Category / Research themes

Ever launched a CR@B? We did!

Yesterday was the first meeting of the Consumer Research @ BU group (CR@B) and it turned out to be a busy and energising meeting of minds from a wide variety of disciplines from across BU.  As we listened to each other’s presentations and compared notes the opportunities for working together in new ways unfolded.

Our aim in bringing the group together is to foster inter-disciplinary research, provide a platform for interaction with industry, and a forum for ideas.  Given the success of our first meeting, we will now be holding informal coffee and cake meetings every 4-6 weeks with time for CR@B research bites (short presentations about our research) and discussion.  We will also be planning a series of high profile public research talks and workshops designed with research and industry application in mind.

Anyone who is doing consumer research is welcome.  This might include researchers working in:-

  • Consumer cultures
  • Consumer behaviour
  • Retail and marketing
  • Visual cognition and consumption
  • Food consumerism and consumption
  • Consumer neuroscience
  • Advertising

and almost certainly more.

So … if you think you might be a CR@B, and are out there hiding under a stone, please crawl out and come and join us.

Our next meeting is at 3pm on Wednesday 3rd December in D234, Dorset House, Talbot Campus.  If you would like to come along or would simply like to find out more please email either Jeff Bray in Tourism who is hosting our next session or any of the other contacts below so that we can get a feel for numbers.

 

Jeff Bray (Tourism; jbray@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Juliet Memery (Business School; jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Janice Denegri-Knott (Media School; JDKnott@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Siné McDougall (SciTech; smcdougall@bournemouth.ac.uk) 

Research Cluster Conflict, Rule of Law and Society is holding a Workshop on ‘Contemporary Issues in International Law’ on Tuesday 28th October 2014, 10-13.00 in EB206

Festival of Learning, PG research, student research, Training

 

 

The commitment and role of the international community in fighting Islamic State (IS/ISIL) are a daily item on the news. Therefore the Cluster for Conflict, Rule of Law and Society is holding a Workshop on ‘Contemporary Issues in International Law’ on Tuesday 28th October 2014, 10-13.00 in EB206.
The workshop brings together Undergraduate and Postgraduate students studying International Law and those interested in the issues of terrorism and the use of force in general. It will be a forum for discussion and debate on

  • the situation in Ukraine/Russia (including the annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysia Airline MH17)
  • the situation involving IS/Iraq/Syria, and
  • will ask what the status quo of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine is.

 

The workshop will be led by Dr. Melanie Klinkner and Sascha Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor in International Law.

There will be tea, coffee and biscuits and interested staff and students are very welcome to join.

£2.5m funding available – SBRI Healthcare Autumn 2014

Funding opportunities

SBRI Healthcare Autumn 2014

The National Health Service England and the NHS Academic Health Science Networks have opened multiple new SBRI competitions with a total of £2.5m funding available in Phase 1 to develop technologies and innovative solutions that can provide better health outcomes in the areas of:

  • Innovation in child & adolescent mental health
  • Improving care of diabetic foot ulcer
  • Medical imaging
  • Improving efficiency & experience of outpatient services
  • Brain injury healthcare

Phase 1 is intended to show the technical feasibility of the proposed concept. Development contracts will be awarded for a maximum of 6 months and £100,000 (inc VAT) per project.  Projects that have completed Phase 1 successfully will be eligible for Phase 2 later in the year. Phase 2 contracts are intended to develop and evaluate prototypes or demonstration units from the more promising technologies in Phase 1.

More information including briefs for the challenges can be found on the website.

Application process

For further details, including the application process click here. The deadline for applications is 9 December 2014

 

 

 

First Wessex Dementia Conference

Research themes

Tuesday 14 October saw the first Wessex Dementia conference hosted by Public Health England, NHS Wessex CSN and The Wessex AHSN. The turnout was much larger than expected demonstrating the increase in interest, enthusiasm and energy surrounding the dementia field. The timeline in the image attached shows just a small selection of projects about dementia that are happening in our region across the dementia timeline; that is from pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, post-diagnostic support to end of life care. BUDI’s work spans this care spectrum but only a handful of our projects are on this timelines as at BU alone we have been involved in 50 dementia projects in the last 2 years (we presented on our Orchestra project with the BSO, the 10 agency partnership project on Dementia Friendly Communities in Dorset we were part of, and the NHS Dorset Memory Advisory service we evaluated as well as having a very popular stand; orange stress balls proved to be particularly popular for our hard working clinical and practice colleagues!)  Taken together with the work of our colleagues from the voluntary, statutory and private sectors alongside our academic colleagues based at other Wessex Universities there is now a critical mass of work going on in our region which bodes well for those who might be affected by dementia in the future in Wessex but also for those currently living with dementia who are participating and hopefully benefiting from the groundswell of commitment to improving not just the diagnostic rate in our region (which two years ago was one of the lowest in the country) but to providing high quality support and services.

