Category / REF Subjects

BU PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s publication in MIDWIFERY

BU research, international, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, 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, Research news

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, Uncategorized

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.

 

 

 

Inge Award 2015 received by Julia Round (CsJCC)

BU research, Women's Academic Network

In March 2015 I received QR funding to attend the Popular Culture Association conference in New Orleans with colleagues from the CsJCC. This was a fantastic experience due to the scale and scope of this international conference. It is split into a number of strands and I found many that informed my research (Adaptation, Gothic, Children’s Literature – and, of course, Comics and Sequential Art).

I presented a paper on ‘Revenant Landscapes in The Walking Dead’ as part of the Comics and Sequential Art strand. This argued against the perception that comics can be treated as ‘storyboards’ for adaptations, and offered a deeper analysis of the way space works on the page and screen. I was delighted to hear last month that it was awarded the 2015 Inge Award for Comics Scholarship, given to the best paper in this strand. This award is judged anonymously and has been given to a number of extremely influential scholars in the past (including Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg, Jr, Amy Kiste Nyberg and Mel Gibson), so I am extremely happy and grateful for the support I have received from the CsJCC and BU, without which this would not have been possible.

Full paper available at www.academia.edu and via BRIAN

Full paper available at www.academia.edu and via BRIAN

 

Congratulations new publication Dr. Pramod Regmi in FHSS

BU research, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized

Asia Pac J PH 2015Asian-Pacific Journal of Public Health published an editorial with Dr. Pramod Regmi as its first author.  The editorial ‘Importance of Health and Social Care Research into Gender and Sexual Minority Populations in Nepal.’  The authors argue that despite progressive legislative developments and increased visibility of sexual and gender minority populations in the general population, mass media often report that this population face a wide range of discrimination and inequalities. LGBT (lesbian, gay, and bisexual, and transgender) populations have not been considered as priority research populations in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Reference:

Regmi, R.R., van Teijlingen, E.  Importance of Health and Social Care Research into Gender and Sexual Minority Populations in Nepal

Asia Pac J Public Health 2015 27: 806–808,

NIHR Research Design Service Research Grant Writing Retreat

BU research, Research Training, Training

Do you have a great idea for research in health or social care?

Would your team benefit from protected time and expert support to develop your idea into a competitive funding application?

The NIHR Research Design Serice (RDS) are offering a unique opportunity for health and social care professionals across England to attend a week-long residential Grant Writing Retreat at Bailbrook House, Bath in June 2016. The purpose of the Retreat is to give busy professionals dedicated time to rapidly progress their research idea into fundable proposals. The Retreat will provide a supportive environment for teams of two or three people to develop high quality research proposals prior to application to national peer-reviewed funding streams. Find out more.

Don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR 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.

New CMMPH paper published from COST collaboration

BU research, EU, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized

BMC Health Serv Res
This week saw publication of a new CMMPH paper in BMC Health Services Research.  This methodological paper ‘Assessing the performance of maternity care in Europe: a critical exploration of tools and indicators‘ is a collaboration between several European maternity-care researchers based in Spain (Ramón Escuriet, Fatima Leon-Larios), Belgium (Katrien Beeckman), Northern Ireland (Marlene Sinclair), the UK (Lucy Firth, Edwin van Teijlingen), Switzerland ( Christine Loytved, Ans Luyben) and Portugal (Joanna White).  Dr. Ans Luyben is also Visiting Faculty in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University.  The underlying work was supported by the European Union through a COST Action called Childbirth Cultures, Concerns, and Consequences headed by Prof. Soo Downe at the University of Central Lancashire.  COST is seen by the EU as an important tool in building and supporting the European Research Area (ERA).

Cost ActionThis paper critically reviews published tools and indicators currently used to measure maternity care performance within Europe, focusing particularly on whether and how current approaches enable systematic appraisal of processes of minimal (or non-) intervention in support of physiological or “normal birth”.

The authors conclude: “The review identified an emphasis on technical aspects of maternity, particularly intrapartum care in Europe, rather than a consideration of the systematic or comprehensive measurement of care processes contributing to non-intervention and physiological (normal) birth. It was also found that the links between care processes and outcomes related to a normal mode of birth are not being measured.”

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

New HEIF project commences: Modelling Natural Capital in Dorset

HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, Research communication

UK government policies relating to economic growth and the environment explicitly identify the need to create ‘a green economy, in which economic growth and the health of our natural resources sustain each other, and markets, businesses and Government better reflect the value of nature’ (Defra 2011). Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and Local Nature Partnerships (LNP), including those in Dorset, were specifically created to support achievement of this goal. Key challenges are the need to assess the economic value of ecosystem services and to factor them into decision making; and the need to develop integrated and multisectoral approaches to spatial development that improve synergies and reduce trade-offs, while supporting the sustainable management of natural resources.

