Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The Centre for Wellbeing and Long-Term Health (CWLTH) will be hosting their next Research Seminar and Centre meeting at 11:00 on Tuesday 22nd April. PhD student Yagya Adhikari will be presenting their doctoral research exploring ‘Parental migration for work and psychosocial problems among left-behind adolescents in Nepal.‘ Click HERE to join this meeting on Teams. Contact CWLTH@bournemouth.ac.uk for more information about the Centre.
NIHR Undergraduate Interns Tom Lower and Kaisei Wieczorek Numao with their supervisor Dr. Dominique Mylod attended the Round 1 NIHR Undergraduate Intern Celebration at International Student House, Regent’s Park, London on 19th March 2025.
Tom and Kaisei are both BU Computer Animation students. Together with Year 3 midwifery student Carys Nash they have developed the User Interface and tracking systems on our Early Labour App during their internship. In line with the feedback that Carys has gathered from women and birth partners, the app provides education and strategies for families to navigate the latent phase (or ‘early labour’) at home before labour establishes and they transfer to a birth unit or Labour Ward. The app content has been developed from research through the BU Centre for Midwifery and Women’s Health and with the latest funding from the NIHR Undergraduate Internship programme.
Tom presented on behalf of the group and we caused some excitement by showcasing the app on a mobile phone to the other attendees!
The ESRC Festival of Social Science (FoSS) is back, running from 18 October to 8 November 2025.
Partnership with the University of Southampton
For the third consecutive year, Bournemouth University is partnering with the University of Southampton (UoS) to deliver a programme of social science events across Dorset and Hampshire. This collaboration enables BU researchers to organise joint events with UoS colleagues and share impactful research with a broader community.
Funding available for your social science event
Apply for up to £1,000 and join the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2025 to showcase your research.
Online information session
Join our online information session to enhance your chances of a successful application and learn how to make the most of this exciting opportunity.
BU’s Public Engagement Team will co-host this session with the UoS Impact Funding Team. During the session, you will hear about past festival events at both universities, learn first-hand experiences from previous participants, and gain an understanding of the application process. You will also receive guidance on how to get involved in this year’s festival.
Wednesday 2 April 2025
11am – 12pm
Online (via Teams)
To attend, please register and we will be in touch with further information
Get inspired about planning your event
The 2025 open call will launch soon. In the meantime, explore these resources from last year to gather ideas and see which events resonated with public audiences while aligning with the festival’s goals:
To help with planning and audience engagement, check out these useful guides from last year’s open call:
If you would like to start discussing your ideas, please get in touch publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk
This week ResearchGate informed us that the paper ‘The Importance of Positionality for Qualitative Researchers‘ by Bournemouth University M.Res. student Ms. Hannah Gurr has been read over 800 times. The co-authors are Hannah’s supervisors Dr. Louise Oliver, Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS), and one of Nepal’s foremost sociology of health and illness researchers Prof. Madhusudan Subedi. 
The paper is of particular interest for qualitative and mixed-methods researchers as these researchers are especially required to be critically reflective and explain to readers their positionality on their work. This account can be relatively straightforward, but there are occasions when this process of reflection and outlining one’s positionality is much more complicated. This method-paper explains this process. It outlines, using examples of different occasions and situations, where and why such complications may arise, for example, around values and personal experiences. It concludes with further practical advice on writing the section on positionality for novice social scientists. The journal in which this methodological paper is published is Open Access and therefor freely available to read for anybody across the globe.
Reference:
So far, I successfully complete IEEE Standards Association | IEEE SA training program 🎓, dedicated to guide Ethical Assessment and Product Improvement using the CertifAIEd framework.
The following Wednessday 26th of March 2025, as a part of NCCA Research Seminars, I am looking forward to briefly demostrate the potentials of earned skills in the following talk:
Title: Ensuring the Quality of Autonomous Intelligent Systems: A Guide to Ethical Assessment and Product Improvement using the IEEE CertifAIEd framework.
Description: Many products employ Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS) including: transportation (self-driving cars), manufacturing, retail / customer service, healthcare, finance, education (AI learning platforms). The use of a quality framework to manage the risks of AIS is crucial to protect users and grow product adoption. The standards association IEEE offers the ability to evaluate the quality of any AIS using an evaluation framework – CertifAIEd. Having recently completed the first stage of IEEE CertifAIEd training, I will present an overview of the potentials of CertifAIEd and the route to become an authorized assessor.
Dr. Nicolay Rusnachenko
Research Fellow at Centre For Applied Creative Technologies PLUS (CFACT+)
Bournemouth University
The Research Connect seminar series, organized by the Department of Marketing, Strategy, and Innovation at the Business School, continued successfully throughout February and March 2025. These sessions have provided an excellent platform for colleagues and PGR’s to showcase their research, share insights, and engage in thought-provoking discussions.
