I recently attended the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS7) Age 17 Survey: Consultative one day conference held at UCL’s Institute of Education in London. Cohort studies are extremely valuable because data is collected over time working with the same sample of people. Longitudinal studies permit to describe the natural history of the same population and can identify risk factors for example, for optimal health, educational attainment chances and/or employment opportunities. Professor Emla Fitzsimons is the Principal Investigator of MCS,m strategically invited leaders of the ‘Activities and Daily Life’, ‘Cognitive Development’, and the ‘Socio-Emotional Development’ to harness conference delegates’ view on what are the important and key issues that society should know when examining 17 year old adolescents’ lives. The leaders provided an overview of their current strategies for capturing participants’ unique style of life. Then through a series of workshops the pros and cons of these were discussed and summarised. I don’t envy their jobs! To study the individual characteristics and the associated environmental factors in such a large sample is a huge undertaking. The attendees were from very varied inter- and multi-disciplinary backgrounds working at a wide range of organisations, including government agencies. The common objective was to create a dataset that can inform many governmental policies on a variety of topics. The process of decision making over every aspects of the 7th sweep of the MCS is extremely complex. The key aspect of longitudinal studies is comparability. Although, each sweep is unique because of the cohort is ageing, there has to be a trend of using the same methodology overtime. Studies like the MCS are facing constant funding crises because they are very expensive to run. There is an ongoing revision of time taken to collect data, finding proxy to gold standard measures and considering cutting expensive data collection methods like, FMRI scans, use of accelerometers to assess physical activity patterns and conducting physical tests. Despite all of these difficulties, data from such studies are invaluable. For example, in the 7th sweep they want to omit interviewing parents about their child’s mental health. I argued to include this data at this sweep, as most adolescents in the study are still living at home and others (like family members) are the ones most likely to identify early signs of mental health problems. Early detection is vital, especially when 1 in 10 adolescents known to develop at least one serious depressive episode in the UK by the time they are 18. Check out the MCS website if you are interested. You can also access all speakers’ slides by following the link (http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/Conference.aspx?itemid=4285&itemTitle=MCS+Consultative+Conference&sitesectionid=28&sitesectiontitle=Events). Data from the previous 6 sweeps are available for researchers to interrogate.
Category / Health, Wellbeing & Society
CEMP awarded EU COST Action Grant
CEMP’s Marketa Zezulkova has been awarded a COST “Short-Term Scientific Mission” grant to conduct field media literacy research with 4-7 year old disadvantaged children in the Czech Republic and to establish a Child Research and Impact Group (CRAIG) with Charles University, Prague. Together with a ‘Mapping Media Literacy in the Czech Republic’ grant Marketa was also awarded recently, this new project further establishes CEMP’s partnership with CU, following the Media Education Summit in Prague last year.
HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.
The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.
BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.
Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!
Midwifery: A Revolutionary Practice?
This title was suggested by one of our collaborators Jeffery L Nicholas. Jeff is a scholar at Providence College in the USA who came to visit Bournemouth University recently. It is a great title, especially since many think about midwifery in terms of its long tradition. Some refer to midwifery as the ‘second oldest profession’. This blog post highlights some of the thinking generated through cross-national inter-disciplinary research.
Jeff (philosopher) and Edwin (medical sociologist) have been discussing the kind of political challenges midwives face today: struggles around the health of the mother and child, over costs (especially the underfunding of the NHS) and providers, and over the rights of women and families to choose. We both believe strongly that these struggles are inter-connected, and Jeff thinks a new approach is worthy of investigating for possible theoretical and practical aid in these struggles.
Specifically, Jeff looks at midwifery as a particular kind of practice with revolutionary potential. This question emerges from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre (1929—). MacIntyre condemns the bureaucratic society in which people become manipulators and manipulated. He also rejects large-scale, nation-state politics by which citizens might wrest control of their lives from those in charge. Rather, he focuses on the every day activities that comprise most of our lives. These activities—practices—come with their own ends that participants attempt to achieve, and they help teach individuals the virtues they need to act as agents in their lives, to participate in their communities, and to flourish. A strong community based around practices is one in which all can pursue the good life together, even if threatened by the state.
Having these discussions made us think about the substantive question, such as “Do some of the NHS free-standing midwife-led units, or some of the UK’s independent midwifery practices or The Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee comprise such communities?” and “How can we best study this phenomenon?” Taking the discussion one of two steps further we brainstormed questions such as “How can midwifery education help an individual develop the virtues to live a flourishing life?” and “How does the student midwife learn to reason in her every day work?”
We hope these questions interest others, and that, together, we might pursue avenues of research to help us understand midwifery in the wider society, to support midwives and communities of midwives, to support human beings in their every day lives, and to birth a better world.
Prof. Jeffery L. Nicholas (Providence College)
&
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
BU roadmap development workshop on digital healthcare technology
Twenty three academics and two colleagues from an SME came together in a work shop organised by Professor Hongnian Yu, Professor Tamas Hickish and Dr Carol Clark. The aim of the workshop was for colleagues to share their knowledge, expertise and experiences in the field of Digital technology.
Digital technology is transforming healthcare and there is a need for interdisciplinary teams at both local, national and international levels to collaborate in order to realise potential. At Bournemouth University leadership in digital healthcare technology is diluted by multiple groupings and departments associated with this strength. Therefore the aims of the workshop were to create a roadmap of research to integrate BU expertise and capacity. The aim was to capture envisioned future research requirements and act as a foundation for future research proposal development. Additionally, the workshop was to establish connections between the participating researchers and scope possible future research collaborations.
Thank you to Jason and Jayne for their help in getting this off the ground.
If anyone is interested in collaborating please contact:
Prof Hongnian Yu yuh@bournemouth.ac.uk; Prof Janet Dickinson jdickinson@bournemouth.ac.uk Dr Shuang Cang scang@bournemouth.ac.uk Dr Carol Clark cclark@bournemouth.ac.uk
What do we know about back pain? The Society for Back Pain Research AGM Bournemouth 2015
I was delighted to attend and represent BU at The Society for Back Pain Research (SBPR) Annual General Meeting 5-6 November 2015 which was conveniently held in Bournemouth, at Anglo-European College of Chiropractic, a partner college of BU. SBPR was formed in 1971 to promote the study of all clinical and scientific aspects of spinal pain, including the neck (my area of interest), and to encourage research into its causes, treatment and prevention. There are now over 200 members of the Society, from a wide range of disciplines including all sorts of healthcare professionals and scientists. Suffice to say if there is anything about back pain this audience does not know it is probably not worth knowing! Having said that, attending this meeting reminded me just how much about back pain is still unknown…
Biological Factors in Non-Specific Back Pain
The title of this year’s meeting was ‘Biological Factors in Non-Specific Back Pain’ to place an emphasis on the ‘biological’. It has been over 25 years since the biopsychosocial model was applied to back pain but lately research has tended to be more concerned with psychosocial aspects, such as fear-avoidance behaviour or depression; research into physical findings to diagnose back pain has sadly not been very fruitful. [An important point was made by Professor Maurits van Tulder, that research has actually been largely focused on psychological factors, to the expense of social factors]. While psychosocial factors do seem to be important in influencing patients’ recovery, they don’t get us much closer to a diagnosis, to finding out what is producing and driving the patient’s pain.
However, one of the presentations at SBPR hinted at where the research focus as regards imaging (and MRI specifically) could perhaps go. One of Associate Professor Mark Hancock’s suggestions was that we need studies that focus on changes on MRI, in response to treatment (or no treatment). But how do we best measure such changes? Which treatments and for whom? Could findings on MRI in a person without back pain predict back pain in the future?
Want to know more? For a longer version of this blog, click here.
Many thanks to the Professional Practice Development community, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, for making my attendance possible.
Type 2 diabetes study in Nepal
Knowing, or better, being able to estimate the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal can help recognise risk factors and plan for the necessary health services. Unlike many high-incme countries such as the UK or the Netherlands, many low-income countries like Nepal don’t have a health system that can generate data to establish the prevalence and incidence of a range of diseases. Therefore, to estimate the disease prevalence of any major disease, in this particular case Type 2 diabetes, we need to collate data from as many as possible small and medium-scale studies of a good enough quality. Hence our systematic review identified and collated studies describing the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal [1].
