Category / REF Subjects

Enhanced Rehabilitation Of The Upper Limb Following Stroke By An Adaptive Virtual Reality And FES Approach

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Games and Music Technology Research.presimage

 

Speaker: Nathan Barrett (A Bournemouth University PhD student based at Salisbury NHS).

 

Title:     Enhanced Rehabilitation Of The Upper Limb Following Stroke By An Adaptive Virtual Reality And FES Approach

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 30th November 2016

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Of the approximately 150,000 people a year who suffer a stroke in the UK, 85% of survivors are left with some degree of motor dysfunction in their upper limb. Complete functional recovery has been found to occur in just 5% to 34% of cases. These low rates may be due to rehabilitative interventions that lack the volumes of specific motor practice needed to induce neuroplasticity – a form of cortical rewiring that allows the brain to adapt after damage. Assistive technologies, such as Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and virtual games, can augment such therapy and may be beneficial to a person’s recovery.

FES is a type of electrotherapy which has good clinical evidence for its use. Electrically-stimulated movements, however, often lack combined voluntary effort – a factor necessary to aid effectiveness. Virtual games, on the other hand, often inspire huge amounts of volitional movement, although, particularly with popular commercial devices, this movement isn’t always therapeutic.

Combining the two is therefore an attractive prospect, yet attempts at this have resulted in systems that are costly, immobile and commercially unavailable. There is therefore a need to combine the two within a system that fulfils the criteria for an effective assistive technology. The system, Esmé (the Electrically-Stimulated Movement and game Environment), is currently in development. This seminar provides an overview of the project and discusses next steps.

 

 

We hope to see you there.

CMC’s Promotional Cultures and Communication Centre wins prestigious industry research award

Business Engagement, Fusion

CMC’s Promotional Cultures and Communication Centre (PCCC) is delighted to announce that the recent research project they undertook for Exterion Media won ‘Best Research Initiative’ at last week’s Media Research Group Awards.  The MRG is the industry group for research professionals working in media related roles and is a great showcase for the work we do here.

The project was titled ‘The Mood of the Underground’ and undertaken in partnership with COG Research, a leading independent research agency.  It comprised of a number of elements: a literature review undertaken by PCCC- CMC; a proposed approach recommended by CMC; primary research completed by PCCC-CMC and COG, and delivery of the final debrief written by PCCC-CMC and COG.

Congratulations to Stuart Armon, Rebecca Jenkins, Chris Miles, Georgiana Grigore, Janice Denegri-Knott, Jill Nash and Shenel McLawrence who worked on this project.

14:Live with Dr Ashley Woodfall returns on Thursday!

Student Engagement

Do you want to get creative for an hour? Do you have an interest in creative research methods?

14:Live is back tomorrow on Thursday 17 November with Dr Ashley Woodfall!8115-rkeo-14live-digital-signage-v3-0

Join us as we get creative and discuss Mess and Mayhem: Creative/Reflective Methods at Play. This mess and discussion led session will be a space to discuss the use (and abuse) of creative research methods. How can they help trigger meaningful research interactions, and how the outcomes might be understood?

This session will be exploring research in a creative environment from drawing, to molding, to improv’ and beyond. We ask if creative reflective methods can share something of your own life world and whether these methods can help unlock metaphorical insights that are missed through more traditional approaches.

Come along on at 14:00-15:00 on Floor 5 of the Student Centre for an hour of mess and mayhem. There will be free drinks and snacks!

If you have any questions then please contact Hannah Jones

BU’s Clinical Academic Doctorates; an example of good practice in new official guidance

The Association of UK University Hospitals (AUKUH) has today released new guidance, Transforming healthcare through clinical academic roles in nursing, midwifery and allied health professions: A practical resource for healthcare provider organisations

The guide is aimed at NHS organisational leads with the responsibility for developing and embedding clinical academic roles for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. Clinical academics serve as a crucial connection between the NHS and universities, working to train future generations of healthcare workers while engaging in research which can improve outcomes for patients and help increase efficiency.