February 12 Session
We kicked off the February seminar with Prof. Jeff Bray, who presented his work on last year’s Watercress-funded project. He also shared valuable insights into navigating the funding application and review process this year. This was followed by Asim Batwa (second year PGR) who presented his research on Smart Digital Nudges: Enhancing Tourists’ Sustainable Transportation Decisions. His session, ahead of his major review, led to a engaging discussion on the role of digital interventions in sustainable travel behaviour.
March 12 Session
In March, Duncan Light presented his research recently published in Tourism Review on Selling Souvenirs and Lifestyle Entrepreneurship, offering key insights into this evolving market. The session concluded with a very interesting discussion on Quality vs. Quantity in Academic Publishing—a very timely topic for researchers striving to strike the right balance in their publication strategies.
You can read Duncan’s full paper: Light, D., Lupu, C., Creţan, R. and Chapman, A. (2024), “Unconventional entrepreneurs: the non-economic motives of souvenir sellers”, Tourism Review, Vol. 79 No. 8, pp. 1442-1456. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-09-2023-0655
Join Us for the Next Research Connect Seminar!
Our next Research Connect session is scheduled for April 9, 2025, from 4:00–5:00 PM in F108. We will follow the same format: an academic presentation, followed by a PGR-led discussion. As always, we’ll continue the conversation informally at Dylan’s afterward.
Looking forward to seeing you there 😊
Tuesday 18th March Drs. Pramod Regmi and Nirmal Aryal from the Department of Nursing Sciences presented our work on risk of kidney disease in Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East and Malaysia. The presentation was at the Project Impact Seminar in the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester organised by The Colt Foundation, the funder of our research. 
The title was: ‘Risk of kidney injury among returnee Nepalese migrants: a mixed-methods’ which was conducted in the one of areas of Nepal with a high proportion of people working abroad as migrant labourers. Over the past decade there have been increasing concerns about possible chronic kidney disease (CKD) in migrant workers returning to Nepal. 
This important study has resulted in one publication in PLoS One (1) and one more recently submitted. The event was good for networking to discuss possible collaborations. We also had the pleasure of meeting former colleagues from the University of Aberdeen, now based at the University of Stirling. This dissemination event is the latest in a long line of research publications focusing on the health and well-being of migrant workers from Nepal from the BU team in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences [1-35].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
References:
The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2025 has launched!
Check your email to access your link to complete the survey.
We’re keen to make sure our postgraduate research students (PGRs) have the best possible experience while studying with us. To do this, we need to know what you think works well and what we could do better.
The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES 2025) is your chance to tell us about your experience as a PGR at Bournemouth University. The more specific your feedback is, the more targeted and effective our actions can be. This includes both positive feedback and what we as a university could do better. Your voice truly makes a difference and helps shape your experience.
This year the survey opened on Monday 17 March 2025 and will close on Wednesday 30 April 2025. Upon completing the survey, PGRs will automatically be entered into a free prize draw. Four winners will be able to claim a £50 shopping voucher. Terms and conditions apply.
In addition, we will be making a £1 donation for every survey completed to the student mental health wellbeing charity, Student Minds.
Once you have completed the survey, you are entitled to claim a Chartwells voucher with a value of £3.95. This covers the cost of a meal from the “Savour menu” but can be used to purchase any items from Chartwells outlets. Please come to the Doctoral College (DLG08, Talbot Campus) to collect your voucher.
How do I take part?
PGRs have now received an email containing a unique link which will allow you to access and complete the survey. If you can’t find this email, contact PRES@bournemouth.ac.uk and we’ll help you to get access.
What will I be asked?
The survey will take around 15 minutes to complete. Your response is confidential, and any reporting will be entirely anonymous. The survey is your chance to tell us about your experience as a PGR at BU. It will ask you to share your views on supervision, resources, research community, progress and assessment, skills and professional development and wellbeing.
Why should I take part?
Your feedback is important. The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey is the only national survey of PGRs and so is the only way for us to compare how we are doing with other institutions and to make changes that will improve your experience in the future.
More information
If you would like to know more about the survey, please visit: PRES 2025.
If you would like to know more about the surveys at Bournemouth University, please visit: Your feedback | Bournemouth University.
Please click here to see actions that we have taken based on feedback from previous surveys.
We hope you take the opportunity to get involved this year and help us make improvements to your experience.
Best wishes,
The Doctoral College
For any PRES related queries, please email: PRES@bournemouth.ac.uk
Application to the fund is highly competitive and we have now committed all of the budget for 24/25. We will continue to review the status of fund-supported publications which are under consideration at journals, and release funds which are no longer required back into the budget as we can.
