Category / Research themes

The social sciences at BU

Research assessment

In response to an open email invitation, a group of social scientists from across BU met on Tuesday 17 March to discuss prospects for inter-Faculty collaboration. As in previous meetings between FMC and HSS colleagues, it was apparent that there were opportunities for more collaborative work than currently exists, and that there is considerable enthusiasm for developing links. A growing presence of the social sciences in BU, and of BU in the social sciences, was felt to be essential to BU’s development as a university with a rich intellectual community. If you haven’t received the report from this meeting by email, and would like to do so, please email Prof. Barry Richards (brichards@bmth.ac.uk)

NIHR Panels and Boards are Recruiting

Funding opportunities

NIHR research programme boards and panels select the most important research questions to commission, and make funding recommendations on project applications.

They are looking for additional expertise for the boards or panels of the following programmes:

  • Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme
  • NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme
  • NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme

For more information please see: Opportunities to influence Health Research

 

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.

Australia endorses “New Learning and Teaching Standards for Environment and Sustainability Higher Education”

BU Challenges

As colleagues will be aware, I have been a passionate advocate of education for sustainability (EfS) and global citizenship. I have worked across the sector to support change, and within BU have contributed to such things as the People and Planet Green League, Eco-campus and many other iniatives to enhance our environmental credentials but also to ensure that through education, we prepare students to lead (and make a difference) in a context that is global but also has to be sustainable.

We have more to achieve at BU in relation to the educative agenda, so in this regard I am sharing this work from Australian colleagues. I would not suggest that we need to impose standards but I would suggest that we might all consider how we could do more to ensure that the learning we provide enables our graduates to become better custodians of the world.

New Learning and Teaching Standards for Environment and Sustainability Higher Education

New national standards for tertiary qualifications in Environment and Sustainability have now been released. The standards are endorsed by the Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (ACEDD) and have been developed through an intensive twelve month process, including consultation with the broad Australian and international stakeholder community of tertiary educators and researchers, employers and practitioners, students, indigenous people and other environmental educators. These standards can be used to design and deliver innovative environment and sustainability higher education in Australia. The standards are included in the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement for Environment and Sustainability, available from http://environmentltas.gradschool.edu.au/ or via the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching website (http://www.olt.gov.au/project-learning-and-teaching-academic-standards-ltas-environment-and-environmental-sustainability-2). For more information about the standards and the process of their development please contact the project co-leaders:

Dr Bonnie McBain (Bonnie.McBain@newcastle.edu.au) or

Dr Liam Phelan (Liam.Phelan@newcastle.edu.au).

 

 

Webb Ellis Cup visits Bournemouth University

Business Engagement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The BU Centre for Entrepreneurship was delighted to welcome Rob Wingrove from RTH2015, who manage and operate the Official Hospitality programme for Rugby World Cup 2015, to the Executive Business Centre on the 23rd April.

Rob delivered a fascinating presentation which looked into three years of planning and development to deliver one of the largest commercial hospitality programmes for any global sporting event, and the marketing strategy and tactics implemented to achieve a forecast of over £110m in sales.

The audience were also delighted to have the opportunity to get up close to the Webb Ellis Cup, rugby’s most coveted prize, which had just returned from a journey around 15 countries as part of an international celebration of rugby.

Rugby World Cup 2015 is estimated to inject nearly £1bn into the British economy in 2015. With over 2.3m tickets up for sale, a global TV audience of 4bn and a record sponsor programme, Rob provided an interesting and detailed insight into how they have created one of the biggest corporate hospitality programmes in history in a saturated market.

Mark Painter, Centre for Entrepreneurship Manager, said, ‘we were absolutely delighted when Rob confirmed he would be able to find time in his busy schedule to visit us here at the Executive Business Centre. It was fascinating finding out more about the vital role hospitality will play in the success of RWC2015 and it was of course wonderful that Rob was able to bring along the Webb Ellis Cup’.

Mark added, ‘the feedback from the attendees was extremely positive and it is clear everyone really enjoyed the event.’

Rugby World Cup, the third largest global sporting event behind the Olympics and Football World Cup, takes place in England and Cardiff between 18 September and 31 October. The tournament will be hosted in 13 venues in 11 cities across the country.

