Category / Sociology & Social Policy

BU presenters at Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development, Melbourne, Australia

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Professor Jonathan Parker presented their research at the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development, in Melbourne, Australia, 9th-12th July 2014.

In a well-received paper concerning the importance of student social workers learning about the causes, impacts and ways of working with the consequences of terrorism, and the problems of rigidity in the current English curriculum, conference delegates were introduced to a two-year study which revealed that student participants felt that a more extensive and sensitive range of intervention tools needed to be taught and deployed via a coherent and nuanced understanding of the geo-political dimensions surrounding the construction of ‘global terrorism’, together with its potential impact on local populations and vulnerable communities. Research findings highlighted the importance of earlier generic community-based and therapeutic approaches, which were favoured above contemporary neoliberal emphases in English social work education concerning assessment, safeguarding and social policing.  Addressing these findings would demand a much needed rebalancing of the curriculum to reinstate essential practitioner skills transferrable to a range of situations and crises – skills that have long been viewed as integral to the social work role by the international community. This research was published earlier in 2014 in the journal Social Policy & Social Work in Transition, DOI: 10.1921/4704030201, http://essential.metapress.com/content/26170w57262444gp/ and was reported in the Guardian on 25th June 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/jun/24/how-can-social-work-education-address-terrorism?CMP=new_1194.

The second presentation reported aspects of the highly successful UK-Malaysian study of reactions to and cross-cultural learning from international placements, research that has challenged preconceived notions of anti-oppressive practices and demonstrates the need to move beyond post-colonial analyses of Western social work towards a post-post-colonial dialectic of shared and cultural appropriate practices. This research, funded by a British Council PMI2 grant, took place over three-years, with three separate cohorts of students supported by two Malaysian universities, Universiti Sains Malaysia on the peninsular and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in Borneo. The success of this study which combined research rigour focusing on  pedagogy with student mobility opportunities has been affirmed by the British Council as one of their most successful funded projects. This study has to-date produced a raft of publications: 2 book chapters, 5 peer-reviewed papers and 5 international conference presentations, including one keynote lecture. The latest research paper has just been published in the prestigious European Jounral of Social Work, Jonathan Parker, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Azlinda Azman, Dolly Paul Carlo & Clare Cutler (2014): Problematising international placements as a site of intercultural learning, European Journal of Social Work, DOI: 10.1080/13691457.2014.925849.

Jonathan Parker and Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

South Asian midwifery at ICM 2014

Publishing

Photo from UNFPA Lao PDR

In early June I published a short overview of Bournemouth University’s contribution to the ICM (International Congress of Midwives) conference in Prague (Czech Republic) (see: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/06/05/cmmph-strong-presence-at-icm-conference/ ).  In addition we highlighted the Nepal contribution in a separate BU Research Blog (http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/06/03/46-sharma-s-sicuri-e-belizan-jm-van-teijlingen-e-simkhada-p-stephens-j-hundley-v-angell-c-getting-women-to-care-in-nepal-a-difference-in-difference-analysis-of-a-health-prom/ ).   Today a belated update of our presence at the Special Session on South Asian Midwifery at the ICM conference last month, as I just received photos from our friends at UNFPA Lao PDR.

South Asia posters at ICM conference (photo: UNFPA Lao PDR)

One of the speakers at the South Asian Midwifery session was our friend Kiran Bajracharya, president of the Midwifery Society of Nepal (MIDSON).  Several of our posters describing our work in Nepal were on display.  Bournemouth University friends were involved in the organisation of the event, such as Swedish midwife Malin Bogren and the editor of the newly launched midwifery journal Journal of Asian Midwifery, Dr. Rafat Jan. The session was concluded by another BU collaborator Petra the Hoope-Bender of Integrare.

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Today’s slides from ROMEO project

Publishing

 

Thank you very much for all of you who attended today’s presentation of the joint project between the University of Aberdeen, Bournemouth University and the University of Stirling.  For those who missed the session or who asked for a copy of the slides after the session, please find these included in the BU Research Blog.

