Category / Sociology & Social Policy

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.

An evening with Human Rights barrister Professor Philippe Sands

On Tuesday evening, we were most fortunate to host a talk byProfessor Philippe Sands QC, the eminent human rights barrister and Professor of Law at University College London. The evening was a collaborative event between the Westbourne Literary Festival – the ‘Book Binge’ – and the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work’s Centre for Seldom Heard Voices: Marginalisation and social integration.

The talk concerned Philippe’s Sands extraordinary book East West Street: On the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity, which is described as part detective story, legal thriller and part family history. The family connections that Sands identifies with the two Nuremberg prosecutors who developed law relating to human rights and genocide, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, are made even stronger when drawing on the close association all three have with promoting human rights and fighting crimes against humanity, connected family histories, places and education. We were reminded, importantly in our current period in history, that the development of human rights in international legislation was undertaken and promoted by the British at the Nuremberg trials. The tradition of compassion, fair play and commitment to human rights that has characterised British society was again emphasised with a warning that we must not lose it.

The talk, and the wide-ranging Q&A held afterwards, was not restricted to the book. Indeed, the consequences of Brexit, Trump’s United States, and world turmoil that allows the rise of the far Right link directly to questions of human rights, abuses of those and to crimes against humanity. Just a few days after the US, UK and French strike on Syrian targets it is not surprising that discussion turned also towards these contemporary events.

The evening was open to the public and a large crowd supported it. Attendees were transfixed by Philippe Sands’ easy yet erudite manner, and our honoured guests, the Mayor and Mayoress of Bournemouth, Councillor and Mrs Williams, were eloquent in their praise of this fascinating, challenging and most timely talk.

Professor Jonathan Parker

Good representation BU research at 2018 BNAC conference

Today on the second day of the 2018 BNAC (Britain-Nepal Academic Council) conference there was a very good representation of Bournemouth University (BU) research at Durham University.  BU’s Professor Michael Wilmore presented his paper: Construction of ‘Community’ in Research on Nepalese Commons.  In the morning FHSS’s PhD student Jib Acharya had an oral presentation on Impact of Healthy Snacks on Children’s Health: An Overview of a Pilot Study.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen presented joint work between BU, Liverpool John Moors University (LJMU) and the University of Oxford on the topic Skills transfer, employability & entrepreneurship of returnee labour migrants in Nepal. Bournemouth University was involved in this project through Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Nirmal Aryal and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

The final talk of the day (and of the conference) was by Prof. Padam Simkhada from LJMU.  Prof. Simkhada is also Visiting Professor at the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health at Bournemouth University.  He was presenting Debate on Educational Reform in Nepal: Outcomes of the International Conference on Quality of Higher Education in Federal Nepal on behalf of LJMU, Bournemouth University and Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal.  Earlier this year BU signed a Memorandum of Agreement with MMIHS in Kathmandu.

 

New CMMPH paper accepted in Nurse Education Today

Congratulations to Mrs. Preeti Mahato on the acceptance of her paper ‘Qualitative evaluation of mental health training of Auxiliary Nurse Midwives in rural Nepal’ by Nurse Education Today, an academic journal published by Elsevier.   Preeti is currently registered as PhD student in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  The paper is co-authored by CMMPH’s Catherine Angell and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as BU Visiting Faculty Padam Simkhada and Jillian Ireland.  The paper is a result of the evaluation part of the ‘Mental Health Training for Community-based Maternity Providers in Nepal’ project and written on behalf of this THET team.

Our THET project in Nepal is a collaboration between the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), Tribhuvan University (Nepal’s oldest university) and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). The project receives funding from DFID, and is managed through THET and supported locally in Nepal by a charity Green Tara Nepal.

 

THET team:

Edwin van Teijlingen, Padam Simkhada, Shyam K Maharjan Preeti Mahato, Bhimsen Devkota, Padmadharini Fanning, Jillian Ireland, Bibha Simkhada, Lokendra Sherchan, Ram Chandra Silwal, Shyam K Maharjan, Ram K Maharjan, Catherine Angell, Flora Douglas.

 

 

 

BU hosts international conference on the state of the world, fifty years after it was turned inside out (circa 1967) and upside down (circa 1968)

Association for Psychosocial Studies Biennial Conference

Bournemouth University, 5th-7th April 2018

‘Psychosocial Reflections on a Half Century of Cultural Revolution’

http://aps2018.bournemouth.ac.uk

A half century after the hippie counterculture of 1967 (‘the summer of love’) and the political turbulence of 1968 (‘May 68’), one aim of this conference is to stage a psychosocial examination of the ways in which today’s world is shaped by the forces symbolised by those two moments. It will explore the continuing influence of the deep social, cultural and political changes in the West, which crystallised in the events of these two years. The cultural forces and the political movements of that time aimed to change the world, and did so, though not in the ways that many of their participants expected. Their complex, multivalent legacy of ‘liberation’ is still developing and profoundly shapes the globalising world today, in the contests between what is called neo-liberalism, resurgent fundamentalisms, environmentalism, individualism, nationalisms, and the proliferation of identity politics.