The BU Centre for Entrepreneurship runs regular seminars and forthcoming events can be found at www.bucfe.com

Representations of PR – online resource

REF Subjects

Representation of professions and employment takes many forms and is often shaped by books and visual and aural media.

In the public relations field, characters such as Edina in Absolutely Fabulous and the foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It are well known, as are terms like “PR success” and “PR disaster”, even though the events may have little to do with public relations practices or activities.

Apart from one US researcher, Professor Joe Saltzman of the University of Southern California, there has been little investigation of representations of public relations in books and entertainment media.

Working with colleagues in Australia, Sweden and the US, Professor Tom Watson of the Faculty of Media & Communication developed the PRDepiction blog:  https://prdepiction.wordpress.com/​ in 2012.

“We wanted to create a resource that would offer a catalogue of books, films, TV and radio, as well as articles, and encourage interdisciplinary research,” said Professor Watson.

As the blog has a relatively simple structure, additions and amendments can be made quickly. It has just been overhauled with a new look and revisions and more entries.

“PRDepiction has grown over the years and become more international. The latest additions include TV series in Australia and the UK, and a three-book series on a fashion PR guru from Australia,” said Professor Watson.

Additions can be sent to PR Depiction as blog Comments or to twatson@bournemouth.ac.uk. The blog also has a Twitter address, @PRDepiction.

PRDepiction's Twitter logo

“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

A model Institute?

The Byrd Institute, Tampa, Florida is an interesting example of an inter-disciplinary academic institute in practice. http://health.usf.edu/byrd/  I presented there earlier this month, Raising awareness of dementia: disseminating research via public engagement activities, which ties in with recent developments in this primarily NIH funded unit which is part of the University of South Florida. We toured the labs, where staff and students work alongside each other with mice at one end of the lab to computer images of human brains at the other. The second floor of the building is dedicated to screening for dementia and provides an example of dementia friendly design where people with dementia and their families spend the day going through the variety of tests that will lead to an often long awaited diagnosis of dementia. The Byrd Institute began as an independent unit on University property before becoming part of the University. Staff from across Faculties work in or are linked to the Institute providing an excellent exemplar of inter-disciplinary working. From screening in retirement villages to recuriting participants to clinical research trials this institute is slowly building a large data base of people with dementia as well as adults with early signs of mild cognitive impairment in a region known for attracting retirement migrants. They are now committed to enhanving their public outreach work and have recruited a social scientist to take this forward in the coming months. They have a wish to raise awareness of dementia within their local community and will achieve this by an ambitious outreach programme which will also contribute to increasing their pool of potential research participants in future clinical, neuroscience and social science projects.

Intergenerational working

Earlier in the month as part of a whirlwind three State visit to the US we visited one of three  Intergenerational Schools in Cleveland, Ohio. http://www.tisonline.org/ This model of education has two distinct programmes to promote learning and working between the older and younger generations. The first is a ‘buddy reading’ system where older people living in the community come into the school to read with pupils. Every pupil receives 2 x 20 minute sessions with an older person per week to enhance their reading skills. A second programme involves every class in the school visiting one of thirty-one care facilities (day care and long stay care) in the area once a month where pupils work with older people on a range of projects. The image attached is one art project  where pupils visited the care home and worked with people with dementia residing in one of Clevelands premier care facilities, Judson to create these banners that hang in the entrance to the care facility. These two initiatives demonstrate the possibilities for learning and working together in meaningful ways benefitting both older adults and school children. We have been experimenting with intergenerational working here at Bournemouth via a Tech Group facilitated at The Bourne Academy where school pupils have welcomed people with dementia and their carers into their schools to work together in an after school club where they have been learning to play on the wii, xbox and ipads together. This way of working offers opportunities to educate younger generations about dementia and to combat associated stigma, ignorance and fear of what it might mean to live with dementia. To paraphrase some of the words of the School Principle in Cleveland, who I found truly inspirational, the younger we start to educate our children about life and the challenges it can throw at us the better prepared they will be to contribute as active citizens in our society.

BU SDRC Contributions to WIT Contact & Surface 2015 International Conference

PG research, Publishing, student research

BU SDRC Director Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor) organised a special session on “Surface Engineering” at the WIT 2015 Contact and Surface International Conference and contributed as a member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) as a reviewer during 2014-15.