ROMEO Edwin June 2014

The project was funded by National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme (09/127/01).  Therefore, I must point out that “views and opinions expressed therein (and here) are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the HTA programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health.”

 

As with all HTA reports the final report and a ten-page summary are both freely available online, see:

www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.

R

Two New Books for Social Workers

Fusion, Publishing

Bournemouth University and Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy Professor Jonathan Parker has recently published two key books.

The fourth edition of the best-selling textbook Social Work Practice, published by Sage, represents a milestone in the book’s history. First published in 2003 to introduce the new qualifying social work degree in the UK, it formed one of the first books in the highly popular Transforming Social Work Practice series from Learning Matters, now an imprint of Sage publications, and edited from the outset by Professor Parker. The book rapidly became a best-seller, consistently in the top-three best-selling social work textbooks in the UK. The work was translated into Japanese, used in Southeast Asia and Europe and has proved popular during Professor Parker’s recent study leave in Malaysia.

The concept for the second book Active Ageing: Perspectives from Europe on a vaunted topic (Whiting & Birch), an edited collection celebrating the European Year of Active Ageing in 2012, was conceived during a weeklong symposium, held at the University of Málaga in April 2012. Academics and students from Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the UK lauded the contribution that older people make to our societies through the exploration and critical analysis of the concept of active ageing. Written in a context of increased population growth and ageing, and continuing fiscal pressures, the editors, Maria Luisa Gomez Jimenez and Jonathan Parker, brought together thirteen chapters comprising diverse insights into ageing and active ageing that offer a contribution to our understanding of these complex areas of modern human life.

Stripping Back the Layers: Women’s spiritual quest for religious authenticity

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

Having failed to get it externally funded, I decided to hell with it! I would do the project anyway. It was too important a topic to abort on such flimsy grounds; and anyway in the social sciences funding has never been a precursor to undertaking excellent and original scholarship, and this promised to be that.

 

I have long been fascinated by religion and spirituality as integral to cultural diversity, and this interest has underpinned much of my scholarship in both social work and sociology. Gender studies are equally a passion and so it seemed natural to form a happy union of the two.

 

For the past eighteen months, and thanks to recent Fusion Funding for part of the project, I have been undertaking a cross-cultural study of women’s experiences of religious commitment across several faith groups in the UK and Malaysia. Both countries share a common historical heritage through the ties of colonialism, where additionally wide-scale migration has forged multicultural and therefore multifaith societies. Each modern nation also struggles to resolve the contradictions and paradoxes created through multiculturalism and claims to a specific national religion.

 

The aim of the study is to examine the constructions and meanings that women bring to religious beliefs and daily practices, which may be distinctive to those of men, particularly given the extremely powerful influences of patriarchy in organised religion. Thus, the working assumption behind this study is that women will bring their own gendered priorities and understandings as women (and variously as wives/partners, mothers, daughters and sisters) to their individual religious and spiritual beliefs.

 

For an in-depth ethnographic study the participant sample is extensive, and where by the end of this year, 48-50 individual narratives will complete the data gathering stage. The level of complexity is high for not only does this study cover two contemporary societies, but it also seeks to cover representatives from several different faith groups. Thus, in Southwest England I am seeking to capture the voices of Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim women, as well as hoping to access female followers of one of the ‘New Religions’.

 

Across Malaysia, I have covered the same groups but substituted Jewish participants for Hindus.  I also hope to access indigeneous Animists to compare with the revival in pre-Christian ‘nature religions’ that may be found in the evocatively pagan, Dorset/Somerset/Wiltshire landscapes.