Authors are reminded that BU is signed up to a number of transformative deals with major publishers. These enable authors to publish gold open access for free, or at a reduced cost, in thousands of journals. Authors are encouraged to review the journals which are covered by these agreements which considering where to publish.
UKRI funded authors can still apply for support from the UKRI Open Access block grant to cover eligible costs associated with publishing in fully open access journals and platforms that are not covered by our transformative deals.
Please contact openaccess@bournemouth.ac.uk with any queries.
Your involvement matters – Please share details of BU’s social, community, and cultural events for the annual Higher Education Business & Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey
Bournemouth University reports on a range of knowledge exchange activities for the HE-BCI survey, collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
Providing a comprehensive view of these activities is crucial, as Research England uses HE-BCI data to allocate the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) annually. For 2024-25, BU received £549,064.
Data collection period
The SharePoint site collects information on all social, community, and cultural engagement events delivered by BU between 1 August 2024 and 31 July 2025.
Please ensure all event details are uploaded by Friday 17 October 2025.
Find your faculty table
Complete all the columns in your faculty’s table, paying particular attention to the Number of attendees and Academic staff time for delivery.
Please note that this year, we cannot include data solely uploaded to the public engagement records on BRIAN, as they do not capture all the information required by HESA. If you have already added data to BRIAN, you must also upload full details to the SharePoint site to ensure your event is included in the survey.
Further support
For detailed guidance on what to include, please refer to the FAQ’s
Please contact the Public Engagement Team should you have any additional questions publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk
Our new Research Café series launched last week at the BGB Café with a thought-provoking discussion on smart cities and cybersecurity. The event brought together members of the public, researchers, and local businesses to exchange ideas, ask questions, and connect with BU’s research community.
Professor Vasilis Katos speaking at Research Café
Leading the conversation was BU’s Professor Vasilis Katos, who explored how residents, businesses, and policymakers can work together to protect smart city infrastructure from growing cyber threats. Professor Katos highlighted the increasing reliance on digital systems in urban environments and the need for proactive security measures to prevent attacks that could disrupt essential services.
Joining the conversation was Emily Rosenorn-Lanng, PhD student and CEO of BU pre-spin-out Cyber Innovations Ltd, who shed light on the often-overlooked psychological impact of cyberattacks. Emily emphasised how cyber incidents can leave individuals and small businesses feeling vulnerable, highlighting the need for greater awareness, resilience, and support systems.
Professor Vasilis Katos & Emily Rosenorn-Lanng with Research Café attendees
The session sparked a lively discussion, with audience members—including local business owners—sharing their concerns and experiences. Attendees described the event as “exceptionally engaging,” “eye-opening,” and “a fantastic opportunity to learn from experts.”
Emily Rosenorn-Lanng reflected on the event “Cybersecurity isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. When attacks happen, they don’t just affect data; they impact lives, trust, and livelihoods. Protecting our digital world means understanding the human side of cybersecurity too.”
Next up in our Research Café series
Showcasing Tomorrow’s Researchers – Tuesday 6 May, 6:30-8pm at BGB Café
We are excited to announce the next event in our Research Café series will feature postgraduate researchers from Bournemouth University, who will share insights into their innovative research.
Come along to hear about their work, ask questions, and gain a glimpse into the future of research.
More details coming soon
Contact
If you have any questions about this event or the Research Café series, please contact the Public Engagement with Research Team at publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk
The ESRC Festival of Social Science (FoSS) returns from 18 October to 8 November 2025. This is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to showcase their work in the UK’s largest celebration of social science research.
Partnership with the University of Southampton
For the third consecutive year, Bournemouth University is partnering with the University of Southampton (UoS) to deliver a programme of social science events across Dorset and Hampshire. This collaboration enables BU researchers to organise joint events with UoS colleagues and share impactful research with a broader community.
Why get involved?
Online information session
BU’s Public Engagement Team will co-host an online information session with the Impact Funding Team (Research and Innovation Services, UoS). During the session, you will learn about past FoSS events at both universities and hear first-hand experiences from previous participants. The session will also explain the application process and guide you on how to get involved in this year’s festival.
Wednesday 2 April 2025
11am – 12pm
Online (via Teams)
To attend, please register and we will be in touch with further information.
Thinking about applying?
The call for applications will open soon. In the meantime, if you are considering applying, we recommend reviewing the 2024 festival open call to gain a clear understanding of the expectations and festival criteria. Understanding the ESRC’s guidelines and expectations is key to submitting a strong application.
If you have colleagues at the University of Southampton who might be interested in running a joint event, consider reaching out to explore collaboration opportunities. Joint events can strengthen your application and broaden your impact, so they are strongly encouraged.
Get inspired by past festival events. For ideas and inspiration, take a look at:
These resources can help you better understand the types of events that resonate with public audiences and align with the festival’s goals.