This project is designed to overcome these challenges, through the development of a modelling toolkit that will enable the value of ecosystem services to be assessed and mapped, then linked with economic activity. While analysis of ecosystem services is now a major international research endeavour, linkage with economic activity (such as the inputs and outputs of different industrial sectors) is at a very early stage. The toolkit to be developed by this project will therefore be both innovative and timely. By piloting the toolkit using Dorset as a case study, this project will deliver a proof of concept, with potential global applicability if successful.

Funded under the Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) initiative, any questions regarding the project can be addressed to P.I. Prof. Adrian Newton or Research Assistant Arjan Gosal.

Linking research and practice – Appointment to international panel

Fusion, international, REF Subjects, Research news, Uncategorized

Professor Tom Watson of the Faculty of Media & Communication has been appointed to the Academic Advisory Panel of AMEC (the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication). He joins six other leading communication measurement and evaluation researchers from Australia, Germany, UK and US. The Panel is chaired by Professor Jim Macnamara of the University of Technology Sydney.

The panel’s role is to “provide expert advice and input to AMEC in relation to research methodology and methods, education and learning, and standards”.

“The measurement of public relations and corporate communication is an important and perennial professional issue,” said Professor Watson. “AMEC is the international body for the communication measurement sector and includes all the major media measurement suppliers in more than 30 countries.”

Professor Watson’s co-authored book (with Paul Noble), Evaluating Public Relations is now in its third edition. “Increasingly, there is a shift from measurement to evaluation, with the understanding of the value created through communication becoming a critical issue for communicators. In the book’s latest edition, we focused more on concepts of value. Creating world-wide standards on value is becoming more important and so the AMEC initiative to create this high-level link between research and practice is very timely.

iamecMASTER

Faculty of Media and Communication Seminar Series – this week – Richard Norrie from Demos

BU research, Research news

We are delighted to invite you to this week’s Faculty Seminar Series, hosted by the Politics and Media Research Group. It is this weds 4 November, 3-4pm in the screening room (W240), Weymouth house.
It is Dr Richard Norrie from the think tank Demos. See below for his abstract and bio. It promises to be a fascinating talk on the topical issue of immigration and integration.
No need to book – just come along
All welcome!
The ‘is’ and ‘ought’ of integration
In a recent speech David Cameron announced a new review to be led by Louise Casey into how integration and opportunities can be increased in divided communities. The philosopher David Hume famously argued that when it came to questions of morality, it was impossible to say what should be based on what exists – in short, you cannot get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. But still, whatever Casey’s review will recommend will have to reconcile what we would like to see in our communities with what is possible given the existing conditions. This presentation is all about how evidence on ethnic and religious integration can be used in order to allow us a better understanding of what can be done in order to improve things. In essence, the question is what are the constraints placed by ‘what is’ on ‘what ought to be’?
At the think tank Demos, we have recently completed the first stage of major research repository called the Integration Hubas led by David Goodhart. This website aims to bring together much of the available evidence and research on the key questions pertaining to integration. In this presentation I will review what we know about integration in terms of differences in residential patterns, economic outcomes, everyday social life, education, and identity. Then, I will present an empirical model of integration in the towns and cities of England and Wales. Provisional analysis has so far identified two key dimensions of integration – a situational dimension reflecting differences in where and how people live and an identity based dimension reflecting people’s strength of commitment to Britain. 
Throughout, I shall be returning to the questions of what is right and what is wrong in terms of integration and what can be done given the evidence we have and the limitations imposed on us. 
Dr Richard Norrie is an Associate Researcher at Demos and the lead analyst on the Integration Hub website.

His research interests include ethnic integration, political participation, religiosity, and civil society. He has co-authored reports on populist political parties in Europe, how immigration is discussed on social media, and online misogyny. He specialises in quantitative research methods.

He holds degrees from the Universities of Warwick, Oxford, and Cologne. His doctorate was awarded in 2014 with a thesis written on the subject of country context, religiosity, and participation in public life.
Richard Norrie

Congratulations to Prof. Brooks

Featured, Featured academics, Research communication, Research news, Uncategorized, Women's Academic Network

BU Professor Ann Brooks has been made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).

  Ann Brooks

Ann Brooks is Professor of Sociology at Bournemouth University since January 2015. Ann has held senior positions in universities in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand and has held visiting fellowships and scholarships in Singapore and the USA. She was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Health and Community at Plymouth University in 2014 and was previously a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Academic Women (Open University Press, 1997); Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (Routledge, 1997); Gender and the Restructured University (Open University Press, 2001); Gendered Work in Asian Cities: The New Economy and Changing Labour Markets (Ashgate, 2006); Social Theory in Contemporary Asia (Routledge, 2010); Gender, Emotions and Labour Markets: Asian and Western Perspectives (Routledge, 2011) and Emotions in Transmigration: Transformation, Movement and Identity (Palgrave 2012) (with Ruth Simpson). Recent books include: Consumption, Cities and States: Comparing Singapore with Cities in Asia and the West (Anthem Press, 2014) (with Lionel Wee); Popular Culture, Global Intercultural Perspectives (Palgrave, 2014); and Emotions and Social Change: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, New York, 2014) (edited with David Lemmings). Her latest book is: Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies and Desire: Theories of Changes in Emotional Regimes from Medieval Society to Late Modernity (2016 Routledge, New York).

