Category / Sociology & Social Policy

Publishing systematic and scoping reviews to improve your research profile

With the forthcoming REF 2021 in mind we would like to encourage both staff and postgraduate students to consider writing up their literature reviews as journal articles. Systematic and scoping reviews are a great way of publishing quality publications. They are highly valued as REF submissions, especially, but not only, in the health field.

There is plenty of support at Bournemouth University: from academic colleagues, with vast experience in writing reviews, to the library team, who can advise on, for example, developing your systematic search strategy and which databases to search.

 

You can start with publishing your review question and research strategy on PROSPERO, international prospective register of systematic reviews. We would like to highlight just one BU example in the field of the social sciences.  FHSS PhD student Orlanda Harvey published her proposed review ‘Support for people who use anabolic androgenic steroids: an investigation into what they want and what they currently access’ late last year on PROSPERO [1].

You might like to have a look at reviews published by Bournemouth University staff, which can be found by searching BURO, our institutional repository of research outputs. Moreover, BU academics have published several methods papers on the doing and writing systematic reviews [2-4].

 

Information about searching the literature for systematic reviews is available on this guide by the library team.

 

Other pages with useful information include:

 

Hopefully we have encouraged you to think about publishing your literature reviews as separate articles, and to seek help early in that process!

 

José López Blanco & Edwin van Teijlingen

 

 

For further information, please contact:

José López Blanco, Faculty Librarian (Health and Social Sciences), Library & Learning Support, Academic Services at tel 67350 or email:  hsslibteam@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

References:

  1. Harvey, O., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E., Keen., S. (2017) Support for people who use anabolic androgenic steroids: an investigation into what they want and what they currently access. PROSPERO 2017 CRD42017075199 Available from: http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?ID=CRD42017075199
  2. van Teijlingen E., Napper, M., Bruce, J., Ireland. J. (2006) Systematic reviews in midwifery, RCM Midwives Journal 9(5): 186-188.
  3. van Teijlingen, ER, Simkhada, B., Ireland J., Simkhada P., Bruce J. (2012) Evidence-based health care in Nepal: The importance of systematic reviews, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 1(4): 114-118.
  4. Stewart, F., Fraser, C., Robertson, C., Avenell, A., Archibald, D., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., Boyers, D. (2014) Are men difficult to find? Identifying male-specific studies in MEDLINE and Embase, Systematics Reviews 3,78.

Congratulations on timely editorial in Nepal

Congratulations to FHSS academics Dr. Pramod Regmi and Dr. Nirmal Ayral who published an editorial yesterday in a scientific journal in Nepal.  The paper ‘Experts warn Nepal Government not to reduce local Public Health spending’ [1] was co-authored by Dr. Bibha Simkhada who has just been offered a post as Lecturer in Nursing in the Department of Nursing & Clinical Sciences, she shall be starting with us on November 1st.  Further co-authors include FHSS Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada and Dr . Sujan Marahatta, the journal’s editor.  He is based at Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Bournemouth University has a long-standing research collaboration with MMIHS.

The editorial warns about the risks of losing the focus on public health and its wider national and global perspective in the recently changed political arena of Nepal.  Since 2015 Nepal has moved from a central state to a federal republic, whereby the seven new Provinces have gained much more power and control in the decentralisation process.  Moreover the first local elections for two decades in 2017 meant a lot of new and inexperienced local politicians were voted in.  Many of these local people had little prior experience of political processes, governing health systems, the notion of priority setting, running sub-committees of elected representatives, political decision-making at local level, etc.  The paper argues that Public Health can easily disappear of the radar.  The untrained newly elected representatives with no political experience are most likely to be drawn into proposing and supporting popular measures including developing new buildings, black-top roads, hospitals, etc., rather than measures that increase the local or regional budget for teachers, Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for community health workers, and preventative public health measures in general.  Buildings and roads are immediate demonstration to voters that politicians have done something useful, reducing maternal mortality by 2.6% or employing two additional health workers doesn’t give politicians neither the same publicity, nor do such policies have immediate signs of success, and hence are unlikely to be vote winners.

The Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences is part of the Open Access publishing of Nepal Journals OnLine (NepJOL) supported by INASP.  The editorial also illustrates the kind of work conducted in Bournemouth University’s Integrative Wellbeing Research Centre (iWell).

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

 

Reference:

Simkhada, P., Teijlingen van, E., Simkhada, B., Regmi, P., Aryal, N., Marahatta, S.B. (2018) Experts warn Nepal Government not to reduce local Public Health spending, Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 4(1): 1-3.

New paper by recent BU Sociology graduate

Dr. Andrew Harding and his BU PhD supervisors just published a new paper from his Ph.D. research [1].   This interesting paper ‘Suppy-side review of the UK specialist housing market and why it is failing older people’ reviews the supply-side of policies and practices that impact on the shortage of supply in the contemporary specialist housing market for older people in the UK.  Andrew is currently based at Lancaster University.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. Harding, Andrew, Parker, Jonathan, Hean, Sarah & Hemingway, Ann (2018) Supply-side review of the UK specialist housing market and why it is failing older people. Housing, Care and Support

 

New BU publication on maternity care & culture in Afghanistan

Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Arnold on the acceptance by Social Science & Medicine (published by Elsevier) of the second paper based on her PhD on maternity care in Afghanistan [1].  This interesting ethnography explores the experiences, motivations and constraints of healthcare providers in a large public Afghan maternity hospital. Arnold and colleagues identify barriers and facilitators in the delivery of care. Under the surface of this maternity hospital, social norms were in conflict with the principles of biomedicine. Contested areas included the control of knowledge, equity and the primary goal of work. The institutional culture was further complicated by pressure from powerful elites. These unseen values and pressures explain much of the disconnection between policy and implementation, education and the everyday behaviours of healthcare providers.

Improving the quality of care and equity in Afghan public maternity hospitals will require political will from all stakeholders to acknowledge these issues and find culturally attuned ways to address them.  The authors argue that this notion of parallel and competing world-views on healthcare has relevance beyond Afghanistan.   The paper co-authored by (a) Prof. Kath Ryan, Professor of Social Pharmacy at the University of Reading and Visiting Professor in FHSS, and BU’s Professors Immy Holloway and Edwin van Teijlingen.

 

References:

  1. 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. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.09.010.

 

Representing BU at the North South Irish Criminology Conference

I had the pleasure of presenting two papers at last week’s international criminology conference at my alma mater, University College Dublin (UCD), representing BU for the first time since joining last September. As with all international conferences, there was an eclectic mix of personalities, researchers, academics and practitioners, representing both sides of the border, as well as the UK, Canada and further afield. The field of criminology remains a niche area in the Republic (but growing slowly) and it was a pleasant surprise to see over 100 delegates at the two day conference presenting papers on prisons, probation, policing, offending, criminal law, victims and prisoners’ rights.

The conference opened with a keynote address by Prof Eamonn Carrabine from the University of Essex who gave an inspiring paper on what he (and others) terms the new criminology of war. Drawing on Mann, Klein and Ruggiero‘s work, he emphasised how war is an “image event”. Using war photography to support this thesis, he demonstrated the way in which war is an intense cultural production, in particular drawing our attention to the impact it has on the towns and villages that are bombarded, and the consequential (de)structural barriers to cultural evolution.

Jane Healy presents research findings at UCD’s criminology conference

 

The conference topic was “New Frontiers in Criminology” and there was certainly plenty of food for thought as to where criminological study might develop in the future, with other presentations that considered indigenous criminology, online crime and labour trafficking, for example.  These were complimented with more ‘traditional’ discussions around rape myths, desistance and youth justice. The majority of papers focussed on prisons, probations and police with only a limited number on victimology itself. My own paper highlighted the more unique forms of hate crime targeted against disabled people, including accusations of benefit fraud, the fluidity of both online and offline abuse, and the use or threat of sexual violence as a method of hate crime.