The guide contains practical information, case studies and templates. One of the case studies highlighted is BU’s innovative clinical academic doctorates. The pragmatic four-year clinical doctorate model enables midwives and nurses to remain in practice while conducting a piece of research to meet clinical priorities. The four-year clinical doctorate is a joint development involving academics at Bournemouth University and clinical colleagues at NHS trusts. The doctorate is structured to enable students to spend two days a week in clinical practice and three days conducting research. All research projects are jointly developed to meet an identified clinical need.

The model originated for midwives in Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, where we have eight fellows, and has now been adopted by the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Poole Hospitals NHS Trust and Dorset County Hospitals NHS Trust (Way et al., 2016). The model is also being extended to other disciplines, with our first nurse fellow at Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Trust.

 

Professor Debbie Carrick-Sen, Co-Chair of the group which produced the guidance, says:

‘Creating this resource has required a significant amount of collaboration from colleagues across healthcare and we are truly grateful to them. The energy that has gone into it is a huge credit to the professions involved. Through this guidance they have the means to share their immense successes, learn from each other and ultimately work to the benefit of patient care.

‘The guidance will be the starting point. We have established a network of organisational leads with the responsibility for its development and for using it to implement clinical academic roles across the UK. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to begin a nationwide dialogue and to transform health and social care in the UK.’

 

Way S, van Teijlingen E, HundleyV, Westwood G, Walton G, Wiggins D, Colbourne D, Richardson C, Wixted D, Mylod D (2016) Dr Know. Midwives, 19, 66-67.

ESRC Festival of Social Sciences

BRIAN, Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Transfer

Dr John Oliver, from the Advances in Media Management research cluster, recently delivered a keynote lecture at the Open Innovation Design Jam competition at the University of Glasgow. The event formed part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science programme of activities that ran from 5th-12th November across the UK.

The Design Jam also involved a number of short, intensive brainstorming sessions in which teams developed innovative solutions to challenges. This event was an opportunity for innovators and businesses to explore open, collective and user-led innovation.
Dr Oliver’s talk on media innovation strategies presented empirical data on how the innovation practices of UK media firms had transformed firm capabilities and corporate financial performance.

Midwifery Graduation: Honours & Awards

international, PG research, student research

alison-sheenaAlongside Bournemouth University’s midwifery and other health and social care students who graduated in last Friday’s ceremony, BU honoured prominent midwife Sheena Byrom OBE with an Honorary Doctorate for her services to the profession. Sheena Byrom gave an inspiring speech at Friday’s Graduation.  Sheena said, “If they can keep in their hearts the passion and the drive they had when they first came to the university, it will help them to be more resilient and keep them motivated towards what they want to do. Healthcare is a blend between love and science and both are equally important. In practice, it is key that they have the skills, but the things that makes the difference are love and compassion.”

rachelalisonedwinAlongside Sheena two students from the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health(CMMPH) graduated with a PhD in Midwifery.  Dr. Alison Taylor received her PhD for her qualitative research on breastfeeding. Her thesis is entitled ‘It’s a relief to talk ….’: Mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding recorded on video diaries.  Dr. Rachel Arnold was awarded her PhD for her research Afghan women and the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital.

Congratulations to all BU undergraduates and Rachel, Alison and Sheena!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

14:Live with Dr Ashley Woodfall

Student Engagement

Do you want to get creative for an hour? Do you have an interest in creative research methods?

14:Live is back on Thursday 17 November with Dr Ashley Woodfall.8115-rkeo-14live-digital-signage-v3-0

Join us as we get creative and discuss Mess and Mayhem: Creative/Reflective Methods at Play. This mess and discussion led session will be a space to discuss the use (and abuse) of creative research methods. How can they help trigger meaningful research interactions, and how the outcomes might be understood?

This session will be exploring research in a creative environment from drawing, to molding, to improv’ and beyond. We ask if creative reflective methods can share something of your own life world and whether these methods can help unlock metaphorical insights that are missed through more traditional approaches.