Further information on this year’s new Fellows can be found here!

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

‘Wicked problems’ in adult social care – responding through collaborative leadership

BU research

The Care Quality Commission’s State of Care report for the Adult Social Care Sector offers both reassuring and worrying elements: reassuring in that 60% of adult services were providing good or outstanding care, but disturbing in that 7% of services were rated inadequate.

A key element related to good or outstanding ratings concerns leadership. Unsurprisingly inadequate leadership is linked to inadequate care, whilst good leadership supports an environment of high quality and continually improving care. According to the CQC report outstanding leaders are characterised by their ‘passion, excellence and integrity and collaboration with their staff.’

leadership-headerHow can leadership be improved across the adult care sector? This is a challenging question as the health and social care sectors are increasingly beset with ‘wicked problems’. Wicked problems are defined by complexity, may have long standing origins and for which there are no easy solutions. Wicked problems may be seen differently by different stakeholders, and this can be particularly challenging as services come together through integrated care.

This approach is informed by the work of Rittel and Webber (1973) who defined tame, crisis or wicked problems. Tame problems are often easily understood with clear causes and resolutions identified. Crisis problems require urgent responses but often respond to strong leadership and control during the crisis period. Wicked problems are much more complex, often with multiple contributory elements, are intractable and difficult to solve. Many of the issues within the adult social care sector are ‘wicked problems. These include a complex and challenging range of issues: an ageing population with increasingly complex needs; the impact of austerity measures on funding for the health and social care sectors; systems which are in a state of perpetual flux and change; the impact of concerns about quality of care; the need for an increasingly skilled workforce; and the problems of recruiting and retaining a suitably qualified social care workforce.  So what leadership approach would be better to deal with the challenges posed by ‘wicked problems’?

iStock_000019216251SmallTo cope with the ‘wicked’ nature of problems within adult social care it is important that leaders are able to think beyond usual leadership and management approaches. ‘Wicked problems’ require ‘wicked solutions’, a break with the constraints of the past and an approach which embraces creativity.  It requires individuals who can facilitate a collaborative approach to harness creativity across different stakeholders both internal and external to their organisation.  It requires a style of leadership which is focused on participation rather than top down direction – that is inclusive, and supports engagement with collective ideas.  Such leaders need to work with the resources within their own workforce by adopting ‘the moral resourcefulness’ to engage in challenging conversations (Hutchinson et al. 2015:3022). Only collective engagement within and across organisations can hope to address the ‘wicked problems’.

For further information on the event please contact

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge – Deputy Director NCPQSW
lfenge@bournemouth.ac.uk

References

Hutchinson , J. et al. (2015) Editorial,  Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24: 3021-3023

Rittel, H.W. and Webber, M.W. (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, Policy Science, 4: 155-169

Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!

BRIAN, BU research, open access, Publishing, Research Ethics, Research news, Uncategorized, writing

Nepal J Epid Open AccessAs it is Open Access Week I would like to clarify one of the Open Access publishing myths.  One of the common replies I receive from academics colleagues when raising Open Access publishing is that it is (too) expensive. This is, of course, true for many academic journals, but not all are expensive.  Some don’t even charge a processing fee at all.  Infamously, The Lancet Global Health charges an article processing fee of US $4750 upon acceptance of submitted research articles.  More moderately priced scientific journals still charge anything up to about £1,500 per article.

Open-Access-logoAcademic publishing has been big business for decades, and Open Access has rapidly become part of that business.  While traditional book and magazine publishers struggle to stay afloat, research publishing houses have typical profit margins of nearly 40%, according CBCNEWS who quote Vincent Larivière from the University of Montreal’s School of Library & Information Science.

At the same time we see a sharp increase in so-called Predatory Publishers who have set up business for the sole reason to make money from Open Access publishing.  They have not established or taken over academic journal for the greater good of the discipline or the dissemination of research findings to the widest possible audience.  Unscrupulous publishers jump on the Open-Access bandwagon BU librarian Jean Harris recently shared an interesting article about Predatory Publishers (click here to read this!).

J Asian MidwHowever, there are other format of Open Access. One of our more recent papers on research ethics was published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology which is an online Open Access journal that does not charge authors for publishing!  Also the Journal of Asian Midwives, where FHSS PhD student Preeti Mahato recently had her article accepted, is hosted in Pakistan by Aga Khan University through its institutional repository eCommons.  Publishing in this Open Access online journal is also free of charge.  In other words, Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH