Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Join us as we celebrate this festive season with classics such as ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ performed by members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and local people with dementia and their carers.
When? Friday, 12th December 2014, 11am – 12noon.
Where? The Atrium (by Starbucks), Poole House, Talbot Campus.
We’d love to see you there!
For more information about this event, please contact: lreynolds@bournemouth.ac.uk.
The BUDI Orchestra during their final rehearsal.
Dr Michelle Heward, Ben Hicks and Sophie Bushell represented the Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) at this year’s National Dementia Congress in Brighton between the 10th and 12th November. This is the UK’s 9th Dementia Congress, organised and hosted by the Journal of Dementia Care. The Congress attracted professionals from a vast array of backgrounds from artists and architects to nurses and social care commissioners with over 200 individuals presenting their work during the event. Highlights amongst the spoken presentations included a fantastic and very moving presentation by people living with dementia and their carers from the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment (DEEP) group and Carers Call to Action and the keynote address by Dr Stephen Judd entitled ‘Making Change Happen’.
For BUDI, additional highlights were the two presentations delivered by our very own Dr Michelle Heward who reported on two of her most recent projects:
In addition to the speakers there were numerous stands with information about products and services designed to support people to live well with dementia, poster presentations and additional attractions. The most popular of these appeared to be a cookery demonstration by Peter Morgan-Jones demonstrating a technique to improve nutrition and enjoyment of food for people who have difficulties swallowing.
Two of the most delightful things about this Congress were the number and variety of individuals who were clearly passionate about making positive impact upon the lives of people with dementia and those who care for them and the breadth of innovative interventions designed to achieve this. For more information about this event please click here.
Sophie Bushell, PhD student, BUDI
SUREBU is a Fusion funded project aimed at showcasing the best of BU’s undergraduate research. Research is broadly defined and could include work towards an undergraduate essay or dissertation, work carried out as part of a volunteer or work placement, or activities for an academic society. Not only are research skills a central part of undergraduate study and academic life, but they are also vital skills for any future career. By encouraging undergraduate students to think critically and develop their skills, research will help to enhance their student experience and increase their employability upon graduation.
The call for submissions is now open, and all BU undergraduate students – from all schools and courses – are eligible to apply. Examples of research could be anything from preparing for a dissertation or an essay to work carried out during a placement year to volunteering or work with academic societies. The main criteria is that evidence of the student’s own critical thinking can be demonstrated. As well as developing new skills, this is a good opportunity to enhance their CVs through a conference presentation, publication of abstract or even being the winner of awards and prizes.
To get involved, register on SUREBU’s website and submit an abstract. Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words, with a title no longer than 150 characters. The deadline for submission is 5th January 2015. If you know of a student or recent graduate who would be eligible to submit, do encourage them to apply!
The Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Local Authorities, supported by the Public Health team, are very keen to build on the success of the 2012 Olympics in Dorset and have developed a legacy fund to provide a significant resource for investment in innovative and evidence based local projects in Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole.
The aim of the legacy fund is to create a legacy and inspire communities by investing in projects that focus on the particularly vulnerable, marginalised and deprived communities in order to address health inequalities which exist in Dorset.
Projects will:
For more information click here.
(BUDI were successful in round 1 with 2 projects awarded through this fund – Bournemouth Symphony Orchestera and Dorset Fire & Rescue Service. Click here for funded awards to date project reference 36 & 43 – PDF at the bottom of the page.)
The use of video within social media (such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) is providing researchers with novel ways of disseminating the findings of research. This is inspiring researchers to think outside of traditional academic approaches, and enabling research to extend to new and wide-ranging audiences. This paper focuses on the Living Well with Dementia project, which was designed to utilise video to raise awareness and challenge gaps in perceptions and understanding of dementia. The project involved filming and disseminating a video featuring people with dementia and carers talking about what it means to live well with dementia. Obtaining the views of people with dementia and carers was considered crucial in terms of portraying the real-life experiences of living with dementia, and enabling these often marginalised voices to be heard. Participants were asked ‘what is your experience of living with dementia?’ and in their responses drew upon diagnosis, treatment, lifestyle, social activities and family relationships. The finished video was disseminated through YouTube. After viewing the video, members of the public were invited to complete a short survey to establish whether watching the video challenged their understanding of dementia. This paper showcases the Living Well with Dementia video, as well as exploring the ethical and practical challenges of capturing the experiences of people with dementia on video. Preliminary results from the survey are also presented, in order to explore the role of video within social media as a method to raise awareness and challenge gaps in perceptions and understanding of dementia.