Come along on at 14:00-15:00 on Floor 5 of the Student Centre for an hour of mess and mayhem. There will be free drinks and snacks!

If you have any questions then please contact Hannah Jones

Islam and Social Work: Culturally sensitive practice in a diverse world

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

islam%20and%20social%20work-pbk_qcThe complexities of multiculturalism as a social ontology and as a political discourse have taken a rapid and alarming turn to the right in a political moment of increasing social turbulence on issues that revolve around national identity, ethnicity and religion. It is therefore timely, if regrettably so, that the second edition of Islam and Social Work makes its debut this month.

The first volume went to press in 2008, in my first year at BU, and my co-authors and I were overwhelmed when the book was showered with positive reviews. Regarded as not only the best, but the sole European text on this conspicuously important topic, it was also viewed as having no counterpart in the Global North (where the subject of social work and minority ethnic groups has been a dominant theme in the social work literature for decades). Since then it has been regularly cited and I been privileged to have anonymously reviewed dozens of papers on Islamic interpretations of social work practice. I have learned that Western social work is no longer the epicentre of practice – there are other worlds out there. I feel that this earlier book was, if nothing else, pivotal to opening the door much wider to be able to hear from our Muslim social work colleagues around the world, whose practice can challenge the restrictive, bureaucratised and therefore often inhuman professional processes in the UK

Strangely, however, over the years, despite the world having changed so very much since in terms of the shifting geo-political axes of power, the rise and fall of despotic regimes, the call for accountability of Western leaders implicated in invasion of Gulf nations, the Arab Spring, global terrorism, Al-Qaeda and later the monstrous birth of imploding Daesh – no one has produced a text to supersede the old first edition. And so, reader, we, Fatima Husain, Basia Spalek and I decided to produce the 2nd edition, which has been fully revised and updated, rewritten virtually from scratch, and I believe we have produced a book that is specific in detail, expansive in scope and completely international in outlook.

We hope that this will be a text that is the first port of call for all social work students across the globe who are interested in learning more about competent and sensitive practice with Muslim service user and client groups across the lifespan, as well as discovering the many beauties and wise profundities that are embedded, but often overlooked, in the youngest of the Abrahamic religions, Islam.

Professor Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Professor of Social & Cultural Diversity

Brick-henge at the Jewell Academy, Bournemouth

staff profile pages

Pupils at the Jewell Academy in Bournemouth have built a scale-model of Stonehenge in the school grounds using 80 house-bricks. The work was as part of an outreach visit by Professor Tim Darvill from the Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science to introduce young scholars to the results of recent research at Stonehenge. Orientated on the mid-winter sunset the model should survive long enough to help celebrate the end of term and the start of the winter festival in six weeks time!

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BU excavations at Cotswold long barrow reported in Current Archaeology

Current Archaeology, the UK’s best-selling archaeological magazine, features news of BU’s discovery of a previously unrecorded Neolithic long barrow in the Cotswolds in its December issue that goes on sale today. The excavations, directed by Professor Tim Darvill and Dr Martin Smith from the Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science, revealed a large stone-built mound dating to around 3800 BC. Such mounds served as territorial markers as well as burial places for communities living in the area. The work forms part of a larger study looking at the history and development of the Cotswold landscape since prehistoric times and includes collaboration with staff from the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

Royal Academy of Engineering – SME Leaders Programme

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, Training

Royal Academy Engineering

 

Are you working with engineering companies that would be interested in this funding opportunity?

Why not send them this information in order that they can consider making an application ?

The Royal Academy of Engineering, sponsored through the Enterprise Hub, invites applications for its small- and medium-sized enterprises leaders programme. This supports promising leaders of high growth engineering SMEs. Recipients receive a grant of between £10,000 to £15,000 towards the cost of training courses and executive education for themselves.

This scheme is open for applications  by SMEs until 4pm on 24 November 2016. For further details on the scheme click on this link.

 

 

 

Stern review of the REF – what next?