We summarised their findings, and to explored selected factors that may influence prevalence estimates. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to systematically evaluate the literature of prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal. Results showed that type 2 diabetes is a burden in Nepal, suggesting this is a possible public health area which needs more preventive interventions as well as efforts to control the disease. The paper is a collaboration between researchers based in Nepal, Denmark, Australia and the UK.
The paper is Open Access so freely available any where in the world.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Reference:
- Gyawali, B., Neupane, D., Sharma, R., Mishra, S.R., van Teijlingen, E., Kallestrup, P. (2015) Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal: a systematic review and meta-analysis from 2000 to 2014, Global Health Action 8: 29088 globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/29088/pdf_189
HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?
The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.
The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.
BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.
Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!
Ethnographies of West Howe: student research projects and community collaboration
Over the past few weeks, students on BA Sociology and Anthropology (Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at BU) have been carrying out ethnographic studies in West Howe, Bournemouth. As part of a focus on expanding undergraduate opportunities to conduct first hand research, students have designed their research projects collaboratively with local groups and organisations based in West Howe.
A short drive from Talbot campus, West Howe comprises a large post-war council estate, and faces a number of contemporary challenges in terms of employment, education, health and well being. It is also a green, spacious and welcoming community, with many active local initiatives aiming to improve quality of life for people in the area. Some aspects of its pre-World War Two history as a rural farming community remain present in its contemporary physical environment, combining with the modernist 1950s vision of suburban public space expressed in the architecture and street design. Local people’s experiences of the transition of the area from a largely rural hamlet to a modern housing estate, involving rapid population increase and large scale construction, was captured beautifully in two oral history books published in the 1980s – West Howe Proper and West Howe Too!
From an early point in their research projects, BU students invested time in building relationships with people in West Howe, working collaboratively with local schools, churches, children’s centres and volunteer groups to identify their key research questions, think through issues of research ethics, and use appropriate methods to gather relevant data, including participant observation, interviews, surveys and focus groups. Many student projects were inspired by the activities of local organisations, residents and volunteers, and the possibilities of engaged ethnography to produce findings that are locally useful and make a difference to people’s lives.
Next Thursday 3rd December students will be presenting their research findings to the community and inviting their engagement, comment and discussion. Themes of the research projects include: primary school education, children’s play and recreation, access to employment, perceptions of addiction, wellbeing and social support, social mobility and transport. Interested BU colleagues are also welcome to attend – please email Dr Rosie Read know if you plan to come (email: rread@bournemouth.ac.uk).
Event details:
Thursday 3rd December, 10am-1pm. Fernhealth Play, Verney Road, Bournemouth BH11 8DA.
Suicide in India: Modelling data
The latest BU research publication used a modelling approach to suicide in India [1]. The paper ‘Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling’ is now online and freely available as it was published in an Open Access journal. The first author of this paper is BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Brijesh Sathian. The modelling resulted in some useful predictions of future risk of suicide at a population level, see for example: 10.12691.ajphr-3-5A-17.fig_1
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
Sathian, B. , De, A. , Teijlingen, E. V. , Simkhada, P. et al. (2015). Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling. American Journal of Public Health Research, 3(5A), 80-87. Online at: http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/3/5A/17/
Ecosystem Services Partnership 2015 Conference, South Africa
Over 350 delegates from around the world attended the Ecosystem Services Partnership conference this year (9-13th Nov 2015) in Stellenbosch – near Cape Town, South Africa. Being fortunate enough to attend this year myself, I presented my research on assessing cultural ecosystem service; a multifaceted approach using various techniques including participatory GIS, spatial mapping, GPS tracking of visitors and use of existing data sets explored in relation to the New Forest.
Themed around nature, people and prosperity, the conference aimed to centre on the dialogue between public and private sector utilisation of the ecosystem services concept.
