Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The international publisher Routledge published earlier this month a new book with the title: The Psychology of Stress [1]. The three authors of this excellent book are: Drs. Charlotte Mottram, Alison Woodward and Shanti Farrington. The latter two academics are based in Bournemouth University’s Psychology Department.
Well done and congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
Dr. Laura Iannuzzi, based in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health, is acting as one of the two guest editors of a Special Issue for the international journal Healthcare. This Special Issue called ‘Advancing Midwifery and Nursing Practice: Equity, Inclusion and Integrated Care’ currently has a call out for contributions. Details can be found by clicking here!
Healthcare is looking for authors to submit papers exploring strategic directions for midwifery and nursing in advancing inclusion, equity, and health. This Special Issue is open to topics such as integrated care strategies and long-term care models, professional nursing roles, evidence-based interventions, and community-engaged approaches. The proposed theme aligns with Healthcare’s focus on multidisciplinary research and practical solutions that improve health outcomes across populations.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
The Guest Editors are Dr. Simona Fumagalli and Dr. Laura Iannuzzi
Tulip bulbs can be eaten, but it is not a common source of human food. Eating tulip bulbs helped many Dutch people in the Hunger Winter, the last winter of the Second World War (1944-1945). During the German occupation the Dutch suffered from a shortage of food. In the collection of my mother, I found a short book published in 1941 with a made-do-and-mend approach about growing your own food. My mother died this summer at the age of 92.
The book ‘Veel groenten van weinig grond’ (in Dutch: Many vegetables from little soil) gives advice to readers on how to grown vegetables in small plots of land, gardens, etc. This book in the first year of the occupation does not mention the use of tulips as food. Hidden in the book was a typed one-page sheet with three instruction for tulips followed by five recipes. 
The main message seems to be that the preparation of the tulip bulbs as well as the taste is very much like potatoes. For example, the recipe for tulip bulb puree includes boiling the bulbs, one packet of vanilla sugar or vanilla essence, three spoons of honey, artificial honey or syrup, mix well and add warm water.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Faculty of Health, Environment & Medical Sciences
This morning ResearchGate informed us that our paper ‘Understanding health education, health promotion and public health‘ [1] which was published in 2021 has been read 8,000 times. This thinking piece delves into the differences between the concepts of: (a) health education; (b) health promotion; and (c) public health. This confusion does not limit itself to the individual terms,
but also to how these terms relate to each other. Some use terms such as health education and health promotion interchangeably; others see them clearly as different concepts. The paper starts by outlining the authors’ understanding of these individual terms.
They suggest how the five principles of health promotion as outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1984) fit into Tannahill’s (2009) model of three overlapping areas: (a) health education; (b) prevention of ill health; and (c) health protection. Such schematic overview places health education within health promotion and health promotion itself in the centre of the overarching disciplines of education and public health. The authors hope their article helps reduce confusion among all those interested in our discipline, including students, educators, journalists, practitioners, policymakers, politicians, and researchers.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
Reference:
This week Dr. Pramod Regmi, who is Principal Academic in International Health in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, taught a CPD refresher workshop on systematic reviewing in Kathmandu. This workshop is part of our long-standing Memorandum of Agreement between Bournemouth University (BU) and Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal. The teaching aimed to refresh knowledge and provide practical training on various aspects of the systematic review process, including literature searching, study selection, data extraction, critical appraisal, and synthesis. The programme, which included both staff and Master students, was jointly organized by MMIHS and BU.
The staff at MMIHS also welcome BU’s Ph.D. student Ms. Anjana Paudyal. Anjana is currently in Nepal as part of the UK’s Turing Scheme Traineeship Programme. Over the past few years MMIHS have kindly hosted several BU students who came to Nepal under the Turing Scheme. Anjana’s Ph.D. focuses on human trafficking, which is form of modern slavery. Despite being a global problem, modern slavery is understudied and poorly understood. Victims of modern slavery are exploited and can experience significant physical, psychological, or sexual, and reproductive health problems.