 

Such a large and highly diverse sample group represents a major study of contemporary, gendered faith practices in modern, multicultural societies; and where despite woman-centric theological re-interpretations, such as, for example, Christian feminists theologies or Malaysia’s ‘Sisters in Islam’, the insights from this study are already proving to be original and profound. My initial hypothesis has been both affirmed and challenged by participants struggling to engage with the politics of ethnicity, culture, gender constructions and gender oppression; together with the business of daily negotiating the politics of church/temple/mosque/synagogue – not forgetting, of course, the politics of the home and family.

 

Participant accounts have been deeply moving at times; and where to my surprise, I have been frequently thanked for giving participants the opportunity to be able to express that which is so important to their individual integrity and sense of purpose in life – and yet which remains a submerged discourse. There are many reasons, political, social and personal for religious expression among women to be largely unheard (and sometimes even a forbidden) discourse in both countries. These too are critical issues of context that are analysed alongside the narratives.

 

With REF2020 beginning to appear over the horizon, I will seek to do justice to these remarkable narratives in my analysis and the research monograph and peer-reviewed papers being planned. However, what is strikingly apparent is the intense interest participants hold towards their own spiritual journey, where they are also eager to read the finished publications in order to find further insights and connections with other women: impact in itself.

 

What this reveals to me is that not only is the area of inquiry extremely rich in theme, nuance and contemporary relevance, but that in respect of social impact (however one defines that term) much more is needed of me. Accordingly I am pondering deeply on how I may return and somehow multiply the fruits of this research to the global community of women for whom it carries such intense meaning and many shared commonalities in an otherwise divided world.

 

Volunteering to be a participant

If this Blog has resonated with you as a woman embracing a religious faith, or as someone who may know of such, I would be extremely grateful if you would contact me directly on scrabtree@bournemouth.ac.uk. Muslim, Jewish and ‘New Religion’ women’s voices in England are still under-represented in the study but all participants from other faith groups are equally welcome.

Obesity prevention in men, findings from a recent HTA Report

Publishing

Media coverage HTA Report June 2014

HSC Open Seminar

 

“Obesity Prevention in Men” with Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

Wednesday 2nd July 2014

 

13.00 – 13.50pm

 

Bournemouth House, B126

 

 

On July 2nd Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen will present findings from a HTA report published this month.  Researchers from the University of Aberdeen, Bournemouth University and the University of Stirling examined the evidence for managing obesity in men and investigated how to engage men with obesity services. The evidence came from trials, interviews with men, reports of studies from the UK, and economic studies.

 

The research found that men are more likely than women to benefit if physical activity is part of a weight-loss programme.   Also eating less produces more weight loss than physical activity on its own.  However, the type of reducing diet did not appear to affect long-term weight loss.

 

Prof. van Teijlingen will highlight some of the key messages for Public Health policy and practice.  For example, that although fewer men than women joined weight-loss programmes, once recruited they were less likely to drop out than women.   The perception of having a health problem, the impact of weight loss on health problems, and the desire to improve personal appearance without looking too thin were motivators for weight loss amongst men.

This work has been funded as part of the ROMEO project (Review Of Men and Obesity) by the National Institute for Health Research, Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA Project 09/127/01).

The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf

–xx–

We hope you can make it and we look forward to seeing you there.

Beckie Freeman

Academic Community Administrator| Health & Wellbeing Community

01202 962184 | rfreeman@bournemouth.ac.uk

HSC postgraduate student speaks at Canadian Conference

PG research

 

Pratik Adhikary spoke about his Ph.D. research at the American Canadian Conference for Academic Disciplines (Toronto: 19-22 May 2014).  Pratik presented the key findings from his thesis under the title ‘Health status and health risks to Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East and Malaysia’.

Pratik is originally from Nepal and he conducted his research with male migrant workers who were returning to Nepal for definite or for a holiday/break.  He is supervised by Dr. Steve Keen and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen both in HSC.

 

Pratik’s study has been supported by Bournemouth University, the PGR Development Fund and the Open Society Foundations.