SDRC Professor Mark Hadfield chaired the special session and also helped the conference as a member of the ISAC to support review process.

BU academics and researchers along with the SDRC international partners from Gazi University Turkey contributed presentations and have submitted the following extended full length papers to the WIT International Journal of Computational Methods & Experimental Measurements (CMEM), which are all currently under review for publication.

  1. Khan, Z., Pashaei, P., Bajwa, R., Nazir, M. H., & Cakmak, M. (2015). Fabrication and characterisation of electrodeposited and magnetron sputtered thin films. In Contact and Surface 2015. València, Spain. Retrieved from http://www.wessex.ac.uk/15-conferences/contact-and-surface-2015.html
  2. Saeed, A., Khan, Z., & Hadfield, M. (2015). Performance Evaluation of Surface Protection Applied to Large Vehicles. In Contact and Surface 2015. València, Spain: Wessex Institute, UK. Retrieved from http://www.wessex.ac.uk/15-conferences/contact-and-surface-2015.html
  3. Gultekin, A., Pashaei, P., Khan, Z., Ozturk, M. K., Tamer, M., & Bas, Y. (2015). X-ray and ab initio study of structural, electronic, elastic and optical properties in Be1-xZnxS alloys depending on Vegard’s law. In Contact and Surface 2015. València, Spain. Retrieved from http://www.wessex.ac.uk/15-conferences/contact-and-surface-2015.html
  4. Nazir, M. H., Khan, Z. A. (2015). Maximising the Interfacial Fracture Toughness of Thin Coatings and Substrate through Optimisation of Defined Parameters. In Contact and Surface 2015. València, Spain: WIT. Retrieved from http://www.wessex.ac.uk/15-conferences/contact-and-surface-2015.html

WIT is currently collaborating with BU in Corrosion research through a post doc programme Mark Hadfield (PI), Zulfiqar Khan (Co-I) led by Dr Adil Saeed as a post doc researcher.

Corrosion (experimental, modelling and simulation) and Surface Engineering (nano coatings) research within BU SDRC is conducted in collaboration with multinational industrial partners through match funding with significant in-kind experimental support.

For further details on current research activity in SDRC please visit the Centre webpage. If you have interests in these areas and would like to find more please contact Dr Zulfiqar Khan

GeoNet Low Carbon Cities

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

Luca D’Acci presented our third GeoNet seminar about the need for ‘Low Carbon Cities’. With cities accounting for 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that something needs to change and low carbon cities could be the answer.

 

The benefits of low carbon cities can be seen in cities such as Copenhagen. Copenhagen has become one of the ‘greenest’ cities in Europe through its innovative use of energy efficient technology and design. Copenhagen is also a compact city. D’Acci suggests a key change to support the conversion to a low carbon city is reducing urban sprawl. Furthermore, a car-based transport model results in increased costs; for example, Houston spends 14% of its GDP on transport, versus only 4% in Copenhagen.

 

Therefore, remodelling a city’s shape and form could be the answer to a more energy efficient world. Containing urban sprawl, developing energy efficient buildings and encouraging ‘greener’ transport systems could contribute to establishing a successful low carbon city. Benefits of these changes have been predicted. Investments of $1.7 billion in domestic energy efficiency could generate annual savings of $626 million, which is a payback time of only 3 years. In addition, 2 million jobs would be created by the new low carbon technological industry. Furthermore, health benefits and a significant reduction in pollution related illnesses would result in a higher standard of living and a better quality of life.

 

Next we went on to discuss how these cities could be implemented. I personally found it interesting that we could look to the past for ideas to shape the future. The Greeks and Romans designed their central hubs around unity, variety, compactness and nature, all of which are characteristics that we want to emulate in our cities today. Futuristic transport using renewable energy sources, building multifunctioning, independent cellular cities, and simply changing to energy saving light bulbs are all ways of creating a low carbon city. However, it is evident that a change in attitude will be important to ensure success.

 

An interesting discussion with the audience followed with most agreeing that low carbon cities are necessary for sustainable development. However, many agreed that the changing of attitudes would be difficult to achieve in existing cities. Despite this, it is important that we find the best solution to regenerate cities, in order to create a sustainable future and provide a template for developing countries to model their new low carbon cities.

Charlotte Unwin, GeoNet Intern