethics of Social Work Practice in Relation to Un-prescribed Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Use. Orlanda Harvey is a PhD student in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences with a research interest in image and performance enhancing drug (IPED) use. Her paper will be published in Practice: Social Work in Action. 
This paper highlights ethical dilemmas that social workers face when assessing risk in relation to those using substances. It explores how legislation and societal factors can impact not just on people’s choices and decisions but also on their ‘vulnerability’ and access to services. Vulnerability, a contested term, is linked, in this paper, to assessment of risk. There are ethical issues that arise when assessing risk with people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS) from both service user and professional perspectives. These ethical issues concern a person’s right to choose whilst making potentially harmful decisions. The paper argues that using substances such as AAS in and of itself does not suffice to make a person vulnerable but this does not mean that people using AAS are not in need of support. It suggests that there may be some groups of people who are more at risk to starting AAS use and that social workers should be aware of these. It also recommends the need for further qualitative research to understand the reasons for starting use and support to help people stop using AAS.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
On the last working day of 2018 at Bournemouth University we congratulate FHSS student Raksha Thapa on the publication of her first PhD paper in her first PhD year. The paper Uptake of Health Services by People from the Dalit Community was published today in the Journal of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences [1]. Raksha is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Vanessa Heaslip and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
The paper discusses a variety of studies and reports on the uptake of health services in Nepal and other low-income countries by socio-economic cultural status in South Asia. These reports often focus on limitations due to physical factors, such as travel distance to health facility, or lack of medical facilities or electricity at the health care centre or focus on resources, such as lack of service providers, or lack of appropriately trained staff. Therefore, this article highlights the importance of discrimination as a reason for people not seeking available health care. Discrimination is particularly a barrier to service usage among the most deprived people in society, such as the Dalit community in Nepal and South Asia more generally. The authors discuss the caste-based discrimination in Nepal and its effects on health outcomes of those groups who experience such discrimination.
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The Law Department is seeking to recruit an experienced and enthusiastic researcher to work on an AHRC funded project designed to create Mass Grave Protection Guidelines.
The project will address the question of how best to protect Mass Graves to secure truth and justice for survivors. The project will do this by bringing together experts and stakeholders from the forensic sciences, criminal investigations, legal profession, NGOs, international organisations, security sector and survivor groups. Through a process of consultations and round-table discussions with these experts, Mass Grave Protection Guidelines will be developed and, once finalised, translated and disseminated to stakeholders.
Ideal candidates should demonstrate excellent legal research, organisational and communication skills. Prior knowledge of research project management is desirable.
This post is available part-time and fixed term basis for 21 months. The Project foresees the following working pattern throughout the 21-month period:
For further information and discussion, please contact Dr. Melanie Klinkner, Project Principal Investigator.
From one NIHR Fellowship to another!
This week I complete my 3-year, 100% FTE NIHR Career Development Fellowship. After the Christmas holiday I then start on a new NIHR Clinical Trials Fellowship.
If you’re not familiar with NIHR fellowships you can find out more here: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/our-research-community/NIHR-academy/nihr-training-programmes/fellowship-programme.htm. The NIHR have re-packaged their fellowship programme and so the Career Development Fellowship is no longer available, as it has been superseded with an Advanced Fellowship.
The Career Development Fellowship has been a career-changing experience. It not only provides you with funding to lead a multidisciplinary team to conduct a research project of importance, but the opportunity to undertake a training and development programme. This has enabled me to further develop my skills and expertise in clinical trial research methods so that I can undertake larger, more complex studies, and therefore go on to produce much higher quality work with greater impact.
The new fellowship that I will start in January 2019 is a Clinical Trials Fellowship. These are designed to provide further advanced research methods training in clinical trials. They provide hands-on experience with several trials at different phases of progression and are to be based in a clinical trials unit. For me, I will be based at PRIMENT, the Clinical Trials Unit at UCL with expertise in trials conducted in primary care and to do with mental health, including my area of dementia. This will help consolidate the experience I have gained so far and training from completing an MSc in Clinical Trials, with further hands-on experience in dementia trials at a leading trials unit.
I can highly recommend NIHR fellowships and happy to discuss them with colleagues interested in applying for one.
Dr Samuel Nyman
CMMPH held its annual away day on the 12th December and was led by the Centre leads, Professors Edwin van Teijlingen and Susan Way. It is an opportunity for BU staff, PGR students and Visiting Faculty to come together and share their research development and impact over the previous year. Time is also given to thinking ahead to ensure the Centre is meeting its aims of promoting the health and wellbeing of women, babies and their families by enhancing practice through education, research and scholarship.
The morning started with an update about EDGE, an NHS IT platform that provides a governance framework for tracking NHS research studies. Doctoral students whose studies require NHS ethics approval will have their research tracked through this system. Other discussions included an update on REF and BU2025, developing a publications strategy and match-funded PhD studentships.
Luisa Cescutti-Butler Malika Felton
Several PGR students presented their work to date, ranging from rising caesarean section rates in hospitals in Nepal (Sulochana Dhakal working towards Probationary Review); acute and chronic effects of slow and deep breathing upon women who have pregnancy-induced hypertension (Malika Felton working towards Major Review); updating the understanding perineal practice at the time of birth by midwives (Sara Stride working towards Probationary Review) and women’s experiences of caring for their late preterm babies (Dr Luisa Cescutti-Butler recently awarded doctorate). The presentations were all excellent and produced a lot of questions and discussion. Well done to all those who presented.
Sulochana Dhakal Sara Stride
The afternoon was used as an opportunity to think ahead about future collaborative research, how this fits in with the Centre aims and objectives as well as meeting the university’s ambitions to be a world class organisation.
The day was really enjoyable with a lot of positive feedback.
Edwin and Sue
Congratulations to Dr. Vahdaninia in FHSS on the publication of her PhD paper ‘ω-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy and risk of allergic outcomes or sensitisation in offspring: a systematic review and meta-analysis’ which has been accepted by the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. This journal is published by Elsevier and has an Impact factor of 2.6.
This paper addresses the increasing global trend in allergic diseases over the past last two decades with children suffering the highest burden. The increasing burden of allergic conditions is an important public health concern and understanding how to prevent the development of allergic diseases is a vital area of research. In this paper, the authors have assessed the effectiveness of omega-3 fatty acids in randomised controlled trials that have supplemented pregnant women during pregnancy for prevention of allergic diseases in children. Their results have shown that intake of omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy can reduce the risk of sensitisation to egg and peanut in children. These findings have important implications in research since food allergies are common in children and are a key risk factor for developing sensitisation to aero-allergens and allergic respiratory diseases later in life.
The publication is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anai.2018.12.008
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Dr. Rachel Arnold’s paper ‘Parallel worlds: an ethnography of care in an Afghan maternity hospital’ [1] originally published in Social Science & Medicine (Elsevier) has been reprinted in full in MIDIRS. This is quite an accolade and should help this paper reach a wider audience. Rachel graduated with a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences in 2016, illustrating that some of the best papers get into print (long) after completing one’s Ph.D. thesis.
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