Until recently, there has been little research in this field, especially in low-income countries such as Nepal. Anjana”s Ph.D. fits in with BU’s collaboration with the US-based La Isla Network, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Nepal Development Society (for details click here!). Led by La Isla Network, we are leading the first-ever international effort to research and address trafficking among Nepalese labour migrants. The work is funded by a $4 million cooperative agreement awarded by the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, International Programs.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Today the University of Huddersfield reported online on the international array of over 70 delegates who attended the Annual Meeting of the Global Consortium for Public Health Research (GCPHR) hosted by the University of Huddersfield in June. Academics, policymakers, clinicians and researchers from around the world (including from Bournemouth University) spent two days on campus for the third GCPHR yearly meeting. Further details on the online report can be read here!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Today was the first day of strategic planning for the MIHERC project. Our collaborators from Sheffield and Doncaster came down to Bournemouth University to discuss progress, meet with midwifery practitioners from University Hospital Dorset NHS Foundation Trust,
and plan action for the coming year. 
MIHERC comprises an interdisciplinary team, led by Prof. Hora Soltani at Sheffield Hallam University, which has members from ethnically and professionally diverse colleagues from Sheffield Hallam University, Bournemouth University and Doncaster City Council.
Professors Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen from the Centre for Midwifery and Women’s Health (CMWH), and Prof. Huseyin Dogan and Dr. Deniz Cetinkaya from the Department of Computing and Informatics are the key Bournemouth University applicants in MIHERC (Maternal & Infant Health Equity Research Centre). Further Bournemouth University academics have been incorporated since its start, these include: Drs. Malika Felton, Orlanda Harvey, Dominique Mylod and Daisy Wiggins. MIHERC is one of the nine NIHR-funded groups to tackle inequalities in UK maternal healthcare as part of the NIHR Challenge Call: Maternity Disparities Consortium. We are proud that of the nine funded groupings across the UK, MIHERC is the only one that is midwifery led.
The long awaited 10-year health plan for England emphasises the use of digital technologies and the aspiration to “make the NHS the most AI-enabled health system in the world”. This requires expertise in artificial intelligence and data science, but interdisciplinary collaboration is also essential if we are to make this a reality.
The Maternal and Infant Health Equity Research Centre (MIHERC) aims to do this by bringing together experts in maternal health, behavioural science, AI and digital health to help drive innovative solutions through co-production and real partnership, ensuring better outcomes for all women and babies. MIHERC is led by Professor Hora Soltani at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) in collaboration with key partners including Bournemouth University (BU), the City of Doncaster Council and South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub.
Alongside Professor Vanora Hundley, who has been appointed as a Capacity Training and Development Lead, Professor Huseyin Dogan and Prof Alessandro Di Nuovo from MIHERC will be co-leading the cross-cutting workstream titled “digital, data, monitoring, evaluation and implementation science” as part of the NIHR Maternity Disparities consortium. This workstreams aims
– to identify and test trusted, reliable AI technologies for deployment by the NHS to help reduce disparities;
– to develop and refine equity monitoring, real-world evaluation and implementation science methods for use in maternity disparities research, with a focus on enhancing their robustness and practical application;
– to embed advanced analytic and digital tools and implementation frameworks into maternity disparities research to improve the rigor and impact of studies on equity; and
– to build a community of practice within and external to consortium to develop analytical, methodological, and implementation science capacity.
The BU key academics are: Huseyin Dogan, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen, and Deniz Çetinkaya. Please do get in touch with the MIHERC team for further information.
On World Refugee Day 2025, Friday 20 June, the new Maternal and Infant Health Equity Research Centre (MIHERC) website was launched. MIHERC is a hub for research, collaboration and action on maternal and infant health equity. MIHERC) is a collaborative effort between Sheffield Hallam University, Bournemouth University and City of Doncaster Council working to reduce health inequalities for mothers and babies. This year’s World Refugee Day’s theme, hashtagSolidarity, reflects MIHERC’s mission to stand with all mothers and babies – especially those facing health and social inequalities or barriers to care.