I jointly presented the only other hate crime paper at the conference with Dr James Palfreman-Kay from Equality & Diversity at BU.  Our hate crime project, which provides students with forum theatre scenarios to enable them to discuss hate crime in an interactive – and safe – way, was recognised by the panel audience as an innovative method of engaging in such a sensitive topic.

As new frontiers go, hate crime is an area ripe for research development in contemporary Ireland. Despite almost a quarter of a century of hate studies here in the UK, there is limited research in the Republic on this topic, with the exception of course of sectarian violence. There is currently no  hate legislation in the Republic, despite recent efforts and encouragement from the likes of Dr Jennifer Schweppe at the University of Limerick and a recent publication by Jennifer, Seamus Taylor, and others. Given the increasing hate crimes and incidents being reported in the UK, I really do hope to see the introduction of hate legislation in the Republic at the very least and would encourage potential PhD students to consider it as an avenue to contributory research.

Given the dearth of victimological papers (and hate studies) presented at the conference, we hope that we achieved our goal of introducting new avenues and ‘frontiers’ for future criminological research with colleagues overseas. We welcome further enquiries from home and abroad who might want to adapt or explore our methods or areas of enquiries. Their absence however did not detract from an interesting and enthusiastic gathering that highlighted so many other fruitful areas of research for me in the future. As an ECR, I left wanting to know more about everything from the demise of prisoners’ rights movements to the question of whether the State’s criminal justice system can ever be constrained through proportionality.  I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to attend the conference and would encourage others to look out for the “NSICC” in future years. Highlights of the event can be found by following @UCDLaw or #NSICC on Twitter.

Dr Jane Healy is a Lecturer in Sociology and Crime & Deviance in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and recently completed her PhD in disablist hate crime

What North Korean defectors say about women’s lives under the Kim regime

Hyun-Joo Lim, Bournemouth University

Glimpses of hope are visible on the Korean Peninsula for the first time in years. North Korea and the US have held some of their most important denuclearisation talks to date, and the Pyongyang leadership has embarked on what looks like a serious peace process with Seoul. The sight of a smiling Kim Jong-un holding hands with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump showed a different side to the North Korean supreme leader, suggesting he does in fact want to see progress towards a happier, more open era.

But while the world’s media focuses on the bravado over denuclearisation, the dire human rights situation inside the regime is being overlooked. Even during the talks, both Moon and Trump avoided directly raising such issues with Kim, eager as they were to achieve their own key objectives. It was galling to hear so little about the lives of ordinary North Koreans – and in particular women.

Many of North Korea’s women suffer daily abuse and injustice, and behind the international politics, there’s no sign that the situation is improving. In my own interviews with both male and female defectors, I heard about the day-to-day inequality, and also the violations of basic rights that women inside North Korea face as a matter of routine.

Trouble at home

North Koreans live in a paradoxical, confused system of gender relations. While Marxist Communism has been the fundamental organising principle of life in the north, Confucian patriarchy has shaped society, too, forming the backbone of North Korean society. Much as happened in post-revolutionary China, the superficial promulgation of equality belies the marked gender segregation of everyday life.

Some interviewees talked about their ordeals in the face of domestic violence. One participant expressed the anger and frustration she felt, as well as her relief when her husband died after more than 20 years abusing her. According to her, there is no redress for North Korean women who are subject to ongoing violence within the household, which is often seen as legitimate treatment.

When the famine began in the early 1990s, it was the women who took responsibility for family survival, going out to sell products and exchange goods. Another participant described how North Korean women often call men in the household “guard dogs” – tough figureheads who stay at home making no particular contribution.

Feeding starving families is largely left to women outside the formal workforce, who are subjected to less government control. These women are left to slip through the official system and get involved in black market trade or informal markets known as “Jangmadang”. Worse, some husbands take the goods their wives buy to exchange them for alcohol, or demand that their exhausted wives bring them alcohol even if their family has nothing to eat. If they do not, they are punished with abuse.