An Example of Research Informed Education

Fusion, Publishing, student research

I have been leading final year Design & Engineering “Advanced Technology & Innovation” unit. This is a 40 credit unit and 50% of the course work is assessed through a research publication.

During this unit the students had the opportunity to choose a topic for research within the area of coatings including nano coatings, structural integrity (corrosion simulation and modelling), thermodynamics, renewable energy and materials. These areas of research are supported through state-of-the-art experimental and analytical resources in Sustainable Design Research Centre and supported by significant industrial collaborations.

Final year design engineering students have been actively engaged with the research activity and were successful in publishing the following journal (open access) and conference papers.

Nugent, M., & Khan, Z. (2014). The effects of corrosion rate and manufacturing in the prevention of stress corrosion cracking on structural members of steel bridges. The Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering JCSE, 17(16). Retrieved from http://www.jcse.org/

Grover, M., & Khan, Z. (2014). The Comparison on Tool Wear, Surface Finish and Geometric Accuracy when turning EN8 Steel in Wet and Dry Conditions. In M. Grover (Ed.), World Congress on Engineering 2014: The 2014 International Conference of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management (pp. 1093-1097). Imperial College London: Newswood Limited International Association of Engineers. Retrieved from http://www.iaeng.org/WCE2014/index.html

Wilton-Smith, K., Khan, Z., Saeed, A., & Hadfield, M. (2014). Accelerated Corrosion tests of Waste-gated Turbocharger’s Adjustable and Fixed End Links. In High Performance and Optimum Design of Structures and Materials Vol. 137 (pp. 501-508). Southampton: Wessex Institute of Technology, UK. doi: 10.2495/HPSM140461

Dobson, P., & Khan, Z. (2013). Design considerations for carbon steel pipes materials’ selection applied in fossil powered plants subjected to wet-steam flow accelerated- corrosion review paper. Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering, 16, 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.scopus.com/source/sourceInfo.url?sourceId=12326&origin=recordpage

Denham, L., & Khan, Z. (2013). The prevention of corrosion and corrosion
stress cracking on structural members of
fixed deep sea oil rigs. The Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering, 16, 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.jcse.org/

The paper “The Comparison on Tool Wear, Surface Finish and Geometric Accuracy when turning EN8 Steel in Wet and Dry Conditions” was accepted in the World Congress on Engineering 2014 organised by International Association of Engineers (IAENG) at the Imperial College London 2-4 July 2014. This paper was presented at the conference. This paper has now been selected to be contributed as a book chapter which will be published by Springer.

“We are happy to inform you that Springer has invited us to publish the edited book [ Transactions on Engineering Technologies – World Congress on Engineering 2014] for our WCE 2014 and we are now inviting our WCE 2014 conference participants of selected papers for the edited book.” [extract from invitation].

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Director Sustainable Design Research Centre

SciTech

 

Reminder For All Consumer Behaviour Researchers … A forum for discussion around CB research.

REF Subjects, Research themes

The study of consumer behaviour has always been a multi-disciplinary endeavour, so perhaps it is not too surprising that there are pockets of related research activity all around BU.  These include consumer related research clusters in the Business School, the Media School, School of Tourism and Psychology.  What is surprising is how little we are aware of each other’s work.

Given this the ICB research cluster are hosting a ‘Hands-on Information Sharing Session’ to provide a forum for discussion around CB research at BU.  The session will provide an opportunity to meet others with similar research interests and learn more about the variety of consumer research being carried out across the University through brief research presentations, followed by discussions over refreshments to look for potential cross-discipline research opportunities.

Wherever you are in BU, if you think that you would like to be part of a forum aimed at developing a stronger research presence in this area please come along to a meeting over coffee and cakes ….

‘CB Hands-on Information Sharing Session’

Wednesday 22nd October at 15:30 in TAG22, Talbot Campus.

