Category / Health, Wellbeing & Society

Dr Fiona Kelly attends the North Sea Meeting, Treviso, Italy

Dr Fiona Kelly attended the Dementia North Sea meeting in Treviso, Italy from 22nd to 24th April 2015. This is an informal meeting of researchers and practitioners from across Europe who meet annually to share research findings and to update on the work of their dementia research and practice centres. This year, there were delegates from the UK, France, Norway, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Italy. The meeting started with a welcome from our hosts from the Istituto per Servizi di Ricovero e Assistenza agli Anziani (The Institute for Services, Hospital and Elderly Care) and followed with updates from each centre, including any political developments relating to dementia. It continued with presentations from each delegate and we heard about a variety of initiatives, including the development of a technology toolbox for people with dementia and their family caregivers to try out different technologies before committing to buying them, an e-learning game for professional caregivers, a programme to develop a global definition of person centred care and to place care on an equal footing with cure, innovative day care models including a house run and managed by people with dementia and the development of an audit tool to measure the quality of dementia gardens.
Delegates visited three specialist units for people with dementia, showcased as being innovative for their design and practice. It was interesting to see how a very strong focus on meeting social, spiritual and sensory needs, providing access to outdoors and combining cognitive stimulation therapy to community dwelling people with dementia was juxtaposed by a strong medical input, particularly when caring for people with dementia nearing the end of life.

On the second evening we were treated to a water bus journey through Venice, ending up in the impressive St Mark’s Square where we strolled in the Spring evening sunshine.

Our meal of traditional Venetian food of sea food and squid ink risotto, baked fish with roasted vegetables and tiramisu was lively with talk of dementia ideas, collaborations and anecdotes. Our dash on a water taxi to catch the last train back finished off the night on a high, if relieved, note.

The final day saw presentations on creative innovations in dementia care and included a presentation by Dr Kelly on preliminary findings from an evaluation of the BUDI orchestra. A thread running through these presentations was the potential of the arts for fun, mutual learning, social inclusion, the equalising of those who take part and improvements in well-being, even if in the moment.

BUDI are delighted to host the event in April 2016 and we look forward to welcoming our European colleagues to Bournemouth.

“I should have married an Englishman”: East Asian women’s perception of their husband’s ethnicity on gendered division of household labour

 

Dr Hyun-Joo Lim, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

University of Bristol’s Centre for East Asian Studies at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies organised a workshop on Europe and East Asia for PhD researchers and early careers academics on Friday 27 March. This was a great opportunity for an academic like me, whose interest lies in East Asia and migrants from this region, to present my work and to network with emerging scholars in the field.

My presentation in this workshop focused on East Asian (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) women’s perception of their husband’s ethnicity in the division of housework and how they construct different modes of masculinities based on ‘race’ and ethnicity. This paper was drawn from my PhD, which examined the life stories of first generation East Asian women living in England. One of the objectives of the study was to explore gender relations at home and the ethnicity of the husband emerged as a major factor affecting them. My findings indicate a certain degree of differences in the division of household labour between couples, depending on whether they have got married to British men or East Asian men. Three participants reported to have egalitarian gender relations at home with men sharing housework and childcare either equally or even taking primary roles. All the women in this category got married to white British men. By contrast, 11 women said that they took almost sole responsibility for housework and childcare, regardless of their employment status. Among this group all but one woman were married to East Asian men.

Whilst the above findings are interesting and illuminate some degree of reality in these women’s experiences, the aim of my research is not to present a generalisable fact. Rather, I was interested in how these women construct divergent modes of masculinities in their talk and its theorisation. Therefore, my paper focused more on the nuanced meanings of East Asian women’s narratives and the impact of cultural imperialism on their perception of masculinities. More revealing than my above findings is the way women divide masculinities along the racial line and place a kind of hierarchical order. Often in their stories British men were depicted positively as egalitarian and doing a lot in the house. If they didn’t, they were represented as outdated like East Asian men. In contrast, East Asian men were portrayed as backwards and traditional, who did not move a finger in the house.

The idea of ‘racialised masculinities’ was developed from the concept of ‘racialised femininities’ based on the work of Pyke and Johnson (2003), which explored the way second generation Korean- and Vietnamese-American women construct femininities in their everyday life. According to this study, young Asian American women depicted American and Asian femininities in a dichotomised way, similar to the way my participants talked about British and East Asian masculinities. Their participants represented American femininity as independent, active and assertive, superior to Asian femininity, which is seen as passive, weak and hyperfeminine. My paper illuminates East Asian women’s internalisation of the discursive construct of the Orient by the West (Said’s 1978) and how it continues to affect their everyday psyche, resonating in their language. I concluded the presentation, arguing that racially divided masculinities overlook persistent gender inequality in Britain as well as variation within a society. For instance, it is well documented that women continue to take the majority of household work, including childcare, in Britain, despite some increase in men’s participation (e.g.  Crompton, et al. 2007; Geist 2010; Kan 2012). Simultaneously, a growing number of East Asian men, especially those who are well educated and have professional jobs, are contributing more and more to housework and childcare (Ishii-Kuntz, et al. 2004; Schwalb, et al. 2004, 2010; Yoon and Chung 1999). The paper was very well received with a lot of follow-up questions and round table discussions.