 

Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Delivering healthcare in prisons

PG research, Research Ethics

A special event has been arranged at BU that will focus on health care within prisons. The session to be held on 28th May will be led by Jane Senior from the University of Manchester. Jane is a clinician-researcher and Research Project Manager for the Offender Health Research Network. Jane is a qualified mental health nurse with over 20 years of post qualification experience of working in prison and secure mental health settings.

Jane’s session will be of great value to anyone :

  • thinking about undertaking research within UK prisons
  • wanting to know more about health care delivery in prisons
  • thinking of working with or in a prison health care team

During the session Jane will outline findings from her recent prison research projects. These include studies into how to manage the health and wellbeing of older prisoners and her recent work in developing the Older Prisoner Health and Social Care Assessment and Plan (OHSCAP). She will also highlight some of the specific issues that can arise when undertaking research within a prison environment.

Staff and students are welcome to attend the session. If you would like to attend please email Holly Crossen-White (hcrossen@Bournemouth.ac.uk).

HSC paper cited over hundred times in Scopus

Publishing

The academic publisher Elsevier alerted us today that our paper has been cited for the 101st time in Scopus.  The paper ‘Factors affecting the utilization of antenatal care in developing countries: Systematic review of the literature’ was published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.  The paper was part of the first author’s Ph.D. research into maternity care in Nepal.

This paper is one of the four outputs submitted to the UK REF for both Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen as part of the Bournemouth University submission and for Dr. Padam Simkhada as part of the University of Sheffield submission.

 

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH, School of Health & Social Care

Panel discussion at Conference of the Canadian Society Sociology of Health Montreal 2014

Bournemouth University Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the 4th Conference of the Canadian Society of Sociology of Health.  The panel consisted of academics are long-term collaborators on a project called Birth by Design (BBD).  The meeting was made possible by fellow BBD collaborator Prof. Ivy Bourgeault (University of Ottawa).

The BBD collaboration comprises academics from a range of different scholarly backgrounds including sociology, political science and midwifery.  The group started in 1997 with international colleagues who worked originally on a collaborative project called ‘Birth in Europe and North-America’.  This work resulted in the book Birth by Design1 and many papers in major sociology academic journals including Sociology of Health & Illness and Social Science & Medicine.2-10

 

 

 

 

The panel discussion was introduced and led by BBD collaborator Prof. Cecilia Benoit (University of Victoria, Canada). Dr. Sirpa Wrede (University of Helsinki) outlined the BBD project and the new methodological insights it provided at the time of cross-national comparative research into maternity care.  Prof. Raymond DeVries (University of Michigan & Maastricht Universiteit) spoke of the difficulties Dutch midwives face in their effort to maintain the unique maternity care system in the Netherlands.   Prof. Gene Declercq (Boston University School of Public Health) presented findings of a study of US mothers.  Prof. Jane Sandall (King’s College London) spoke about the policy implementation gap and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen reminded the audience to keep a theoretical perspective in mind when conducting comparative research in general.     Prof. Bourgeault had organised that all slides were translated in the French as the conference was bi-lingual.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

References:

  1.  DeVries, R., Benoit, C., Teijlingen van, E. & Wrede, S. (eds.) (2001) Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Midwifery Care and Midwifery in North America and Europe, New York: Routledge.     Birth by Design was short-listed for the 2004 BSA Medical Sociology Book Prize!
  2. van Teijlingen, E.R., Sandall, J., Wrede, S., Benoit, C., DeVries, R., Bourgeault, I. (2003) Comparative studies in maternity care RCM Midwives Journal 6: 338-40.
  3. DeVries, R., Wrede, S., van Teijlingen E., Benoit, C. & Declercq, E. (2004). Making Maternity Care: The Consequences of Culture for Health Care Systems. In: Vinken, H., Soeters, J. & Ester, P. (Eds.), Comparing Cultures, Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 209-231.
  4. Benoit, C. Wrede, S., Bourgeault, I, Sandall, J., DeVries, R., van Teijlingen E. (2005) Understanding the social organisation of maternity care systems: Midwifery as a Touchstone, Sociology of Health & Illness, 27(6): 722-737.
  5. Wrede, S., Benoit, C., Bourgeault, I.L., van Teijlingen E.R., Sandall, J., De Vries, R. (2006) Decentered Comparative Research: Context Sensitive Analysis of Health Care, Social Science & Medicine, 63: 2986-2997.
  6. van Teijlingen, E.R., Wrede, S., Benoit, C., Sandall, J., De Vries, R. (2009) Born in the USA: Exceptionalism in Maternity Care Organisation Among High-Income Countries Sociological Research Online, 14(1) www.socresonline.org.uk/14/1/5.html
  7. Sandall, J., Benoit, C., Wrede, S., Murray, S.F., van Teijlingen E.R., Westfall, R. (2009) The reconfiguration of professional relations with clients: social service professionalism or market expert? Current Sociology 57(4): 529–553.
  8. Bourgeault, I.L., Declercq, E., Sandall, J., Wrede, S., Vanstone, M., van Teijlingen E. DeVries, R. & Benoit, C. (2008) Too posh too push? Comparative perspectives on maternal request caesarean sections in Canada, the US, the UK and Finland. In: Chambré, S.M. & Goldner, M. (eds.) Advances in Medical Sociology Patients, consumers and civil society. Vol. 10. London: JAI Press, 99-123.
  9. Sandall, J., Benoit, C., van Teijlingen E., Wrede, S., Declercq, G. & De Vries, R. (2012) Gender and maternal healthcare. In: Kuhlmann E. & Annandale, E. (eds.) Palgrave Handbook of Gender & Healthcare (2nd edn.). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 389-404.
  10. Benoit, C., Sandall, J., Benoit, C., Murray, S.F., van Teijlingen E., Wrede, S., Declercq, G. & De Vries, R. Maternity Care as Global Health Policy Issue. In: E. Kuhlmann, E., Bourgeault, I. (eds.) Palgrave International Handbook on Health Care Policy & Governance,  Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming).

More about academic writing

Publishing

Earlier this year (13th Jan. 2014) we wrote a BU Research Blog under the title ‘Writing about academic publishing’.  We can now add two further contributions this body of work.  The first article in Nepal Journal of Epidemiology offers some advice on how to construct a title for an academic article.  The authors (BU Professors Edwin van Teijlingen and Vanora Hundley; BU Visiting Faculty Ms. Jillian Ireland and Dr. Padam Simkhada and international collaborator Dr. Brijesh Sathian) have a wealth of experience reviewing papers and all have experience as editor board members and/or editors.  The authors are associated the editorial boards of the many journals, including: Birth, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, Medical Science, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, Essentially MIDIRS, Sociological Research Online, Hellenic Journal of Nursing Science, Midwifery and Asian Journal of Health Sciences.  In our joint capacity as reviewers and editors we have seen some great and some awful titles.  The paper in Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an attempt to improve the appropriateness and usefulness of titles chosen by budding authors.

Editorial Midwifery 2014

Editorial Midwifery 2014

The second addition is an editorial in the international journal Midwifery published by Elsevier.  Together with HSC Visiting Faculty Prof. Debra Bick we address the question: ‘Who should be an author on your academic paper?’   Still too often we hear about worrying stories from fellow academic s and postgraduate students about inappropriate behaviour related to authorship of academic journal papers.  The Midwifery Editorial advises academics to discuss authorship and authorship order early on in the writing process.  At the same time, it highlights that authorship ‘rules’ or ‘traditions’ can vary between different academic disciplines.  Thus when working in a multidisciplinary team, issues of authorship of any papers which arise out of the study should be discussed before problems or concerns arise.

 

We would like to take this opportunity point our readers to another interesting and useful BU Research Blog written by Shelly Maskell under the title: ‘How to design a completely uninformative title’ (7th Feb. 2014).