Helpful guides
These guides from last year’s open call are valuable resources to help you understand and support event planning and audience engagement.
Funding and Support
Funding of up to £1,000 per event is available to support your event. BU’s Public Engagement team will offer ongoing advice and guidance at every stage—from application and event development to planning, delivery, and evaluation.
New drop-in surgery for application support
In addition to the information session, the Public Engagement Team will be hosting a drop-in surgery on campus, providing you with the opportunity to meet the team and receive additional support for your application.
This will:
Take advantage of this support to enhance your proposal and perfect your event plans.
If you would like to start discussing your ideas, please get in touch with the team at publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk
All BU staff and students are invited to attend the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition! This is an internationally recognised research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland in 2008. It challenges doctoral researchers to condense their thesis into a compelling three-minute presentation, communicating its originality and significance to a non-specialist audience.
Date: Wednesday 26 March, 10:30-14:30
The National competition is run by the research organisation Vitae. More information about the history of 3MT® can be found on the Vitae and 3MT® websites.
There will be four parallel presentation sessions, one for each Faculty, to select the 2 finalists to advance to the final round, which will take place in the afternoon. The winner will be able to take part in the national competition run by Vitae.
Lunch will be provided.
See below for the tentative programme of the day:
10:30-12:00: First round (4 parallel sessions, Fusion Building)
12:00-13:00: Lunch (Share Lecture Theatre)
13:00-14:00: Final round (Share Lecture Theatre)
14:00-14:20: Break
14:20-14:30: Winners Announcement and Closing
Come along and support BU doctoral researchers at this exciting event. Let’s share knowledge, foster collaboration, and build connections with the research community!
Further information available on Brightspace.
Please do contact us if you have any questions: pgrskillsdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk
Best wishes,
The Doctoral College RDP Team
The Sonamoni Project is working with communities in rural Bangladesh utilizing human-centered design (HCD) techniques. These design principles have been applied for many years in designing consumer products and, more recently, in the fields of health and social systems. The research project is identifying solutions to reduce the number of drowning deaths in newly mobile children (6-24 months), developing prototype, and assessing the acceptability and usability of potential interventions. This interdisciplinary project is coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), the University of the West of England, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the University of Southampton, and Design without Borders Africa (DwB) from Uganda. Our Sonamoni project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme.
As part of the Sonamoni project we arranged some serious South-South learning by facilitating a visit to DwB in Uganda in early march by two of our Bangladesh-based team, namely Notan Chandra Dutta, Research Manager and Mirza Shibat Rowshan, HCD Specialist. DwB applies HCD approaches to complex challenges faced by communities in low and middle-income countries. To gain greater insights into HCD activities the researchers from Bangladesh visited one site near Lake Victoria to observe data collection with fishermen, transporters, and local leaders. Notan and Shibat co-facilitated a four-day long Design Community Advisory Board (DCAB) workshop on the “Enhancing Fisherfolk Safety” project where fishermen, boat owners, transporters, traditional weather forecasters, health workers were the participants. To prevent drowning, HCD was applied in the workshop to generate ideas and share solutions of the lake site community from Lake Victoria of Mayuge district. Lessons learnt from the visit by two staff of CIPRB can further enrich the Sonamoni Project implementation in Bangladesh. The NIHR really values research capacity building and South-South learning in its funded projects, as well as North-South leaning, of course. 
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
The primary aim of this event is to raise participants’ awareness of how to get started in research at BU or, for more established staff, how to take their research to the next level. It will provide participants with essential, practical information and orientation in key stages and processes of research and knowledge exchange at BU
You’ll be made aware of the support available at each stage of the research lifecycle and get an introduction to the Research, Development & Support Team, who are here to help! It will be hosted by our experts who are responsible for strategy, outputs, ethics, public engagement, knowledge exchange, project management & training. It will include:
Come along, join in, get some important insights – hopefully see you there! Book your place HERE
If you are new to academia, it may be helpful for you to meet with your faculty mentor to guide your familiarisation of research at BU and expectations of an early career researcher before attending this induction. You can also join the Early Career researcher (ECR) Network.
For some background and more immediate information on RDS, please head to the RKE SharePoint
For further information on this event or joining the ECRN, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk
At Bournemouth University, we are committed to making our research accessible beyond the university.
If you are organising an event that connects members of the public with BU’s research, we can help promote it to relevant audiences through our monthly newsletters and social media channels.
To be considered for inclusion, your event or activity must be;
Event descriptions may be edited for consistency in style with other content.
Share your upcoming public event or activity
If you have any questions, please contact the team publicengagement@bournemouth.ac.uk
BU staff can login below:
Join our online info session to find out how you can apply for the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2025
Reading about Positionality
New Social Work Education paper published
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Horizon Europe info days 2025 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.
Research Information Network