Guidance, REF Subjects

ref-logoThe Stern review of the REF was published in July 2016. The government have accepted the main recommendations, and we are expecting in November a HEFCE technical consultation on implementation – to affect the next REF exercise (probably in 2021). It is expected that the new arrangements will be settled by the summer of 2017.

So what did Stern recommend – and what is likely to be in the consultation?

  1. The main thing that Stern might have done, but did not do – following widespread concern in the sector – was move to a metrics-based approach for the REF. Peer review and case studies will remain and there will be an opportunity to celebrate success wherever it is found in the REF – not a metrics based ranking. There may be new metrics, and a new Forum for Responsible Research Metrics has been launched, but the key is that these metrics should be used responsibly and carefully.
  2. All research active staff should be returned in the REF (and allocated to a unit of assessment).
  3. Outputs should be submitted at Unit of Assessment level with a set average number per FTE, but with flexibility for some faculty members to submit more and others less than the average. A total cap should be set based upon two outputs on average per FTE with an individual cap (e.g. six) and a minimum per FTE (potentially 0).
    There has been some concern expressed about these changes – Maddalaine Ansell (University Alliance) via Wonkhe and James Wilsdon in The Guardian, 29th July 2016. At BU, our strategy is that all academic staff should be active in research as part of Fusion, so we will not be moving towards teaching only contracts. We hope the sector will not do so either – we will consider pressing for all staff to be included and remove any risks around the definition of “research active” to avoid this
  1. The total number of outputs per UoA should be adjusted so that it does not significantly exceed the 190,000 reviewed in REF2014. This may require the average number of outputs submitted per faculty member to be below two.
  2. Outputs should not be portable. The review proposes that outputs should be submitted by the HEI where the output was demonstrably generated and that work should be allocated to the HEI where they were based when work accepted for publication. There may be some flexibility around maximum numbers when staff have moved- e.g. maximum three outputs from those who have left.
    Concern has been expressed that this will restrict employment options for early career researchers, e.g. Paul Kirby. James Wilsdon again “the broader move to reduce output numbers and decouple them from individuals should reduce pressure on those at the start of their career, or who take time out of research because of childcare, illness or caring responsibilities” Other views: – it might be fairer to early career researchers who will be recruited on potential not previous publications
  1. Institutions should be given more flexibility to showcase their interdisciplinary and collaborative impacts by submitting institutional level impact case studies
  2. Impact should be based on research of demonstrable quality. However, case studies could be linked to a research activity and a body of work as well as to a broad range of research outputs
  3. Guidance on the REF should make it clear that impact case studies should not be narrowly interpreted, need not solely focus on socioeconomic impacts but should also include impact on government policy, public engagement and understanding, cultural life, academic impacts outside the field and impacts on teaching – the report recommends that research leading to impact on curricula and/ or pedagogy should be included. BU welcomes these changes and we look forward to seeing more details of these plans.

So watch this space – once the consultation is launched the Research and Knowledge Exchange team will be working with the policy team to prepare a BU response. You can read more about BU’s policy and public affairs work on our intranet pages.

InsideBU – Out Now

Student Engagement, student research

insidebu-front-cover-useThe latest issue of InsideBU, the magazine for BU staff and students, is out now.

This issue brings the concept of Fusion to life through a range of features and articles including:

  • Celebrating undergraduate research through hosting the prestigious British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) next year
  • National research into the scale and impact of financial scamming in the UK, headed by BU’s National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work and Professional Practice
  • The research stories behind the Fusion mural on Talbot Campus.

Hard copies are available across both campuses and you can also read it online – simply click the arrows on the bottom right of the screen to expand it to a full page size.

If you use a screen-reader, Word and PDF versions are also available. The current issue – and all back issues – can also now be found on the Staff Intranet, under ‘Find’ on the bottom right of the homepage.

Please email insidebu@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like hard copies sent directly to you.

We appreciate all feedback and suggestions for future issues. If you have a story for the next issue of InsideBU, email insidebu@bournemouth.ac.uk.