 

 

We regret to inform you ….

PG research, Publishing, Research Integritiy, student research

It is always disappointing for an academic author to receive a rejection letter.   Today I received yet another one from Midwifery (published by Elsevier).   Sometimes I think academic publishing in good journal is not getting any easier over time.  Neither does the experience of having  over two hundred peer-reviewed academic papers make a rejection easier to deal with.  This was my third paper in a row that got rejected by Midwifery.  All three papers were rejected on resubmission, so a lot of extra work had gone into these papers after the initial peer review and the editor’s feedback.  These three papers where led by three different postgraduate students (Sharma, Baral & Burton) as first authors, and in each case co-authored by myself and different BU academics and/or from other universities.

Midwifery is the journal in which I have published more papers than any other journal (see top blue piece of pie in ‘Documents by source’) as reported on SCOPUS today (26 April 2015).  Moreover, I am co-author of one of the top five most downloaded papers in Midwifery for 2014 (see recent BU Research Blog), and this paper is also the most cited Midwifery paper since 2010!   Still I manage to have three papers rejected in a row.

What is does show to me is that the journal’s peer review system is robust (i.e. blind and impartial) because I am also a member of Midwifery’s editorial committee.  I think it is back to the drawing board and discuss with each set of authors what the next step should be for our papers.  To be fair we had a paper published already this year in Midwifery, namely:  Grylka-Baeschlin, S., van Teijlingen, E.R., Stoll, K., Gross, M.M. (2015) Translation and validation of the German version of the Mother-Generated Index and its application during the postnatal period. Midwifery 31(1): 47–53.

As an editorial board we try continuously to maintain a high quality of papers to be published in our journal, and we would like to encourage potential authors to keep submitting their papers to Midwifery.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

CEMP / CEL Research Bulletin April 2015

Funding opportunities, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment

 

               

 

The latest CEMP bulletin, now combined with the Centre for Excellence in Learning, is now available as a PDF  CEMP CEL bulletin April 15  or word doc  CEMP CEL bulletin April 15

The bulletin provides a ‘top 20’ of research funding opportunities related to education, learning and pedagogy research and grouped into the the three BU learning research sub-themes: Media and Digital Literacies, Practitioner Enquiry and (Higher) Education Dynamics.

To follow up any of these opportunities, please contact Julian or Richard in CEMP or Marcellus Mbah in CEL.

Impact of fatigue management research in Multiple Sclerosis – FACETS, IMSPIRE and beyond

Fusion, PG research

Lunchtime Seminar with Peter Thomas, Wednesday 15th April 1-1.50pm, R303

Please come to listen to Professor Peter Thomas present on the impact that his research into fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis is having, noting the importance of research with strong potential for patient benefit, and the importance of the research funder.

Further information on this Seminar series can be found by clicking on the link below.

Impact Seminar dates 2015

There is no need to book – just turn up. Contact Zoe on zsheppard@bournemouth.ac.uk for more information.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Impact of fatigue management research in Multiple Sclerosis – FACETS, IMSPIRE and beyond

Fusion, PG research, Research assessment, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, student research

Lunchtime Seminar with Peter Thomas, Wednesday 15th April 1-1.50pm, R303

Please come to listen to Professor Peter Thomas present on the impact that his research into fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis is having, noting the importance of research with strong potential for patient benefit, and the importance of the research funder.

Further information on this Seminar series can be found by clicking on the link below.

Impact Seminar dates 2015

There is no need to book – just turn up. Contact Zoe on zsheppard@bournemouth.ac.uk for more information.

We look forward to seeing you there.

New paper on obesity research

Publishing

Colleagues associated with the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) and the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health (all based at the University of Aberdeen), the Nursing, Midwifery & Allied Health Professional Research Unit (University of Stirling), the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research & Policy (SCPHRP) based at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) at Bournemouth University published their latest paper on obesity research.  The paper ‘A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men’ is published in the journal: Obesity Research & Clinical Practice.  This systematic review summarises the literature reporting the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical weight-management interventions for men. Studies were quality assessed against a checklist for appraising decision modelling studies.  This research is part of the larger ROMEO study.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

 

Reference:

Boyers, D., Avenell, A., Stewart, F., Robertson, C., Archibald, D., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men, Obesity Research & Clinical Practice (online first)