Yesterday the online newspaper Online Khabar in Nepal published an opinion piece in English written by three Bournemouth University academics working with a colleague in Kathmandu. This interdisciplinary piece ‘Resilient through experiences: Unlocking the entrepreneurial prowess of Nepal’s left-behind women‘ brings together ideas gained from many different studies and disciplines. The three authors from Bournemouth University are: Dr. Sukanya Ayatakshi-Endow, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and Dr. Pramod Regmi, and they collaborated with Dr. Rashmee Rajkarnikar who is based at Nepal’s oldest and largest university, Tribhuvan University. The four authors brings insights from economics, business studies, sociology, women’s studies, migration studies and health.
Yesterday (25 June) the online journal PLoS One published ‘Life-time experience of violence among women and girls living with disability in Nepal‘ our latest study on disability in Nepal [1]. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 28 municipalities representing all seven provinces as well as all three ecological regions of Nepal. A total of 1,294 women and girls with disability aged 15–59 years participated in 2021. We trained local enumerators using the KoBo application on smartphones or tablets. Both written and oral informed consent was sought from all participants. Cross-tabulations were performed in STATA 18 to determine the distribution of the prevalence of violence. Also, bivariable and multivariable logistic regression models were fitted to establish association between the participants’ characteristics and odds of experiencing violence.
Overall, 457 (35.32%) women living with disabilities had ever experienced violence at a point in their lifetime. Psychological/emotional violence was the most prevalent violence (74.40%) followed by physical violence (31.07%) and denial of services (28.67%). Age was positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing violence. Women belonging to the Brahman/Chhetri ethnic group had reduced odds of violence [AOR = 0.56; 95%CI: 0.37–0.85] compared to Hill Dalits. Divorced or separated women showed a markedly higher likelihood of experiencing violence [AOR = 6.69; 95%CI: 2.31–19.40] compared to currently married women. Participants who had not witnessed violence against other women exhibited significantly higher odds of experiencing violence [AOR = 1.86; 95%CI: 1.20–2.89]. Women living in the Koshi province [AOR = 4.04; 95%CI: 2.54–6.42], Madhesh province [AOR = 2.16; 95%CI: 1.15–4.08] and Bagmati province [AOR = 2.21; 95%CI: 1.41–3.46] reported significantly higher odds of experiencing violence compared to those in Karnali.
The paper concludes oncludes that age, ethnicity, marital status, and provincial residence are significant predictors of violence among women and girls living with disability in Nepal. Interventions aimed at addressing violence against women living with disability in Nepal must prioritize older women and those who were previously married. Also, policy-makers may want to consider giving priority must be given to those provinces where the prevalence and risk of experiencing violence is highest.
The study was funded The United Nations Women Trust Fund, and the paper is freely available in the Open Access journal. We previously published on research into disability in Nepal in 2023 [2].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Visiting Faculty, Centre for Disability Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India.
References:
This week the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Global Consortium for Public Health (GCPHR) takes place at the University of Huddersfield on June 25th-26th. GCPHR 2025 was attended by people involved in global health research from the UK, India, Nepal, Qatar, and Ghana. Building on the success of the 2023 inaugural two-day meeting and the second annual event in 2024, the 2025 meeting brought together a diverse community of health researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and global health leaders. This initiative has as its main aim to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, promote innovation, and strengthen international collaboration.
Bournemouth University academics have been involved since GCPHR’s inception, and this year Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen from the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH) contributed to a panel discussion on ‘Innovating Tomorrow: National and Global Research in the Age of AI’. He presented around the pros and cons of Interdisciplinary Research in Global Health. Together with colleagues Edwin has published several papers on interdisciplinary research [1-3] and collaborative writing of research output with a range of colleagues from different disciplines [4-5].
Prof. Padam Simkhada from the University of Huddersfield (and Visiting Faculty in BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences outlined the recently awarded British Academy grant on ‘Evidence-based Policy-Making in Nepal’. The latter project, which includes BU’s Dr. Pramod Regmi as co-investigator, also has policy-makers in Nepal as collaborators, giving it great potential to become a REF Impact Case-Study.
References:
Event Date and time: Tuesday, 15 July 2025, 1200-1600 GMT
Event Location: Bournemouth Gateway Building, St Pauls Lane, Bournemouth, BH8 8GP Room BG
(Refreshments and Lunch will be provided)
Join us to explore the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for training and evaluating dynamic risk assessment (DRA) in domiciliary care settings.
This stakeholder workshop will seek insights on the following research questions:
Featured Speakers (TBC):
Who Should Attend?
About CfACTs+ Project
This project explores how creative technologies like VR can transform training, improve operational efficiency, and support workforce development; see:
Reserve Your Spot Today!
This event is free, but places are limited.
Register via Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-on-domiciliary-care-worker-training-virtual-reality-for-dra-tickets-1433020275219?aff=oddtdtcreator
Event Funded by:
BU Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) & Research Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF)
Next month on July 25th Bournemouth University will join in with the world-wide celebrations of World Drowning Prevention Day 2025. The first achievement to highlight is Dr. Jill Nash interesting piece recently published in The Conversation, in which she highlights Five ways to keep teenagers safe by the water [1]. It is also worthwhile to read last year’s contribution to World Drowning Prevention Day by Jill on the dangers of being near water and the role emotions play in making safer decisions [2].
The second major piece of research related to drowning prevention at Bournemouth University is the Sonamoni Project. The Sonamoni Project is working with communities in rural Bangladesh utilizing human-centered design (HCD) techniques. 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. 
Sonamoni is coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the University of the West of England (Bristol), the University of Southampton, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), Design Without Border (DWB) in Uganda and Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB). The interdisciplinary team at Bournemouth University covers three faculties and six academics: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
This international project funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme, also includes a BU-based PhD student, Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossein. He recently published the first article related to drowning prevention in Nepal [3].
References:
Centre for Wellbeing & Long-term Health, Rehabilitation & Prevention workstream Networking and Development Event – Wed 25th June! In BG-212.
Does your research broadly fit the category of “rehabilitation and prevention”? Then join us for this first event of the Rehabilitation & Prevention workstream of the Centre for Wellbeing and Long-term Health!
Whatever the focus of your research is or your professional background, whether it be at population or individual level, public health or rehabilitation of a particular condition in a particular demographic of people, whether you are a PGR or a senior academic, we would like this to be your research home. Come and share the highlights of what you do in a 5-minute Lightning talk, and hear from the highlights of others.
We want this to be a stimulating event and you might just find your next collaborator(s). Dr Jonny Branney and Dr Katie Collins, the workstream leads, will be taking notes with a view to creating a quick reference guide of what the workstream members are working on to make it easier for you to find the expertise you need for your next project. We want the workstream to be a place to talk about the sort of research enquiry that gets you out of bed in the morning, that puts the joy into your working life. A place to share and celebrate in your project successes, and to get a welcome lift when your latest research bid or journal submissions are rejected. A place to learn from those more experienced, from those with alternative expertise, identify a mentor or a coach, and for others to learn from you and benefit from your coaching and mentorship. A place to test out your ideas and get feedback from critical friends. A place to identify collaborators for your next research project. Is your research broadly “rehabilitation and prevention”? Then this is your place. Register here!!
Lightning Talks
Attendees are required to prepare a 5 minute lightning talk – 5 PowerPoint slides maximum to summarise your background as a researcher, what you’ve done, are doing, and plan to do. Nice and concise so we quickly get to know what everyone is about. There will be a timer!
Rough Itinerary
12:30pm Lunch – provided
1pm Welcome from workstream leads
1.05pm 5-minute Lightning talks
2.50pm – 3pm Closing remarks from workstream leads
See you there! Room BG-212.
For further information on this event please contact theme leads, Dr Jonny Branney (jbranney@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Dr Katey Collins (kcollins@bournemouth.ac.uk).