The largest conference of its kind, the keynote speakers were diverse. Highlights included Executive Director of the Natural Capital Coalition’s Mark Gough (the coalition aims to build clear guidance on how business can effectively and measure natural capital just like financial capital is measured). The conference was closed with an inspiring and convincing talk from ‘Gross Domestic Problem’ author Lorenzo Fioamonti (Professor of Political Science at the University of Pretoria) about the downfalls of using the GDP statistic as the only measure of an economy.
Arjan Gosal is currently working as a Research Assistant on the HEIF project: Modelling Natural Capital in Dorset.
Team BU shortlisted for Sports Technology Awards
Well done to Team BU who has been shortlisted for Sport England Sports Technology Hackathon Awards 2016.
Successful ESRC Festival of Social Sciences in EBC today

This afternoon Prof. Jonathan Parker introduced the final of three session in the Executive Business Centre under the title ‘Enhancing social life through global social research: Part 3. Social science research in diverse communities’. This session was well attended and coveredwas a wide-range of interesting social science research topics.
Professor of Sociology Ann Brooks started off the session with her presentation on ‘Emotional labour and social change.’ She was followed by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen who gave an overview of research in Nepal. FHSS PhD student Andy Harding introduced his thesis research into ‘Information provision and housing choices for older people.’ At this point Prof. Brooks gave her second talk on ‘Risk and the crisis of authenticity in cities’. Social Anthropologist Dr. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers spoke about her research on ‘Reconciliation and engaged ethnography in the Balkans.’ Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim highlighted her study on ‘North Korean defectors in the UK’ and the session was completed by Dr. Mastoureh Fathi who presented her analysis of parenting books for Muslim parents in the UK.
This was the last day of the ESRC Festival of Social Science at which Bournemouth University was extremely well presented!
Thank you to my colleagues for organising this and the ESRC for funding the events!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
(medical sociologist)
BUDI’s ESRC Festival of Learning event held on 11th November 2015
BUDI hosted a packed day of events showcasing some of our research, community-based projects and awareness-raising work. Attendees included university staff and students, people living with dementia and their family members, care home staff, members of the Alzheimer’s Society and interested members of the public. The day started with an announcement of the commitment by Bournemouth University to work towards becoming dementia friendly. This entails delivering dementia friends training to all university staff and, in time, to all students, ensuring Human Resource processes meet the needs of family members caring for people with dementia and anyone with a diagnosis of dementia working in the university, ensuring any marketing and communications are ‘dementia friendly’ and working with Estates to ensure the university meets dementia friendly design principles as much as possible.
We were delighted to see the return of the BUDI orchestra, comprising people with dementia, their family members, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra musicians John Murphy and Kevin Pritchard and led by Andy Baker, a freelance musician, who showed us techniques to support successful rehearsals and performances. This interactive workshop had everyone participating and it set the tone for an inspiring day.
BUDI orchestra and the audience playing music together.
We also heard from Dr Samuel Nyman about his recently NIHR funded Tai Chi project and had a chance to learn some basic Tai Chi from Robert Joyce. In the afternoon we were inspired to create poetry by Jonnie Seagrave ‘Fluffypunk’ and shown how to create poetry with people with dementia.
We then heard from Mary O’Malley about her Ph.D. investigating wayfinding in people with dementia, followed by a dementia friends training session delivered by Dr Michelle Heward. Throughout the day, we had visitors to our BUDI stand and the Alzheimer’s Society’s table, In the Student Centre, SportBU had a sponsored spin bike challenge to cycle 850,000 metres – a metre for every person living with Dementia in the UK. They managed this amazing feat and raised £100.00 for the Alzheimer’s Society. A huge thank you to everyone who took part and contributed.
The day finished with a screening of the film Still Alice, which portrays the journey of a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in her early 50s, and this was followed by a lively panel discussion (Professor Candida Yates, Professor Iain MacRury, Dr Fiona Cownie and Dr Fiona Kelly), in which the audience offered their insights, experiences and thoughts on the film.
Pictures (Learning Tai Chi, Learning Poetry, BUDI welcome desk and SportBU bike challenge)




New midwifery publication PhD student Carol Richardson
Carol Richardson, joint Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and CMMPH’s PhD student, published her latest article ‘On running for supervisor’ in the most recent edition of The Practising Midwife. Carol as Clinical Academic Doctoral Midwife is conducting her thesis research on the topic of pregnancy and obesity. Her PhD is supervised by FHSS Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Carol Wilkins & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
Congratulations!
