Category / REF Subjects

The importance of preservation and sustainability of digital data in the arts

Fusion themes

The AHRC research project, ArtoP: The Visual Articulations of Politics in Nigeria sets out to collect and archive visual material that is produced by artists, animators, filmmakers, photographers in Nigeria around and following the elections in February 2019. As part of the project outputs, the research will culminate in a digital archive that will serve two purposes i) to preserve this collection over a period of 10 years and ii) to disseminate parts of the collection with a wider public through a web-based platform. These outputs present a number of challenges that highlight the importance of planning for digital archiving and ensuring its sustainability given the rapidity with which digital traces are created, disseminated and in turn disappear (Ernst, 2013). This post forms part of a longer paper in development that seeks to focus upon changes in archival practice in the arts, especially where contexts of contemporary image making practices tend to be based in the digital and circulate in virtual spaces. Additionally, the variances in technological landscapes across different geographies also present separate sets of challenges that a researcher may face – who has access to this data; which voices are included and excluded; how does one curate for fair access?  

Collecting Digital Images

In 2018, the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston) ran an exhibition on ‘Art in the Age of the Internet’, that examined how ‘the internet has radically changed the field of art, especially in its production, distribution, and reception’ (Respini, 2018). This exhibition is connected to a wider ongoing discourse within the arts on digital media (Gere, 2004, 2006) and the impact this is having upon museums and galleries. Therefore it is not surprising to see that in recent years there has been a growing recognition of the urgent need to actively collect and preserve digital art and digital graphics – material which is inherently ephemeral.  Archives have been tempted to wait until a top down collections management system is developed. This has resulted in gaps in collections.There is a consensus emerging that researchers and archivists urgently need to take a DIY, active approach to collecting digital content as near to the time of its publication as possible. Unlike physical collections, there is less chance of acquiring large collections of digital content at a later date, long after the material was created. This is because material on digital platforms are fleeting, with people entrusting storage of their digital creations to third-party proprietorial platforms whose commitment to the long term preservation of material is uncertain:     

“Digital works increasingly operate within a culture that replaces ownership with access. The idea that anything is accessible anytime online changes the motivation to collect and archive within the personal sphere. Personal cultural material is now embedded in proprietary software and third party platforms where responsibility for its longevity in a fast changing technological environment is ambiguous. Certainly, the ability to capture the online object within the context which makes it meaningful recedes as time passes […] digital collecting is best approached as a process of rapid response.” (CCDP 2018) 

One only needs to think of the demise of Myspace, a once-popular social media platform and a medium for sharing artwork and music, which recently lost all content uploaded by users before 2016, to recognise how transient and vulnerable our individual and collective digital heritage is. (Hern  2019)

Capturing Context and Circulation

Another challenge in collecting and archiving digital images and artworks is capturing the contexts and the patterns of circulation which make the images meaningful. Simply saving a digital graphic as an individual image file severs the image from its context. One challenge has been in capturing the interactive web environments in which digital graphics are published, republished and commented upon by users of Web 2.0. The sharing and modification of images online by a variety of actors is increasingly rapid and dynamic. For example, people can change the meaning of an image by reposting it on social media with a different caption, presenting new opportunities for engaged political citizenship and satire (Agbo 2018). This, along with the growing availability of digital editing tools, which are often embedded within the interface of social media platforms themselves, also allow users to easily edit the visual content of images, leaving them ripe for subversion and parody. Social media users quickly respond to each other in a humorous, conversational form, in ways which reframe images, reference earlier posts and trade ‘in-jokes’. In such exchanges users demonstrate their visual literacy and quick textual wit (Dike 2018). As both the content and context of digital images is endlessly mutating, it doesn’t make sense to archive once instance of an image, or even to think in terms of individual images. A recent report by the Collecting and Curating Digital Posters (CCDP) project recommends thinking in terms of “graphic events” rather than discrete images in order to reflect the ongoing social practices in which images are referenced, negotiated and transformed.  We should capture many iterations of the same image, the way in which they have migrated, the online environments in which they are encountered, and the ways audiences have interacted and commented on the images. The CCDP project recommends using the open-source tool Web-Recorder, in which collectors ‘record’ a web session, allowing them to capture their experience of browsing a website, trace the circulation of images online and record the ways in which it was possible to interact with digital graphics within native software and social media environments. These ‘sessions’ can be saved and played back by future users of the archive using the open source Web Recorder Player.  