Isolated and shamed

Sexual violence is also a common problem inside the army. Being able to join the Worker’s Party of Korea is an essential pathway to a secure, successful life in North Korea, and a major reason for women to join the army is to become a member of the party. Senior male officials frequently exploit this as a means to manipulate and harass young women, threatening to block their chances of joining the party if they refuse or attempt to report the abuse. Out of fear, most women suffer in silence.

Female hygiene also remains a serious issue. Female soldiers are not given the chance to wash or change during training outside; my interviewees talked about women in the army being given wound dressings to use instead of sanitary towels. Things are even worse for ordinary female citizens, who have to make do with any materials available, such as off-cuts from men’s used vests or socks.

If they get pregnant unintentionally, women get the blame. Thus, many pregnant women use a range of dangerous methods to abort: tightening their stomach with an army belt to hide their growing pregnancy, taking anthelmintic medicine (antiparasitic drugs designed to remove parasitic worms from the body), or jumping off and rolling down the high mountain hills. Unsurprisingly, it’s common to find foetuses in army facilities’ toilets.

The gender divide in North Korea is so deeply ingrained – this is a society that has no term for sexual harassment – that women often blame each other rather than men for not behaving appropriately in these situations.

These stories all paint a distressing picture. It seems North Korea’s women are still trapped not only in systemic poverty, but in a deep-seated structure of gender inequality. Hence, we should not forget about the suffering of ordinary women inside the DPRK, hidden behind the glaring headlines of sweet smiles and big hugs between leaders. Denuclearisation is a step forward, but progress on human rights is the leap that’s needed most.The Conversation

Hyun-Joo Lim, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Social Work, Precarity & Sacrifice as Radical Action for Hope

Congratulations to Professor Jonathan Parker on the publication of his latest article in the International Journal of Social Work & Human Services Practice. [1]   In this paper Professor Parker outlines the history and development of social work, primarily in the UK, in the context of uncertainty and ambiguity.  He suggests that in an age of increased precariousness, social work itself represents a precarious activity that can be misconstrued and used for political ends as well as for positive change. As a means of countering potentially deleterious consequences arising from this, the concept of sacrifice which is used to consider social work’s societal role as scapegoat on the one hand and champion of the oppressed on the other. The paper concludes that social work’s potential for developing and encouraging resilience and hope is indicated in the ‘sacrifices’ social workers make when walking alongside marginalised and disadvantaged people.

The paper is Open Access, meaning that anybody across the globe with internet access will be able to read it  free of cost.

 

Reference:

  1. Parker, J. ‘Social Work, Precarity and Sacrifice as Radical Action for Hope’, International Journal of Social Work and Human Services Practice Vol.6. No.2, 2018, pp. 46-55.

New BU migrants’ health publication

The Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health (Springer) just accepted the latest paper by former FHSS Ph.D. student Dr. Pratik Adhikary (photo). [1]  His latest paper ‘Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study’ is the fourth, and probably final, paper from his Bournemouth University Ph.D. thesis.  This latest paper is based on the qualitative part of the mixed-methods thesis, his previous papers focused more on the quantitative data. [2-4] 

Since this is a qualitative paper it also offers a more theoretical underpinning than the previous papers.  The work uses the dual labour market theory which associates labour migration specifically to the host economy as it explains migration from the demand side. Labour migrants from less developed economies travel to fill the unskilled and low-skill jobs as guest workers in more developed economies to do the jobs better trained and paid local workers do not want to do.  This theory also explains the active recruitment through labour agents in Nepal to help fulfil the demand for labour abroad, and it helps explain some of the exploitation highlighted in host countries. The theory also helps explain why lowly skilled migrant workers are often at a higher risk to their health than native workers . Similar to migrant workers from around the world, Nepali migrant workers also experience serious health and safety problems in the host countries including accidents and injuries.

The latest article will be Open Access in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health!