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Prof. Vanora Hundley

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health, Bournemouth University

 

References:

  1. van Teijlingen, E., Ireland, J., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sathian, B. (2014) Finding the right title for your article: Advice for academic authors, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 4(1): 344-347.
  2. van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Bick, D. (2014) Who should be an author on your academic paper? Midwifery 30: 385-386.

 

Highest marks for International Fellowship for Midwives research in Nepal

 

In 2013 Wellbeing of Women joined the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) to offer the International Fellowship for Midwives (worth £20,000).  Their first ever recipient was BU Lesley Milne with her supporting team.  Lesley is a Senior Lecturer in Midwifery based at BU’s Portsmouth Branch Campus and her proposal set out to undertake a research project to explore barriers to facility birth in Nepal.

 

Delivery bed small hospital Nepal

Apart from Lesley herself the BU team comprises Vanora Hundley, Professor in Midwifery, Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research, and two HSC Visiting Faculty members, namely Dr. Padam Simkhada, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, and Ms. Jillian Ireland, Community Midwife NHS Poole Hospitals.

 

Small commercial pharmacy outside local hospital (Nepal)

Small commercial pharmacy outside local hospital (Nepal)

At the end of March 2014 we submitted the final report on the research to Well-Being of Women and the RCM and this report gained an ‘A’ in their scoring system.  Last week at the feedback meeting in Well-Being of Women’s office in London Lesley presented some of her key findings which she illustrated with some of her photographs.  The comments from those round the table were that the topic was well researched and that the qualitative research findings could help focus the funders in their future work.

 

Having reached the dissemination stage, we are planning scientific papers as well as a feedback session in Kathmandu (in September this year). Currently we are working on two academic papers, one is in an advanced stage approaching submission and the other is just passed its draft stage.

 

 

Lesley Milne, Vanora Hundley, Jillian Ireland (Visiting Faculty),Edwin van Teijlingen & Padam Simkhada (Visiting Faculty)

 

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

School of Health & Social Care

 


Optimising Childbirth Across Europe (Optimise2014)

Publishing

Last week BU Professor Edwin van Teijlingen attended the international conference ’Optimising Childbirth Across Europe (Optimise2014)’ [http://optimisebirth.com/] in Brussels, Belgium.  This new conference  in the maternity care field was based on the work of the COST (Co-operation in Science and Technology) Action IS0907.  This Action, over the period 2010-2014, set out to advance scientific knowledge about ways of improving maternity care provision and outcomes for mothers, babies and families across Europe by understanding what works, for who, in what circumstances, and by identifying and learning from the best.

 

As part of this COST Action several academics have spent time over the past three years at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.  Susanne Grylka-Bäschlin a Swiss midwife studying at Hannover Medical School, Germany, studied cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women in Switzerland and Germany.  See gave an excellent oral presentation of this first ever study to translate and apply the Mother-Generated Index in German. Mother-Generated Index was originally developed by Dr. Andrew Symon who is based at the University of Dundee [http://dundee.academia.edu/AndrewSymon ].

A further BU contribution to the conference involved the work of another European visitor to the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.  Dr. Ans Luyben, a Dutch midwife working in Switzerland presented a poster based on work in Switzerland at the COST Action conference at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health

ENABLE: Reflections on a Fieldtrip

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

A room with a view

We arrived fairly late in the evening. The roads were dark and seemed more windy and enclosed than during the daytime, and yet the bus driver, somewhat perversely, insisted on overtaking at speed on occluded bends whenever he possibly could!

The barrier to the ‘resort’ was shut when we arrived but our interpreter told the guard that we were indeed going to the Tasik Chini Resort – the only place one can go after passing through the gate. After deliberation, he let us proceed.