There are problems in capturing such phenomenon in retrospect.  The rapidly changing appearance and technological environment of social media platforms introduces temporal distortion when searching social media platforms for, say, memes produced in response to a particular political controversy in 2014. We need to capture such phenomena as soon as possible. This requires us to be active and embedded users of the web in order to spot emerging visual trends as they occur.      

‘The archival infrastructure in the case of the Internet is only ever temporary, in response to its permanent dynamic rewriting. Ultimate knowledge (the old encyclopedia model) gives way to the principle of permanent rewriting or addition. ‘ (Ernst, 2013:85)

Storage and Access: Open Source Solutions.

‘Our obsession with memory functions as a reaction formation against the accelerating technical processes that our transforming our Lebenswelt (lifeworld) in quite distinct ways. [Memory] represents the attempt to slow down information processing, to resist the dissolution of time in the synchronicity of the archive, to recover a mode of contemplation outside the universe of simulation, and fast-speed information and cable networks, to claim some anchoring space in a world of puzzling and often threatening heterogeneity, non-synchronicity, and information overload’. (Husseyn, 1994)

Any discussion of a digital archive necessitates an active engagement with technological apparatus in order to consider the relationship between a technological environment and the production of (and obsession with) memory (Husseyn 1994). Storage and preservation are key aspects to any discussion on digital archiving, and as digital technologies accelerate their pace of change, paradoxically, so must a digital archive respond to this by mitigating against it. 

Storage and preservation

A question we faced in designing the ArtoP project was which software we should use for digital preservation and storage. Digital preservation can be difficult as the file formats we may take for granted now can become obsolescent in future – the software which opens them can disappear, rendering the contents of a file irretrievable. We therefore wanted to ensure that material was packaged in stable file formats, adhered to widely agreed-upon archival standards, and was stored securely. We identified Archivematica as the ideal software for our purposes. 

Archivematica is an open source, web-based digital preservation system that is used by a variety of institutions. The fact that the software is open access and free to install and operate actually ensures greater longevity. Proprietary software, tied to the variable fortunes of individual companies, are more liable to disappear than open source projects, which enjoy the support of an active community of users and developers. 

Archivematica is not a single piece of software but rather an ecosystem containing a number of tools, components and specifications which run the ‘microservices’ necessary to preserve digital content. For example, one of the microservices performed by Archivematica is called ‘normalisation’. During normalisation the files you upload are converted into preservation-friendly formats, using an active list of stable and accessible file formats compiled and updated by the UK National Archives. This provides some insurance against the rapid cycles of change and obsolescence which characterise the life of file formats. 

Archivematica’s core functions are as follows: 

  • User submits data to Archivematica in the form of Submission Information Packages (SIPs)
  • From the SIPs, Archivematica creates Archival Information Packages (AIPs) for the long term preservation of data.
  • Archivematica stores (and backs up) AIPs
  • Archivematica creates Dissemination Information Packages (DIPs) to export content to populate an archival access system, such as Access to Memory (AtoM), Archive Space, Figleaf etc.

Ensuring Access

As mentioned earlier, another priority of the project was to make a selected range of images from the archive available for public consumption through a public archive hosted on a web-based platform. Increasingly users of archives wish to be able to actively interact with collections and desire wider access (Fossati 2009), challenges which digital access and display offers potential solutions to.  For this process we are opting for the web-based access platform Access to Memory (AtoM).  

Like Archivematica, AtoM is open source – it is free to use, free to share and free to develop. All documentation is freely available online. This is complemented by a supportive community of users, who communicate and solve problems using a google mailing list, as well as by congregating in person at the UK User Group’s meetings, which are attended by a number of archivists and librarians from prestigious UK universities.

AtoM supports the use of a choice of widely agreed-upon archival standards for describing archival objects. This enables digital images to be presented along with explanatory context, or metadata, crucial to its understanding. Using archival descriptive standards also means there is the potential for us to link the material to larger aggregators of archival holdings, and material on our access page could be discovered by people using archival search portals such as Archives Hub.

Crucially, AtoM is also integrated into Archivematica – the two systems were developed by the same company and are configured to ‘speak’ to one another.  Archivematica produces Dissemination Information Packages (DIPs) that can populate AtoM with images, video and metadata. 

We also liked how AtoM can be customised according to the diverse needs of different organisations and audiences. We aim to hold workshops in Lagos to ask for feedback from Nigerians as to how they think material should be described and presented to the public, and we will attempt to customise our AtoM page accordingly. Rather than projecting our own assumptions on the material by presenting it in certain ways, we are eager to have this determined by local knowledge and needs, as well as local technological landscapes (see below). Moreover, Atom features multi-lingual support, with the potential to add translations, making the material relevant to different audiences. Our aspiration is for the public side of the archive to be a resource for Nigerian citizens, artists and researchers. 

We are inspired by the wide range of institutions that have used and customised AtoM in creative and innovative ways to present visual context, ranging from the Glasgow School of Arts to The Chinese Canadian Artefacts Project. We are currently exploring and brainstorming ways of customising AtoM. 

Local technological landscapes 

One of the considerations we need to bear in mind when customising our web-based access system is the local technological landscapes used by our primary audience: Nigerians. Digital technology has been harnessed by Nigerian artists and citizens to make political critiques, and has afforded Nigerians with new strategic opportunities to produce and circulate indigenous knowledge within global flows of information. Many Nigerians primarily access the internet using smartphones. Thus we need to consider designing our web-based access system in ways which are suitable for mobile browsers.  Additionally, to align with the UN Sustainability Development Goals, we are keen to ensure that access to this archive for educational purposes is designed for Nigerian users and their specific technological landscape, in order for it to have the greatest impact in Nigeria (and other African countries). Therefore, we also need to ensure that our website is accessible to users whose bandwidth may be limited and for whom mobile data is a significant expense. This might involve customising file normalisation in Archivematica in order to produce lower resolution image and video files for access purposes, which will load much quicker for users with slower internet connections or limited data. 

We are still in a development phase and will be researching the local technological landscape in Nigeria further, as well as soliciting advice from Nigerians as to the form our access system should take. 

In the meantime we wanted to take this opportunity to share our experiences, and hope to forge new relations with academics that may also be considering approaches to digital archiving. We hope to see our research extending to considering a range of formats and elements that may contribute to the generation of digital still or moving images and that sit within a more complex pipelines such as those in CGI for example, and the implications of this to archival practices.

Therefore, any feedback from readers of this blogpost is of course welcome – please contact 

PI Dr. Paula Callus – pcallus@bournemouth.ac.uk

CoI Dr. Charles Gore – cg2@soas.ac.uk

RA Dr. Malcolm Corrigall – mcorrigall@bournemouth.ac.uk

Bibliography

Agbo, George Emeka, (2018).  “The Struggle Complex: Facebook, Visual Critique and the tussle for Political Power in Nigeria” Cariers D’étude Africaines 230, pp.469-89.

CCDP, (2018). Collecting and Curating Digital Posters Handbook, https://ccdgp.co.uk/index.html.  

Dike, Deborah N. (2018), “Countering Political Narratives through Nairaland Meme Pictures” Cahiers D’étude Africaines 230: pp.493–512

Ernst, W. (2013), Digital Memory and the Archive, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Gere, C. (2006), Art, Time and Technology, Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Fossati, G. (2009), From Grain to Pixel, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Hern, A. (2019) “Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016”, The Guardian, March 18.  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016 

Haskins, E. (2007), ‘Between Archive and Participation: Public Memory in a Digital Age’, in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol.37, pp. 401-422.

Huyssen A. (1994), Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, London p.253.

 

BU REF 2021 Code of Practice – staff feedback exercise

REF Subjects, Research assessment

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system for assessing research in UK higher education institutions HEIs.

Institutions making a submission to the REF 2021 are required to develop, document and apply a code of practice on identifying staff with significant responsibility for research, determining who is an independent researcher and the selection of outputs in their REF submissions.

BU held a comprehensive staff engagement exercise in April 2019 and received agreement from staff representative groups for the Code of Practice submitted in June 2019. UKRI have since asked us to revise and resubmit our REF Code of Practice. In light of these changes, staff are invited to read and comment upon the revised BU REF 2021 draft code of practice, prior to the final revised draft being submitted to UKRI for approval.

The revised draft code of practice, a briefing paper (including equality analysis) amd feedback form are available from the BU Staff Intranet:

https://staffintranet.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/news/thismonth/buref2021codeofpractice-stafffeedbackexercise.php 

The exercise is open for feedback until Tuesday 10 September 5pm.