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P, van Teijlingen E., Keen S. (2018) Workplace accidents among Nepali male workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A qualitative study, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health (First Online), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-018-0801-y
  2. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen, E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-175. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf
  3. Adhikary, P., Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  4. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care 14(1): 96-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052

New BU mental health publication

Congratulations to Faloshade Alloh (PhD student in Faculty of Health and Social Science), Dr. Pramod Regmi (Lecturer in International Health), Abe (Igoche) Onche (BU  graduate MSc in Public Health) and Dr. Stephen Trenoweth (Principal Academic and Leaded for BU iWell Research Centre) on the timely publication of their paper on mental health in developing countries [1]. 

Despite being globally recognised as an important public health issue, mental health is still less prioritised as a disease burden in many Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). More than 70% of the global mental health burden occurs in poorer countries. The paper addresses mental health issues in LMICs under themes such as abuse and mental illness, cultural influence on mental health, need for dignity in care, meeting financial and workforce gaps and the need for national health policy for the mental health sector.  This exciting paper has 51 references including several linking to BU publications on research in Africa [2-3] and several papers related to South Asia [4-6], particularly highlighting the recently completed THET project that was led by BU [4-5].

The authors highlight that although mental health education and health care services in most LMICs are poorly resourced; there is an urgent need to address issues beyond funding that contribute to poor mental health. In order to meet the increasing challenge of mental health illness in LMICs, there is a need for effort to address cultural and professional challenges that contribute to poor mental health among individuals. The authors suggest that mental health should be integrated into primary health care in LMICs. Creating awareness on the impact of some cultural attitudes/practices will encourage better uptake of mental health services and increase the ease when discussing mental health issues in these countries which can contribute to reducing the poor mental health in LMICs.

 

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

 

Click here to view the full publication.

 

References:

  1. Alloh, F.T., Regmi, P., Onche, I., van Teijlingen E., Trenoweth, S. (2018) Mental health in low- and middle income countries (LMICs): Going beyond the need for funding, Health Prospect 17 (1): 12-17.
  2. Alloh F, Regmi P, Hemingway A, Turner-Wilson A. (2018) Increasing suicide rates in Nigeria. African Health Journal  [In Press].
  3. Alloh FT, Regmi PR. (2017) Effect of economic and security challenges on the Nigerian health sector. African Health Sciences. 17 (2):591-2.
  4. Acharya DR, Bell JS, Simkhada P, van Teijlingen ER, Regmi PR. (2010) Women’s autonomy in household decision-making: a demographic study in Nepal. Reproductive Health. 7 (1):15.
  5. Simkhada B, Sharma G, Pradhan S, Van Teijlingen E, Ireland J, Simkhada P, et al. (2016) Needs assessment of mental health training for Auxiliary Nurse Midwives: a cross-sectional survey. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences. 2:20-6.
  6. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C., Ireland, J. on behalf of THET team (2018) Qualitative evaluation of mental health training of Auxiliary Nurse Midwives in rural Nepal. Nurse Education Today 66: 44-50. https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Wu2axHa5G~S-
  7. Regmi PR, Alloh F, Pant PR, Simkhada P, van Teijlingen E. (2017) Mental health in BME groups with diabetes: an overlooked issue? The Lancet389 (10072):904-5.

BU contribution to Routledge Handbook of Well-Being

Congratulations to current and past academics in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science & Technology who contributed to the newly published Routledge Handbook of Well-Being.  The editor Prof. Kate Galvin was previously based at Bournemouth University.  She is currently Professor of Nursing Practice in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton.

The following four chapters in the edited collection have been authored or co-authored by BU scholars and students past and present:

  • Dwelling- Mobility: An Existential Theory of Well-being Chapter 8 by Les Todres & Kate Galvin
  • Heritage and Well-being: Therapeutic places, past and present Chapter 11 by Timothy Darvill, Vanessa Heaslip & Kerry Barras
  • Embodied Routes to Well-being: Horses and Young People Chapter 20 by Ann Hemingway
  • Eighteen Kinds of well-being but there may be many more: A conceptual Framework that provides direction for Caring Chapter 30 by Kate Galvin & Les Todres.