The receptionist indicated that tonight we had two rooms rather than the one room we had booked, having asked for two extra beds in the room for the children. One room had a twin bed and a mattress, and the other a single bed, but she said she would sort it all tomorrow. We paid in full after debating three or four times what the actual price was for the stay; a kind of mental gymnastics that pulls the mathematical body into contorted shapes only vaguely resembling the original anatomy from whence it came.

The rooms: interesting that the room with the twin beds and a ‘mattress’ was exactly that; no sheets or blankets just the mattress. The other room, however, looked more promising at first sight. There were in fact two beds there not one. OK, so the toilet ballcock was gone and water was constantly overflowing from the cistern onto the bathroom floor, but TWO beds!

So, we divided the children, given they didn’t want to sleep without an adult, sprayed the rooms with insecticide and prepared for the night. It was then that I (Jonathan) looked at the two beds and saw that whilst one was fine, the second was covered by dead, dying and some struggling ants and assorted insects; and the toilet was still dripping, resonant off the hollow dampness of Derbyshire’s Blue John mines! That bed couldn’t be slept in as I then preceded to spray it.

So, back to plan A with me (Sara) and one of the girls in the bed and one on the mattress. But, just a minute, there’s a mattress but no covers or pillow. No that’s not going to work so three in a bed it is, with some topping and tailing, and me back to the bed in the other room keeping the insects at bay and drowning the noise of the leaking cistern by air conditioning that’s making everything too cold and dry.

Fieldwork is, of course, meant to be a little uncomfortable and sometimes evocative of van Gennep’s ‘rite of passage’, a gaining of one’s socio-anthropological spurs! However, we are staying at what purports to be the premier resort for Tasik Chini. This is important because, until 2004 – (and here I (Jonathan) had to stop writing for a while to scratch that itch that turned out to be a troop of ants seeking solace in my bed) – in 2004 eco- and ethno-tourism (although somewhat contested) was seen as an important means of securing the economy of the area. It seems now, a decade on, that this resort finds anyone staying a rather irritating yet bizarre intrusion into a life that happily runs purposelessly for itself, except for weekend weddings, or as a place for the army cadets to stay and practice manoeuvres through the night. (Manoeuvres punctuated by eerie whistles, commands and shouts!) And, rather perversely, it seems that staff cannot get a single order right, no matter how small or precisely articulated it is: kopi ice O kosong (black iced coffee, without sugar) usually has milk and sugar in it; roti bakar (toast), if it comes at all, takes longer (much longer) than nasi goreng (fried rice)!

It also seems to evoke, more seriously, something that mimics the tragedy happening to the lake in bio-environmental terms and, from a human perspective, to the Orang Asli people living around the lake. It is an intrusion into the ill-thought plans of others or an encumbrance to manage that imposes rather than seeks dialogue!

And still the dripping cistern spits! (Should have consulted ‘Tripadvisor’ first http://www.tripadvisor.com.my/Hotel_Review-g298291-d2213723-Reviews-Lake_Chini_Resort-Pahang.html!)

Jonathan Parker & Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Cyber Security Seminar: Everyday Security for Everyday Lives (Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Royal Holloway)

Our next Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Seminar will take place on Tuesday, 4th March at 5pm.
The seminar will take place in EB202 in the Executive Business Centre, and will be free and open to all. If you would like to attend, please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/interdisciplinary-seminar-in-cyber-security-tickets-10691914805

Our speaker will be Dr Lizzie Coles-Kemp. Lizzie is a qualitative researcher, interested in the everyday practices of information production, circulation, curation and consumption within a broad range of communities. She works in Possible Futures Lab within the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University of London. Her main focus is the interaction between people and security and privacy technologies, how each influences the other and the communities of practice that emerge. As part of this focus, she explores topics such as identity and technology use, gender and information management and information control as a means of power. Current interdisciplinary work includes: value sensitive design in public service delivery, cultural analysis in institutional security and the use of visual research methods in interdisciplinary research.