BMC blog on latest HSS paper

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, writing

Dr. Rachel Arnold’s recent paper in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth was highlighted in a blog promoted by the publisher.  The paper ‘Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care‘ reports on the everyday lives of maternal healthcare providers working in a tertiary maternity hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan (1). BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth is an Open Access journal so the paper is available free of charge to anybody in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) with an internet connection.  The aim was to understand the staff’s notions of care, their varying levels of commitment to providing care for women in childbirth, and the obstacles and dilemmas that affected standards, and thereby gain insight into their contributions to respectful maternity care, whether as ‘villains’ or as ‘victims.’

Dr. Arnold is Postdoctoral Midwifery Researcher in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  This is the third paper from Rachel’s excellent PhD project, the previous two papers appeared in BJOG and Social Science & Medicine (2-3).

Click here for BMC Blog post:

Villains or victims? The role of maternity staff in decreasing or enhancing respectful care

Reference:

  1. Arnold, R., van Teijlingen, E., Ryan, K., Holloway, I. (2019) Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 19 :307 https://rdcu.be/bPqlj
  2. Arnold R., van Teijlingen E, Ryan K., Holloway I. (2015) Understanding Afghan health care providers: Qualitative study of culture of care in Kabul maternity hospital, BJOG 122: 260-267.
  3. Arnold, R., van Teijlingen, E., Ryan, K., Holloway, I. (2018) Parallel worlds: an ethnography of care in an Afghan maternity hospital, Social Science & Medicine 126:33-40.

 

New paper published: Rihova, I., Moital, M., Buhalis, D. and Gouthro, M. (2019), “Practice-based segmentation: taxonomy of Customer to Customer (C2C) co-creation practice segments”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,  https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-01-2018-0096

New paper published: Rihova, I., Moital, M., Buhalis, D. and Gouthro, M. (2019), “Practice-based segmentation: taxonomy of Customer to Customer (C2C) co-creation practice segments“, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,  https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-01-2018-0096

Abstract

This paper aims to explore and evaluate practice-based segmentation as an alternative conceptual segmentation perspective that acknowledges the active role of consumers as value co-creators. Data comprising various aspects of customer-to-customer (C2C) co-creation practices of festival visitors were collected across five UK-based festivals, using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with naturally occurring social units (individuals, couples and groups). Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic analysis procedure within QSR NVivo 10. Private, sociable, tribal and communing practice segments are identified and profiled, using the interplay of specific subject- and situation-specific practice elements to highlight the “minimum” conditions for each C2C co-creation practice.

C2C

Unlike traditional segments, practice segment membership is shown to be fluid and overlapping, with fragmented consumers moving across different practice segments throughout their festival experience according to what makes most sense at a given time. Although practice-based segmentation is studied in the relatively limited context of C2C co-creation practices at festivals, the paper illustrates how this approach could be operationalised in the initial qualitative stages of segmentation research. By identifying how the interplay of subject- and situation-specific practice elements affects performance of practices, managers can facilitate relevant practice-based segments, leading to more sustainable business. The paper contributes to segmentation literature by empirically demonstrating the feasibility of practice-based segments and by evaluating the use of practice-based segmentation on a strategic, procedural and operational level. Possible methodological solutions for future research are offered.

C2C

Mentor + Media – a new app for professionals working with refugee youth

The “Media literacy for refugee youth” international project started in 2017 and its aim was to understand how unaccompanied minor refugees use digital technologies and social media. For this, the principal investigator of the project, Dr Annamária Neag, with the support of her mentor, Dr Richard Berger, carried out field work in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK. A total of 56 unaccompanied refugee kids were interviewed, and some of them also took part in a digital ethnography phase. Moreover, in London, a group of young people joined the participatory action research phase of the research.

Although the first aim was to understand how these young people use smart phones and social media, the final goal was to create media education materials that can aid their integration into a new society. For understanding the young people’s media lives, Dr Neag also interviewed mentors, guardians and educators who helped her in how to shape these educational materials.

          

Based on the research findings, the team decided that the best course of action was to create an app that could aid the work of mentors and social workers who look after unaccompanied refugee children. With the help of Kyle Goslan, from Bournemouth University, this app is now freely available for iPhones from the AppStore. Those interested in the app should only do a quick search for Mentor + Media on the AppStore and install it from there.

 

About Senait – or the perks of graphically illustrating research

In recent years it has become ever more important to ‘translate’ research findings to people outside academia. While writing blog posts or giving interviews is fairly common, illustrating research is not so much. However, there have been some very interesting projects that trialled this artistic method, and their success led Dr Annamária Neag to contact a Hungarian illustrator, Kata Tóth, to try out this new way at looking at academic research. Their acquaintance is not new, as the artists helped Dr. Neag create a board game to use as a tool for interviewing unaccompanied refugee youth.