 

Congratulations to all!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Two reviews by BU academics in the American Anthropologist in 2018

The first review by a Bournemouth University academic  in the prestigious  journal American Anthropologist was published in its February issue.  Dr. Sue Sudbury who is Principal Academic in Media Production reviewed the film ‘The Anthropologist’ [1].  She wrote in this Open Access review that this film raises many interesting issues about the role of the anthropologist and deftly illustrates the divide that exists when different cultures come together.   Her conclusion of the review is that ‘The Anthropologist’ is an intriguing and memorable film about environmental anthropologists and the important work they do collecting and telling the stories of people whose lives are being reshaped by climate change. It is also about the relationship between female anthropologists and their daughters. As such, it does an important job of introducing the subject and will no doubt generate discussion, but it is not an anthropological film and doesn’t claim to be.

The second one, a book review this time, appeared this week in the June issue.    Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in Bournemouth University’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) reviewed the book Midwives and Mothers: The Medicalization of Childbirth on a Guatemalan Plantation by the American anthropologist Sheila Cosminsky [2].  He reminds the reader that some of the work in this book work has previously been published in articles, as clearly stated in the acknowledgments (p. xii).  He highlights that “on reading the book I remembered with joy snippets from some of the articles on Doña María I read nearly thirty years ago while working on my PhD thesis.” Cosminsky does a great job of bringing together a lifetime of anthropological (field)work in a comprehensive and easy‐to‐read book.

It is not often that we see reviews written by BU staff in this impressive journal, let alone two in subsequent issues.

 

References:

  1. Sudbury S. (2018) The Anthropologist Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger, dirs. 81 mins. English, Russian, Sakha, Kiribati, Spanish, and Quechua with English subtitles. New York: Ironbound Films, 2015, American Anthropologist 120(1): 169-170.
  2. van Teijlingen E. (2018) Midwives and Mothers: The Medicalization of Childbirth on a Guatemalan Plantation by Sheila Cosminsky, American Anthropologist 120(2): 369.

New Sociology book by BU’s Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim

Congratulations to Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, on the publication of her book East Asian Mothers in Britain: An Intersectional Exploration of Motherhood and Employment.   This book focus on how Chinese, Japanese and Korean mothers in the UK make sense of their motherhood and employment. It addresses questions such as: “What are the intersecting factors that shape these women’s identities, experiences and stories?”

Contributing further to the continuing discourse and development of intersectionality, this book examines East Asian migrant women’s stories of motherhood, employment and gender relations by deploying interlocking categories that go beyond the meta axes of race, gender and class, including factors such as husbands’ ethnicities and the locality of their settlement. Through this, Dr. Lim argues for more detailed and context specific analytical categories of intersectionality, enabling a more nuanced understanding of migrant women’s stories and identities.

The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan (hardcover ISBN978-3-319-75634-9), see website: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319756349

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

New GCRF-funded study in South Asia

A new multidisciplinary project in South Asia, run between two of Bournemouth University’s Faculties, has recently been funded.  The cross-faculty project “Scoping Study to understand the maternal health, ageing and wellness in rural India to develop a grass-root centre addressing these issues” has Dr Shanti Shanker (Psychology) as its principal investigator in collaboration with Prof Edwin van Teijlingen (Human Sciences & Public Health).   These BU lead researchers have been working in India and Nepal for more than a decade.

This project was recently awarded £76k from the HEFCE GCRF (Higher Education Funding Council for England, Global Challenge Research Funds) Call, at Bournemouth University.  The project will be running from 2017 to 2021 between Maharashtra, India, Nepal and the UK.  This important research initiative  aligns closely with Bournemouth University’s strategic plan around South Asia through Connect India.  Connect India is BU’s hub of practice which focuses on the world’s most populated areas and a global region which is developing rapidly in many ways.