The academic editor of PLOS ONE informed us yesterday that our latest paper ‘Life-time experience of violence among women and girls living with disability in Nepal: A cross-sectional study’ [1] has been accepted for publication. The paper is based on research conducted as part of the Inclusive Partnership Against Violence (INPAV) project in Nepal. 
Working with our long-term research paper Green Tara Nepal (GTN) and funded by The United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF) through Nepal Disabled Women Association (NDWA), we have been involved in InPAV. This project included a situation analysis of the existing government setup One-stop Crisis Management Center (OCMC) to understand the inclusiveness of the OCMC services for girls and women with disabilities. The paper just accepted was part of this research.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
The Acquired Brain Injury Rehabilitation and Adult Neuropsychology Services in Dorset are having their 25 years anniversary which they are celebrating with this conference held in Bournemouth University.
We would like to invite you to this conference on 10th July 2025 which brings together professionals, researchers, and students who work with people with acquired brain injuries such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, tumour, or brain infections to discuss holistic and effective rehabilitation approaches in practice and applied research.
The Acquired Brain Injury Rehabilitation and Adult Neuropsychology Services in Dorset have always supported multidisciplinary collaborations across the field of rehabilitation and recovery. They have continued to have strong collaborations with Bournemouth University. Members have supported teaching and work placements at the MSc level for over a decade and collaborated with BU researchers from the INRC to bring together practice and research. This conference celebrates and showcases the services and these collaborations in this conference by bringing together professionals, clinical practice, and applied research.
The conference will include presentations about the ABRIS’s holistic rehabilitation philosophy, discussions about effective brain injury rehabilitation programmes, case stories and displays about bespoke person-centred rehabilitation activities.
This conference will be of interests to occupational therapists, speech therapists, clinical and neuropsychologists, doctors and rehabilitation physicians, physiotherapists, rehabilitation assistants, nurses, and case managers.
The conference is organised in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research Centre at Bournemouth (Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research Centre | Bournemouth University) (Leads: Drs Ellen Seiss & Emili Balaguer-Ballester) and co-sponsored by Trauma Informed Practice Services (CIC www.thetipsuk.org).
For more details of the topic, and tickets (limited availability) please see the link on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brain-injury-rehabilitation-a-holistic-approach-that-works-tickets-1112548555679?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Bournemouth University has received funding from the NIHR to support an internship for a Social Work student to seek views and perception of women from ethnic minority and migrant communities. Therefor, we are seeking volunteers to take part in a small group on-line workshop to hear from women from ethnic minority and migrant communities. They are invited to share their thoughts, insights and experiences of engaging in health research so that we can better understand what would work when conducting research with this population. This work sits within a larger NIHR-funded project that aims to reduce health inequalities for marginalised mothers and babies. BU Profs Huseyin Dogan and Professor Vanora Hundley are leading workstreams within this prestigious NIHR Maternity Disparities project over the next five years (more information about the bigger project can be found here!).
We would like to hear from women from ethnic minority and migrant communities, also referred as women from the global majority. You do not need to be pregnant or have had a baby to participate in the workshop. If you are a woman from an ethnic minority and migrant community in the UK and you would like to take part please apply here! The event will be online on Tuesday 8th July from 11.00-12.30. No specific experience of involvement in research is required.
Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Faculty of Health & Social Sciences
BU staff can login below:
Bournemouth University psychologists publish new book
Connecting Research with Practice: FoodMAPP Secondment in Austria and France
Health promotion paper read 8,000 times
The Beautiful Work Challenge: On Birth
Free event on Solutions to Inequalities in Dementia Diagnosis and Care
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 Call
ERC Advanced Grant 2025 Webinar MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
Research Information Network
Horizon Europe Work Programme 2025 Published
Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme pre-Published
Explore our work, meet our partners, and find out how you can collaborate with us by clicking here! MIHERC is led by Sheffield Hallam University, with Bournemouth University as a key partner and the important funding coming from NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) Maternity Challenge Initiative. The BU key academics are: Huseyin Dogan, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen, and Deniz Çetinkaya. Please share with all who may be interested.