TetraGrip: A functional electrical stimulation (FES) device for restoring hand and arm functions in people with spinal cord injuries
We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.
Speaker: Lalitha Venugopalan
Lalitha is a Bournemouth University Creative Technology postgraduate student researching for a PhD in Biomedical Engineering based at the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Title: TetraGrip: A functional electrical stimulation (FES) device for restoring hand and arm functions in people with spinal cord injuries
Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM
Date: Wednesday 18th November 2015
Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus
Abstract:
TetraGrip is a four channel upper limb FES device for restoring the hand and arm functions on people with C5-C7 tetraplegia. This device uses an inertial measurement sensor (IMU) for detecting the shoulder elevation/depression. The signal from the IMU is used for controlling the functions of the stimulator and for adjusting the grasp strength.
The stimulator is programmed to operate in the following modes: exercise, key grip and palmar grasp. Key grip mode (fig 1) is used to grasp smaller objects like a pen or a fork, whereas the palmar grasp (fig 2) is used to grasp larger objects like a glass. The exercise mode is used to strengthen the forearm muscles.
The system will be clinically tried on ten able bodied volunteers to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility. If the results from this study are found to be satisfactory, then the device will be clinically tried on tetraplegic volunteers for answering the following questions:
- Is possible for a person with tetraplegia to generate the desired input signal to control the operation of the device?
- Does the system improve the hand and arm functions of the user?
- Is the system easy to use for people with tetraplegia?
We hope to see you there.
November Café Scientific joint venture between FHSS & FMC
This month’s Café Scientific last week (Nov. 3rd) was run as a collaboration between CMMPH and the Media School. Café Scientific is a monthly event hosted at Café Boscanova for Bournemouth University.
This month’s debate was chaired by CMMPH’s Prof. Vanora Hundley (sitting in the centre of the photo taken by Naomi Kay). The debaters on either side were Dr. Ann Luce and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Ann Luce is a well recognised media researcher and a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Communication who argued against the motion “Fear in childbirth: is the media responsible?” Two opposing presentations generated a lively debate. The audience, however, was not with Ann and overwhelmingly voted in favour of the motion.
The next session of Café Scientific also has a health flavour as James Gavin will be talking on Tuesday December 1st on: Upwardly mobile: Why stair climbing helps us stay active.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
BU PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s publication in MIDWIFERY
Ms. Sheetal Sharma, PhD student in FHSS, published her latest paper in Midwifery (Elsevier) this week. This latest paper ‘Midwifery2030, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean?’ is co-authored by a number of illustious midwifery researchers. The 2014 State of the World’s Midwifery report included a new framework for the provision of womancentred sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health care, known as the Midwifery2030 Pathway. The Pathway was designed to apply in all settings (high-, middle- and low income countries, and in any type of health system). This paper describes the process of developing the Midwifery2030 Pathway and explain the meaning of its different components, with a view to assisting countries with its implementation.
Sheetal is currently in her final year of a PhD on the evaluation of the impact of a maternity care intervention in Nepal.
Congratulations!!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Catherine Angell & Prof. Vanora Hundley (all CMMPH)
&
Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University).
Reference:
ten Hoope-Bender, P. Lopes, S., Nove, A., Michel-Schuldt, M., Moyo, NT, Bokosi, M., Codjia, L., Sharma, S., Homer, CSE. (2015) Midwifery2013, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean? Midwifery















New HIV paper by BU PhD student
BU Annual Research Conference: Poster Exhibition Call for Applications
Vitae Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition: Applications Now Open
3C Online Social: Thursday 26 March 1–2pm – Research Culture, Community & Can you Guess Who?
Four BU students at national midwifery conference
ECR Funding Open Call: Research Culture & Community Grant – Apply now
ECR Funding Open Call: Research Culture & Community Grant – Application Deadline Friday 12 December
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 Call
ERC Advanced Grant 2025 Webinar
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease