Category / REF Subjects

Research from the Department of Psychology in the New Scientist

HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, open access, student research

Research resulting from a BU-funded PhD studentship is featured in this week’s edition of the New Scientist, and was also recently covered by the Independent. Under the supervision of Dr Sarah Bate from the Department of Psychology (Faculty of Science and Technology), Anna Bobak has spent the last three years investigating so-called “super recognisers”, or people with extraordinary face recognition skills. It appears that only a small proportion of the general population have these skills, yet they may be incredibly useful in forensic and security tasks, such as the identification of perpetrators from CCTV footage or in passport control. While super-recognisers have previously been identified via laboratory tests of face recognition, Anna’s work demonstrates that only some of these individuals also excel at more applied face recognition tasks. In a recent paper published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, she demonstrates that more real-world tasks are required to identify the super recognisers who can truly be of value to the Police Force and in national security settings.

Anna has recently moved into a PDRA position where she continues to work with Sarah in the field of super recognition. Her post is part of a HEIF5+1 initiative that aims to generate knowledge exchange with the Police. The team are currently working directly with Dorset Police to create screening tools that can identify officers who may be particularly suited to certain face recognition tasks, and to make a series of recommendations for best practice that are extracted from excellent performance. They are also creating resources that educate officers about the limitations and biases that act upon the human face recognition system, and how these may influence core policing activities.

Talk by Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers cancelled

conferences, Fusion, PG research, Research Ethics, Women's Academic Network

Unfortunately we are cancelling the talk: Ethnographies of Memory – the cultural reproduction of militancy in Kosovo by Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. We apologise for the late notice. This is because the Women Academic Network talk has been rescheduled this morning for the same time slot (see below). Dr Schwandner-Sievers will give her talk at a later date to avoid some people having to make a choice.

Polly Trenow (Fawcett Society)
‘Feminism in practice – does activism really work?’
Wednesday 18th November
TAG22
2-4pm (with networking 3-4pm)

For any questions, please get in touch with Dr Masi Fathi (mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Successful ESRC Festival of Social Sciences in EBC today

Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, PG research, student research, Women's Academic Network

Slide1Slide2This afternoon Prof. Jonathan Parker introduced the final of three session in the Executive Business Centre under the title ‘Enhancing social life through global social research: Part 3. Social science research in diverse communities’.  This session was well attended and coveredwas a wide-range of interesting social science research topics.

Professor of Sociology Ann Brooks started off the session with her presentation on ‘Emotional labour and social change.’   She was followed by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen who gave an overview of research in Nepal.  FHSS PhD student Andy Harding introduced his thesis research into ‘Information provision and housing choices for older people.’  At this point Prof. Brooks gave her second talk on ‘Risk and the crisis of authenticity in cities’. Social Anthropologist Dr. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers spoke about her research on ‘Reconciliation and engaged ethnography in the Balkans.’  Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim highlighted her study on ‘North Korean defectors in the UK’ and the session was completed by Dr. Mastoureh Fathi who presented her analysis of parenting books for Muslim parents in the UK.

ESRC banner (2)

This was the last day of the ESRC Festival of Social Science at which Bournemouth University was extremely well presented!

 

Thank you to my colleagues for organising this and the ESRC for funding the events!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

(medical sociologist)

BU PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s publication in MIDWIFERY

international, open access, Publishing, writing

Sheetal Sharma Midw 2030

 

Ms. Sheetal Sharma, PhD student in FHSS, published her latest paper in Midwifery (Elsevier) this week. This latest paper ‘Midwifery2030, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean?’ is co-authored by a number of illustious midwifery researchers. The 2014 State of the World’s Midwifery report included a new framework for the provision of womancentred sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health care, known as the Midwifery2030 Pathway. The Pathway was designed to apply in all settings (high-, middle- and low income countries, and in any type of health system). This paper describes the process of developing the Midwifery2030 Pathway and explain the meaning of its different components, with a view to assisting countries with its implementation.

Sheetal is currently in her final year of a PhD on the evaluation of the impact of a maternity care intervention in Nepal.

Sheeta;

Sheetal Sharma

Congratulations!!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Catherine Angell & Prof. Vanora Hundley (all CMMPH)

&

Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University).

 

Reference:

ten Hoope-Bender, P. Lopes, S., Nove, A., Michel-Schuldt, M.,  Moyo, NT, Bokosi, M., Codjia, L.,  Sharma, S., Homer, CSE. (2015) Midwifery2013, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean? Midwifery

 

BU featured by Kidney Research Charity

innovation

Bournemouth’s biomedical research features in this season’s Kidney Research UK ‘Update’ magazine (page 13). We share  this issue with Lauren Laverne (sort of)!

KRUK is one of Britain’s leading kidney research charities and has awarded us an Innovation Award to identify genes that underpin the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in diabetes. The innovative part of the research is that it uses the fruit fly Drosophila – a novel tool in the research armoury that has helped us understand the genetic basis of human development and behaviour as well as cardiovascular disease. Research at Bournemouth will use unique genetic tools to establish how insulin signalling maintains the expression of evolutionarily conserved genes that regulate kidney function in both flies and humans. This simple model organism has enormous power to help us identify new pathways of clinical significance to CKD – a condition that affects and kills thousands of people every year in the UK.

If you are keen to learn more about the research – email me at phartley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Upcoming CfE / FM Event: Meet the Entrepreneur – Simon Phelps

Business Engagement

Fluvial Logo CaptureTuesday 24 November 2015
2pm arrival for a 2:30pm start
Executive Business Centre, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB

The Business School and Centre for Entrepreneurship are delighted to invite you to the first in our series of ‘Meet the Entrepreneur’ events.

Simon Phelps founded Fluvial Innovations Ltd alongside BU in 2006 and designed, developed and patented the modular flood barrier, Floodstop.  Floodstop was specifically designed to fill a gap within the market for a functional and rapidly deployable flood barrier.

This is a great opportunity to hear about Simon’s personal journey as an entrepreneur and learn more about his own experiences as a business owner and his approach to founding and growing an innovative business.

Floodstop is used throughout the UK, US and parts of Europe and won the Emergency Planners Society’s Award for Most Innovative Product of The Year 2009 and voted “The Most Innovative Product of 2009” by the Emergency Planning Society.

Simon’s achievements include UK South West Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 and HSBC Start-Up Stars Regional Finalist 2008.

THIS IS AN INTERNAL EVENT FOR BU STUDENTS & STAFF ONLY

To book please click here

Sociology meets Archaeology – Stonehenge as a site of multiplicities

Fusion

Sociology students at StonehengeSara Ashencaen Crabtree, Stewart Davidson, Alexandra Jarrett, Georgia Larkins, Ana Paixao Pancada, Charles Scovell-Burfutt, Seval Fleming

Recently FHSS Sociology+ and SciTech students undertaking the final year sociology unit ‘Seekers, Believers & Iconoclasts: Sociology of Thought’, joined up with BSc Archaeology students for a joint Faculty trip to Stonehenge, led by Professor Tim Darvill and Professor Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Dr Eileen Wilkes and Professor Jonathan Parker. The field trip provided a very important exploration of the overlapping domains of belief, from the prehistoric to the contemporary world, exemplified by Stonehenge, one of the most visited ancient sites in the world.

The day started inauspiciously being dark with rain. After visiting the considerably improved new information site with its excellent exhibits, including an appealingly nostalgic one of historical tourism to Stonehenge, we visited the monument itself. Always impressive and endlessly enigmatic, windswept Stonehenge offers endless variation of vista, where the scale and positioning of the stones appear to change immensely from different viewpoints. From there we followed the processional route in reverse away from Stonehenge negotiating mud and sheep dung on our cheerful march. Tim, charisma totally undampened by the rain, led us on a mobile lecture tour around much of the great prehistoric landscape of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments studded with a bewildering range of burial barrows, dented with ditched enclosures and crossed by great processional avenues.

It was a privilege to visit Stonehenge with our two BU archaeologists on hand to properly explain the relevance of the landscape that would otherwise have been trodden with little appreciation of the incredible importance of what lay underfoot and what it meant, where Stonehenge sits at the centre of a vast metropolis of monuments.

Later the sociology students reflected on what they had learned. Alex, taking BA Sociology & Anthropology, spoke of the epiphanic moment of drawing essential connections between the generic theoretical and specific social phenomena that lay around her. Georgia on BA Sociology & Social Policy (BASSP) thought about material culture, and how the ancient and modern participant engages in the drama of performance. As sociologists we learned from our archaeological colleagues that Neolithic Britons with great subtlety and vast ingenuity orchestrated this physical pilgrimage over the landscape, drawing ancient pilgrims from huge distances, through the construction of an approach where Stonehenge is dramatically obscured and revealed successively en route – thus channeling both physical approach, perception and therefore experience.

Stewart on BASSP wrote a lengthy analysis: ‘My time throughout BU has given me a much broader perspective on this academic discipline, all too often other social sciences are intertwined. However, when Tim conceptualised this idea of Scienti, the merging of ideas that contributes to a new way of understanding, I challenged my own perception and it’s given me an alternative way to examine things.

I did not hesitate to sign-up for this field trip… I mean it’s not every day one gets an opportunity to have a reconnaissance guide (Tim Darvill) take you around the landscape to expand our understanding of our pre-historic ancestors’ rich history and an opportunity to see it through Stone-age eyes! I have gained transferable skills and drawn comparison to even another unit! My understanding is clearer now on what Bourdieu is suggesting in terms of habitus: we become a structured structure. This even has links with labelling theory and the fluidity/structures flows in everyday practice. This is from observing these momentous structures encountered on the day and the assimilation of these ancient societies.’

To conclude, the success of this trip, where sociology meets archaeology in a synergistic appreciation of the multiplicities of meanings in belief systems, has inspired us as an academic group to explore more opportunities for cross-Faculty engagement, in terms of both research as well as teaching – and where the Stonehenge landscape is now clearly on our sociological map.