Facilitated by: Dr Michelle Heward & Dr James Palfreman-Kay
Wednesday 10th December 2014 10:00-11:00
Student Hall, Talbot House, Talbot Campus
To book your place, please e-mail Organisational Development od@bournemouth.ac.uk
On the 4th and 5th of November, I represented Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) at the Birmingham Care Show with my colleagues Clare Cutler and Dr Rick Fisher. This show attracted over 350 national exhibitors from many sectors of the care industry, including care home providers. This was a fantastic opportunity for BUDI to network and meet a range of potential collaborators. During the event we met over 200 delegates, many were interested in our bespoke educational services and our forthcoming MSc Applied Dementia Studies programme (due to start in September 2015 subject to validation).
The event demonstrated the current focus on making services and products within the care industry ‘dementia friendly’. Many of the displays were heavily influenced by a medical perspective of dementia care, such as medicine compliance aids and monitoring technologies. However, I also noticed small businesses promoting a more psycho-social approach, including one organisation who delivered drama sessions to help carer’s gain an empathetic understanding of what living with dementia is like. The experience was, for me as a PhD student within BUDI, a good opportunity to meet practitioners in the field of dementia care, and to see first-hand the range of products and services on offer to people affected by dementia.
Chris Poyner, PhD student, BUDI
Last week I was invited to represent Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) at the 9th Arts and Health South West (AHSW) Annual Conference held in Taunton. This was a great opportunity for me to talk about the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA’s) approach to involving people affected by dementia within their gallery space, as showcased in the MOMA Workshops held in May 2014 . I also discussed some of the work that local Dorset museums are undertaking to involve people affected by dementia, and ways to evaluate such activities.
The conference showcased a wide variety of innovative arts based projects, including: the therapeutic purposes of creative writing, doodling, and music and health from Live Music Now. The positive health impacts of arts based activities for a range of participants were highlighted in several presentations throughout the day.
If so, we would love to hear from you!
In the Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI), we are always developing ideas for projects that will take education and research forward. To make sure that the work we do will make a difference and really help, we need to hear the views of people with dementia and their carers.
If you are a carer and would like to help us every now and then by offering your views on our latest ideas or to suggest ideas of your own then we would love to hear from you. Also, if you know of anyone locally who has dementia or is a carer of someone with dementia who might like to get involved, do please pass this message on to them.
We have two projects at the moment that we would really appreciate help with. One is for a research project involving physical activity and the other an education project for a new course to run from 2015.
To get in touch, please contact the BUDI office via email on budi@bournemouth.ac.uk or call Michelle O’Brien, BUDI Administrator on 01202 962771 / Emma Pegrum, BUDI Admin Assistant on 01202 962543.
On 15th October, I presented at a three-day conference at Linkoping University in Sweden on Life with Dementia 2014: Relations. There were two strands to the conference: communication and citizenship and I predominantly attended the citizenship parallel sessions as this is where I am currently focused. The conference was attended by delegates from universities in Sweden, the UK, Norway, Japan, Canada and USA, all with an interest in working and campaigning to promote the rights and inclusion of people with dementia as equal citizens or partners in interaction. In the citizenship strand, there were presentations and key notes with questions and ideas on what citizenship and rights means in the context of people with dementia, with a particular challenge of what it means for people with more severe cognitive impairment. Throughout the conference, we heard, or spoke, about interdependence, human capabilities, opportunities rather than support, inclusive research methods, co-researching, parity of participation and transformative strategies to reduce social injustice. At the end of the conference, there was a separate meeting to work on capturing the enthusiasm and commitment to ensuring people with dementia remain equal citizens, so we formed the ‘citizenship and dementia international research network’, with a view to collaborating on writing, presenting at conferences, campaigning and working on research ideas. Anyone interested in hearing more, please get in touch fkelly@bournemouth.ac.uk
At the beginning of 2014 BUDI was lucky enough to secure FIF CCCP funding to set up the BUDI orchestra, a partnership project with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra supported by BU Music Scholars and other students. I blogged about this during the rehearsal period and after the performance at the Festival of Learning, but as the project officially comes to an end as we write our final report I am blogging a final time to give a little update. First we won a poster prize two weeks ago at the 7th International Rural Dementia Summit running concurrently with the 7th Safety and Health in Agriculture and Rural Health Populations conference in Saskatchewan, Canada and Canadian colleagues are now interested in setting up their version of the BUDI orchestra in two provinces. We also secured some further funds to extend the project and are currently rehearsing for an informal Christmas performance that will take place in the Atrium/Starbucks on 12 December, do stop and listen as you enjoy your coffee! If any member of staff/student would like to join us as we rehearse, particularly anyone with a strong singing voice do get in touch with Laura (lreynolds@bournemouth.ac.uk)who can give you more information about our rehearsal schedule, as we are missing our BU Music Scholars this time round who led the singing part of the rehearsals so well in the initial project. We also secured funding from the Dorset Legacy Fund to begin a new orchestra project and this will commence in January 2015. We have submitted a larger grant application to conduct a multi-site study but we have a few months to go before we will hear if we are successful or not. We have received extremely positive feedback from our participants, students and BSO colleagues who have been part of the initial and ongoing project extension and the idea has been favourably met at regional and international conferences where we have shown the video we created documenting the project. The BU FIF provides an excellent opportunity to conduct pilot/proof of concept work and we are grateful for the funds received enabling us to undertake this work which has been the most fun project I’ve been involved with to date.
SPARK 2014 is a brand new opportunity to see the latest innovations developed to meet NHS needs alongside a national conference that brings together the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), industry partners and NHS leaders and clinicians.
The conference will be of interest to the following audience who are keen to know what the next innovations in healthcare are:
The SBRI Healthcare programme is an NHS England funded scheme to accelerate the development of new technologies for known health needs. With over 100 companies in the SBRI Healthcare fold some of the key areas in which innovations are being developed are:
Cancer : COPD : CVD : Diabetes : Dementia : End of Life : Hand hygiene : Meds Adherence / Meds Optimisation : Mental Health : Long Term Conditions : Patient Safety : Patient Empowerment : Renal : Research Tools : Telehealth / Telecare for People with Learning Disabilities.
Conference details: 10 December, QE II Conference Centre, London
Booking information including discounted rates for universities: click here
Proposed agenda: click here
We will be holding a CHIRP meeting on Thursday 30th October at 1pm in P403 for anyone who may be currently conducting (or interested in conducting) research studies related to digital health.
The aims of these CHIRP meetings are to meet regularly as a group with common interests so that we can stay updated about current research/current technologies etc., potentially find areas of common interest for collaboration and generally bounce ideas around one another.
Meetings are open to anyone interested in digital technologies and health whether this focuses on digital health interventions, issues around the impact of digital technologies on health and wellbeing, how digital technologies can aid clinical training or something similar. We are particularly interested in creating a multi-disciplinary group of researchers so welcome any colleagues from Health and Social Care, Computing, Psychology, the Media School etc. etc.
We are currently working on pulling together a BU CHIRP/Digital Health research webpage and aim to share our first version with colleagues at the meeting as well as update current/planned projects and past/upcoming events of interest.
Please contact Sarah on swilliams@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like to join our CHIRP group or would like to come along and find out more at our meeting on the 30th.
Tuesday 14 October saw the first Wessex Dementia conference hosted by Public Health England, NHS Wessex CSN and The Wessex AHSN. The turnout was much larger than expected demonstrating the increase in interest, enthusiasm and energy surrounding the dementia field. The timeline in the image attached shows just a small selection of projects about dementia that are happening in our region across the dementia timeline; that is from pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, post-diagnostic support to end of life care. BUDI’s work spans this care spectrum but only a handful of our projects are on this timelines as at BU alone we have been involved in 50 dementia projects in the last 2 years (we presented on our Orchestra project with the BSO, the 10 agency partnership project on Dementia Friendly Communities in Dorset we were part of, and the NHS Dorset Memory Advisory service we evaluated as well as having a very popular stand; orange stress balls proved to be particularly popular for our hard working clinical and practice colleagues!) Taken together with the work of our colleagues from the voluntary, statutory and private sectors alongside our academic colleagues based at other Wessex Universities there is now a critical mass of work going on in our region which bodes well for those who might be affected by dementia in the future in Wessex but also for those currently living with dementia who are participating and hopefully benefiting from the groundswell of commitment to improving not just the diagnostic rate in our region (which two years ago was one of the lowest in the country) but to providing high quality support and services.
Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and the fund will close on 31 October 2014.
More information can be found here.
Alternatively please feel free to contact
Jayne Codling – Knowledge Exchange Adviser
Ext 61215 jcodling@bournemouth.ac.uk
Today BUDI held our third annual Carers Forum where a local solicitor talked to our members about why and how to set up of power of attorney (attracting huge interest and a barrage of questions from our carers illustrating the importance of this issue, for all of us, not just those who have dementia) and from a local GP, who has been the lynch pin in creating the UKs first Dementia Friendly GP surgery right here in Dorset. Running in parallel with the carers forum was our partners programme where people with dementia had the opportunity to use some of the technologies we have innovatively used in some of our other projects where we have been running technology groups for people with dementia in rural Dorset and in the Bournemouth Borough. To end the day we showed for the first time our recently compiled video of the BUDI Orchestra which brings together some of the views of those who participated in this project, BU students, BSO musicians and most importantly, people with dementia and their carers. The perceptions of Jane Stitchbury, the current High Sheriff of Dorset who opened the performance in June 2014, and who shares her views on the BUDI orchestra, reflect the feedback we gathered from the general public who viewed the performance. We would be interested in hearing what you think about the orchestra.
Click the link below to view the video:
I was awarded Fusion funding to spend the last six months working in the BU Dementia Institute (BUDI) on an internal secondment. This time has come to an end and a formal report has been submitted reporting on how the objectives have all been achieved. Here I’d like to share what I personally found to be most useful from the secondment.
I had several tasks to complete over the six months but the bulk of my time was spent on writing research grant proposals. In particular, I took the lead on an application for a project to develop and validate a novel intervention to help older people with dementia who have recently experienced a fall-related injury (currently under review with the National Institute of Health Research, Health Technology Assessment programme). The secondment was invaluable for writing this proposal in two ways. First, the sheer volume of work to be completed in writing the proposal demanded many hours of my time. Second, there were several aspects I had to get to grips with during the proposal writing including NHS sponsorship, arrangements for intellectual property, involving patients in our decision-making, etc., that the secondment provided the ideal environment to master all of this. This was great not only for completing the proposal but gave me the tools to subsequently write a different proposal for a different funder very quickly to meet the tight deadline.
I would therefore recommend internal secondments to colleagues who may have interests relevant to institutes / research centres outside of their school. It provides an opportunity to contribute to BU outside your immediate school and an opportunity to develop tools to not only achieve the task at hand but take back with you and use after the life of the secondment.
Those interested in an internal secondment to contribute to BUDI’s research and / or education should contact Professor Innes in the first instance.
Dr Samuel Nyman
BUDI and Department of Psychology
On Friday 28 November 2014, the BSA Ageing, Body and Society Study Group 6thAnnual Conference: Researching Bodies will take place at the British Library Conference Centre, London. The conference will include a keynote address by Prof Les Back (Goldsmiths University) who will speak on: Inscriptions of Love: the body as an impermanent canvas and a plenary panel on Researching Bodies.
The British Sociological Association are inviting submissions to the conference. They invite abstracts for poster and oral presentations that will be 15-20 minutes long. They are encouraging researchers to share their perspectives on ‘researching bodies’ and welcome abstracts on different theoretical and methodological approaches, emergent ideas, work in progress, practitioner perspectives, and emperical findings.
Abstracts of 250 words long should be submitted before midnight, 12/09/2014 online here. Those that submitted an abstract will be informed of the decision before 29/09/2014.
You can find further information about the call here.
I have taught at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense on a number of occasions but I continue to be impressed by the enthusiasm and challenging questions the Master’s level students pose. Paris is rich with culture and the education system has many benefits. I am privileged to be part of a growing French research culture that respects skills and knowledge with cutting edge technology in neuroscience.
Sacre Coeur, roof-top; Gare du Nord, r.
Eiffel Tower, roof-top.
This complements my experience at Bournemouth University and has enabled me to collaborate on projects that face difficult challenges with respect to ethics and use of expensive technology, namely fMRI scanning. Functional Magnetic Resonance Scanning is notoriously expensive yet the benefits to clinical research are potentially huge.
Modernism - or the Aliens have landed!
My study on yawning and cortisol at Bournemouth University [1] has now includes collaboration with three prestigious centres in France: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, Amiens University Hospital, University of Picardy Jules Verne.
I hope to continue my Anglo-French meetings with the assistance of the Erasmus Travel Scholarship scheme in the future, as well as with funding from the French Embassy and the French Multiple Sclerosis Society.
[1] Thompson, S.B.N., 2014. Yawning, fatigue and cortisol: expanding the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis. Medical Hypotheses. Doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2014.08.009.
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Insight Dementia educational resource: now available!
NIHR Global Health Research Academy 2025
Take part in the 2025 ESRC Festival of Social Science: Application Deadline Extended to Friday 23 May 2025
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
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Research Information Network
Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme pre-Published