A counter-cultural and identity-based ethos now dominates much of consumer culture, and is reflected in the recent development of some populist and protest politics. A libertarian critique of politics, once at the far margins, now informs popular attitudes towards many aspects of democratic governance; revolutionary critiques have become mainstream clichés. Hedonic themes suffuse everyday life, while self-reflection and emotional literacy have also become prominent values, linked to more positive orientations towards human diversity and the international community.

 

The programme is now available on the conference website:

http://aps2018.bournemouth.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Provisional-Programme.pdf

There are five keynotes and eighty papers, with presenters from all continents, as well as a number of experiential workshops. As well as examining the main theme of societal change, there is an open stream of papers on a wide range of topics. Methods of psychosocial inquiry are applicable to most topics. As an academic community, the psychosocial is a broad church defined only by a commitment to exploring and linking the internal and external worlds – the deeply personal and the equally deeply societal as sources of experience and action.

BU colleagues can attend the whole conference at the hugely discounted rate of £40, or £25 per day.

 

 

Two papers on health & migration in Nepal

This last week two separate papers have been accepted on aspects of health and well-being among migrants workers from Nepal.  The first in the International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care is based on a completed PhD project in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences with Dr. Pratik Adhikary as first author [1].  This paper ‘Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad’ is co-authored by two former FHSS staff Dr. Zoe Sheppard and Dr. Steve Keen, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).

 

The second paper ‘A study of Health Problems of Nepalese Female Migrants Workers in the Middle-East and Malaysia’ was accepted by the Open Access journal BMC International Health & Human Rights [2].  The lead author of this paper is Bournemouth University (BU) Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University) and two of his co-authors are based in Nepal: Manju Gurung (chair of Pourakhi Nepal) and Dr. Sharada Prasad Wasti and one at BU: Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen .

There is  a growing momentum in migration research at BU with further academic papers being published related to studies on migrant workers from Nepal [4-8], relatives of migrant workers [9], migration into the UK [10-12], Eastern European migration issues [13-15], migration and tourism [16], migration and the media [17] as well as migration in the past [18].

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care (accepted). https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  2. Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E.R., Gurung, M., Wasti, S. (2018) A study of Health Problems of Nepalese Female Migrants Workers in the Middle-East and Malaysia, BMC International Health & Human Rights (accepted Jan.).
  3. Adhikary, P., Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen E., Raja, AE. (2008) Health & Lifestyle of Nepalese Migrants in the UK BMC International Health & Human Rights 8(6). Web address: www.biomedcentral.com/1472-698X/8/6.
  4. van Teijlingen E, Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P. (2009) Alcohol use among the Nepalese in the UK BMJ Rapid Response: www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/oct20_1/b4028#223451
  5. 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
  6. 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.
  7. Aryal, N., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P., Bhatta, YKD., Mann, S. (2016) Injury and Mortality in Young Nepalese Migrant Workers: A Call for Public Health Action. Asian-Pacific Journal of Public Health 28(8): 703-705.
  8. Simkhada, PP., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Aryal, N. (2017) Identifying the gaps in Nepalese migrant workers’ health & well-being: A review of the literature, Journal of Travel Medicine 24 (4): 1-9.
  9. Aryal, N., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Dhungel, D., Ghale, G., Bhatta, GK. (2016) Knowing is not enough: Migrant workers’ spouses vulnerability to HIV SAARC Journal of Tuberculosis, Lung Diseases & HIV/AIDS 8(1):9-15.
  10. Scammell, J., 2016. Nurse migration and the EU: how are UK nurses prepared? British Journal of Nursing, 25 (13), p. 764.
  11. Holscher, J., 2017. The effects of Brexit on the EU, the UK and Dorset – a migrant’s account. BAFES Working Papers, 1-11.
  12. Sapkota, T., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2014) Nepalese health workers’ migration to United Kingdom: A qualitative study. Health Science Journal 8(1):57-74.
  13. Filimonau, V., Mika, M. (2017) Return labour migration: an exploratory study of Polish migrant workers from the UK hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-22.
  14. Janta, H., Ladkin, A., Brown, L., Lugosi, P., 2011. Employment experiences of Polish migrant workers in the UK hospitality sector. Tourism Management, 32 (5): 1006-1019.
  15. Mai, N., Schwandner-Sievers, S. (2003) Albanian migration and new transnationalisms, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 29(6): 939-948.
  16. Dwyer, L., Seetaram, N., Forsyth, P., Brian, K. (2014) Is the Migration-Tourism Relationship only about VFR? Annals of Tourism Research, 46: 130-143.
  17. Marino, S., Dawes, S. (2016). Fortress Europe: Media, Migration and Borders. Networking Knowledge, 9 (4).
  18. Parker Pearson, M., Richards, C., Allen, M., Payne, A., Welham, K. (2004) The Stonehenge Riverside project Research design and initial results Journal of Nordic Archaeological Science 14: 45–60.