Abstract: Over the last five years at the Information Security Group, Royal Holloway, a research group called Possible Futures Lab has been working on projects that explore what notions of information control mean in the context of everyday lives. We have two primary objectives: to improve designs related to everyday information production and control and to influence thinking on topics of everyday information security. Each of our projects has started with ethnographic research that has enabled us to identify and observe the relevant spaces and places. From there we have co-designed with each community discovery tools for seeing, experiencing and exploring these spaces. These tools help us to better understand the community viewpoints on information and its control and to design/re-design services and technologies to better support this position. This talk gives examples of this approach in two of our projects that focus on cyber security decision making.

BU Social Science Input at Tasik Chini, Malaysia

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

A very significant aspect of our Fusion Funded Study Leave has been our invitation to spend time as Visiting Professors at the Tasik Chini Research Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.  This Research Centre is primarily a natural science-based one, which is now expanding its remit to embrace social science, and which focuses on Tasik (Lake) Chini in the State of Pahang, about 4 hours drive from Kuala Lumpur. This lake, one of only two freshwater lakes in Peninsular Malaysia, is composed of a very large area of 12,568 acres, and in terms of beauty and grandeur was not dissimilar to England’s Lake District.  Google the lake and a serene vision will appear of placid waters smothered in ravishing pink and white water-lilies in a valley of opulent, teeming rain forest and rimmed by green mountains. A veritable paradise, seemingly, and also the traditional ‘native’ lands of a community of indigenous, ‘first-people’, of Malaysia, the Jakun tribe of the Orang Asli (original people).

 

Hardly surprisingly maybe that this wonderful area received coveted UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status due to its lush diversity of flora and fauna. However, although once a popular eco-tourist destination, very few tourists are spotted now and the trade has virtually died off. The reason being that the lake itself is dying with total and irreversible collapse of the ecological system predicted by 2030.  Unrestrained mining of the mineral-rich soil in the area has led to mass deforestation, while logging, itself, and destruction of the colossal swathes of the forest has made way for Oil Palm plantations. Contaminants from mines in very close proximity to the lake have caused considerable pollution and the replacement of local flora with a pernicious species of aquatic weed and algae.  To add to a catalogue of disasters, and against the wishes of the those Orang Asli communities who managed to hear of it (as they were not formally consulted) and Malaysian environmentalists, an ill conceived dam was placed in 1994 at the juncture of the Tasik Chini and the great Pahang River. This served to prevent the annual ebb and flow of the lake that made boating of tourists difficult at times but was essential to the ecosystem of the area  The lake is now stagnant, polluted and  the fish, upon which the Jakun relied on as fisher folk, frequently unfit to eat, their flesh being tainted and their bodies invaded by parasites.

 

Our role as social scientists invited to work with the Tasik Chini Research Centre is to help to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge of the problems here and the local communities. Our work is to aid amplification of their voices in speaking of their experiences of trying to survive in traditional native lands that have been violated and usurped.  With our fourth intensive field trip to Tasik Chini coming up this week and a packed itinerary of interviews and focus group discussions planned with the local villagers, our ethnographies are rapidly developing. The Orang Asli people have much to be angry about and although too often treated as backward and uneducated in Malaysia itself, they have impressed us considerably with their passion for their lands, their rage and grief at the destruction, their eloquence, their gracious hospitality to us – and their ability to organise their communities and their protests up to the highest levels of Government. Truly they are a great if much abused people and we count it a pronounced honour to be so warmly welcomed by them, and regard this as some, and maybe, the most important work of our careers.

 

We hear much in the UK of the trite, overused and sometimes disingenuous phrase ‘making a difference’ when applied to higher educational endeavour and these experiences have brought into sharp relief the differences between its application to the banal and to the truly tragic. This area is part of the traditional land of the Jakun, and as such should be protected and preserved. But much more than this it is an international site for the earth’s future generations and we must, as academics, plough back what little knowledge we have into securing this heritage.

 

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Jonathan Parker