The collaboration lasted a couple of months and it involved a very engaged discussion about what and how to represent the two-year long “Media literacy for refugee youth” project. This discussion helped clarify the most important aspects of the research, but it was also relevant to see how someone not involved in academic research sees the relevance of the findings.

Illustration by Kata Tóth

With more than 60 research participants (unaccompanied youth and mentors/educators), it was not an easy task to select just one story to illustrate. That is why, after much thinking and debate, Kata Tóth and Dr Neag decided to work with the metaphor of the digital labyrinth. This metaphor best exemplifies the journey young refugees need to take upon arriving in Europe and starting a new life here. Although the graphic novel presents the story of a 17-year-old girl from Eritrea, Senait, she is a fictional character. Her difficulties in getting settled in a new country and a new digital world, as well as her skills and strengths are representations of those of the young people Dr Neag interviewed during the project.

Illustration by Kata Tóth

Although it is not always easy to ‘translate’ research into a whole different medium, graphically representing academic projects can be fulfilling both professionally and personally. This endeavor can help in distilling the most important findings of your research and it can be a starting point for discussions with young people, students or anyone interested in social science research.

Further information: Finding a Way through the Digital Labyrinth is available from: https://issuu.com/blueanna/docs/illustration_final1

Kata Tóth is a freelance illustrator living in Budapest, Hungary: https://www.behance.net/katatoth

toth.kata.toth@gmail.com

NIHR RDS Grant Applications – seminar & support event, Truro, Cornwall – 8th October 2019

BU Challenges, Funding opportunities, NHS

Are you planning to submit a grant application to NIHR?

We are holding a one-day event at the Knowledge Spa, Truro, Cornwall on Tuesday 8 October that is aimed at helping you to improve your chances of success..

The morning seminar session is open to anyone to come and hear RDS advisers give presentations on what makes a good grant proposal. Topics covered will include:

  • what does the NIHR look for?
  • the application as a marketing document: selling the topic, selling the method, and selling the team
  • the team
  • clarity of description and explanation
  • feasibility issues
  • identifying and avoiding potential pitfalls.

The afternoon support session of one-to-one appointments is for those who would like to discuss their own proposal with an RDS adviser.

This event is FREE and refreshments and lunch will be provided. Places are limited and will be allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. In order to secure your place please register using our online form by 1pm, 25 September 2019. Find out more.

And don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

RDS Research for Social Care Roadshow

Funding opportunities

The NIHR will be investing in future social care research with annual funding calls via the Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme.  The next call is planned to launch in September and will follow a similar format to the first call, however to give it a clearer social care identity it will be launched as Research for Social Care (RfSC). The RfSC call will have a budget of £3m and further information will be released shortly.

The Research Design Service (RDS) is running an event in Bristol on 30th September which offers an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of RfSC funding. Attendance at these events is FREE and refreshments will be provided.

More details can be found on the NIHR website or on our RDS South West website.

And don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

Emerald Literati Highly Commended award for BU paper

Former PhD student, Dr Andy Harding, now at Lancaster University, and BU Professors Jonathan Parker, Sarah Head and Ann Hemingway have been highly commended for their paper Supply-side review of the UK specialist housing market and why it is failing older people published in Housing, Care and Support.

As a result, this paper has been made available on OpenAccess on the Emerald website for the next six months.

Promoting Nursing CPD in Nepal

Fusion, international, writing

Bournemouth University facilitated a Strategic planning meeting to develop a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework for Nepal last week in Kathmandu. The planning meeting was held on 30th July 2019 at the Institute of Medicine IOM Maharajgunj Nursing Campus.  Midwifery is not formally recognised in Nepal, i.e. as a profession separate from nursing, therefore when refer to nursing CPD in this blog we mean both ‘nurses’ and ‘nurse-midwives’.

Bournemouth University is collaborating in this project with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) in the UK, the IOM Nursing Campus, the Nursing Association of Nepal (NAN), MIDSON, the Nepal Nursing Council (NNC) and several other key stakeholders in Nepal to support nursing regulatory bodies to establish mandatory CPD and/or post-registration training programmes relevant to their current practice in nursing. 

The Bournemouth team (led by Dr. Bibha Simkhada with Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and Dr.Pramod Regmi) argued that CPD offers nurses the opportunity to maintain, improve and broaden knowledge, expertise and develop their personal and professional qualities to enhance practice and career development. Nepal has had limited process and progress in ensuring CPD for nurses and the uptake of post-registration education and training  programmes or CPD tends to be ad hoc.  Generally, CPD in Nepal remains under-developed as showing evidence of having received CPD is not currently a requirement of nurses when they re-register every five year.

This project is a good example of a BU FUSION project as our earlier Research in the form of a needs assessment will to the introduction of CPD which is of course, post-registration Education in nursing, helping to improve Practice in a low-income country.  We think we have had at least some impact on nursing in Nepal as the general feeling of our strategic planning meeting positive towards introducing CPD in the near future in Nepal.

 

 

BU PhD student Peter Wolfensberger has article accepted in Brit J Mental Health Nursing

Centre for Excellence in Learning, international, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to FHSS PhD student Peter Wolfensberger whose article ‘Uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health – a mental health nursing perspective’ was accepted yesterday by the British Journal of Mental Health Nursing [1].   The paper introduces the concept of ‘uncertainty in illness’, which is a well-known concept in health care literature  and a considerable volume of research has investigated how people adapt to different health conditions and how the concept of uncertainty in illness relates to those populations. However, while there is substantial literature focusing on coping strategies and personal recovery, there is a paucity of research about uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health. 

This paper therefore, explores uncertainty in illness among mental health nurses and to provide an understanding of its relevance to people living with mental ill health.  The paper concludes that even though mental health nursing does not directly address uncertainty, the concept and its implications need to be considered and raised further among mental health professionals in order to improve support for people living with mental ill health in their process of personal recovery.

This paper originated from Peter’s PhD research on insights into mental health nursing in Switzerland, which has had input from Prof Fran Biley (before he passed away) and Dr. Zoe Sheppard (before she moved to her new job in Dorchester).  His current BU supervisors are: Dr. Sarah Thomas and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and his Swiss supervisor is Prof. Sabine Hahn (Berner Fachhochschule/ Bern University of Applied Sciences).

 

Reference:

  1. Wolfensberger P. Thomas, S., Sheppard, Z., Hahn, S, van Teijlingen, E.  ‘Uncertainty in illness among people living with mental ill health – a mental health nursing perspective’  British Journal of Mental Health Nursing (Accepted)

 

 

 

 

Congratulations on academic paper by BU PhD student Orlanda Harvey

open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to Orlanda Harvey, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences on her PhD publication “Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Scoping Review into what they want and what they access” in the Open Access journal BMC Public Health [1].  Since there is a paucity of research on support for people using Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS), this article searched and synthesised the available evidence in this field. Gaining an understanding of the support both accessed and wanted by recreational AAS users will be of use to professionals who provide services to intravenous substance users and also to those working in the fields of public health and social care, with the aim to increase engagement of those using AAS.

This systematic scoping review identified 23 papers and one report for review, which indicated that AAS users access a range of sources of information on: how to inject, substance effectiveness, dosages and side effects, suggesting this is the type of information users want. AAS users sought support from a range of sources including medical professionals, needle and syringe programmes, friends, dealers, and via the internet, suggesting that, different sources were used dependent on the information or support sought.

The authors argue that AAS users tended to prefer peer advice and support over that of professionals , and access information online/specialist fora, reflecting the stigma that is experienced by AAS  users. These tendencies can act as barriers to accessing services provided by professionals.  The paper concludes that support needs to be specific and targeted towards AAS users. Sensitivity to their perceptions of their drug-use and the associated stigma of being classified in the same sub-set as other illicit drug users is relevant to facilitating successful engagement.

 

Reference: 

  1. Harvey, O., Keen, S., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2019) Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Literature Review into what they want and what they access. BMS Public Health 19: 1024      https://rdcu.be/bMFon

 

 

Law in Context Early Career Workshop – University of Oxford

Jeffrey Wale (FMC) has won a place on the Law in Context Early Career Workshop organised by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford in September 2019.  This followed an open competition involving PGRs submitting their PHD thesis in 2019.  Ten applicants were chosen to participate and the best papers from the workshop will be considered for publication in the International Journal of Law in Context.  Jeffrey will be presenting his doctoral research titled Regulating Medical Decision-Making: A Qualitative Study of Fetal Reduction in Multiple Pregnancy.