Please could those wishing to attend let Juliet Memery know as soon as possible to ascertain likely numbers for catering purposes, and then send three Powerpoint slides (max) that briefly cover your research/interests in issues relating to consumer behaviour research to her by Monday 20th October (email: jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

All welcome – we look forward to seeing you there!

 

This is your official invitation to the launch of Destination FeelGood!

Why you should join Destination FeelGood:

By joining us you’ll be a part of a unique network of businesses, working together to explore the potential of health & Wellbeing tourism.

We have three ideas cafés, which will run between 4pm-6pm on the dates:

  • 21st October 2014– Marketing & Product Opportunities in Health & Wellbeing Tourism
  • 20th November 2014– Food Innovation & Legislation
  • 24th February 2015– Healthy Staff, Healthy Profit

Each Ideas Cafés will be held in the Executive Business Centre, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB.

If you would like to attend this event, please click here.

We very much look forward to seeing you there!

Call for entries for fifth UK Energy Innovation Awards

Innovators from across the energy industry and SME community are being invited to enter the UK’s leading energy innovation awards which showcase and celebrate outstanding projects, technologies and talent making a real impact in the energy sector.

Now in its fifth year, the UK Energy Innovation Awards 2015, will unite figureheads of the energy industry and the innovation community in a high profile event to celebrate the best innovations across the electricity and gas networks including the renewables sector.

Following an unprecedented number of high calibre entries last year, the awards, organised by the Energy Innovation Centre and supported by leaders from the major energy companies, has been refreshed and extended to include new categories which reflect the diversity of entries in previous years.

These updated categories include:

  • Best Offshore Renewable Energy Innovation sponsored by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult
  • Best Electricity Network Improvement
  • Best Gas Network Improvement
  • Best Innovation Contributing to Quality and Reliability of Electricity Supply
  • Best Innovation Contributing to Quality and Reliability of Gas Supply

Altogether there will be 14 categories with the closing date for entries on Friday, December 12th. A black tie awards ceremony will be held in Manchester on April 30th featuring leaders from across the energy networks. Entries can be made online by visiting www.energyinnovationcentre.com

Chief executives from across the energy industry will be on the judging panel including Northern Gas Network’s chief executive and Energy Innovation Centre chairman Mark Horsley.

Last year, the awards attracted more than 370 guests from the electricity, gas and offshore renewables sectors along with innovators from a wide range of small businesses, start-up companies and academia.

Amongst the winners were Open Grid Systems which won the ‘International Trade Award’ in recognition of strong overseas sales of its tablet application which gives network operators an augmented reality view of assets out in the field, the first tool of its kind. Other technologies recognised included a robotic system which internally repairs leaking cast iron mains, the UK’s first ‘smart grid’ in Orkney and a unique technology to allow keyhole excavations on highways and roads.

Denise Massey, managing director of the Energy Innovation Centre, said: “The UK innovation scene has continued to grow and develop so much since the awards began back in 2010 and we are proud to have been able to contribute to this. With this in mind, we look forward to seeing a diverse and exciting range of entries representing the continued improvements happening in the sector.

 “The Energy Innovation Centre exists to encourage this important collaboration between external innovators and the energy industry by modernising the networks and revolutionising the way electricity and gas is delivered. It’s clear the industry is alive with an incredible number of talented, creative and forward thinking problem solvers, engineers, technologists, and academics so we look forward to seeing the entries.”

The full list of categories includes:

For category sponsorship opportunities, please contact Out There Events on 0161 946 6262 or email ellie@outthereevents.com.

Measuring research impact – report from the Medical Research Council shows the societal reach of research

Measuring research impact beyond academia is becoming a standardised part of research.  Thanks in part to the changes to the REF, more and more emphasis is being placed on the need to demonstrate the value of research more widely.  With that in mind, the latest research outputs, outcomes and impact report from the Medical Research Council (MRC) is a useful tool for demonstrating that impact to a broad audience.  Based on research taken place over the last few years, the report gathers together impact statistics and case studies of key outcomes and explains them in language accessible to all.

It makes for interesting reading, with statistics showing:

  • 46% of MRC-funded research projects attracted further funding from more than 1,000 different funders,
  • Between 2006 and 2013, researchers took part in more than 23,000 public engagement events,
  • One fifth of researchers reported that their work had an impact on local, national or international policy,
  • 12% of awards led to the development of a product or intervention.

Statistics aside, some of the most exciting parts of the report lie in the stories and case studies identified.  For example, research about portion sizes from the MRC’s Human Nutrition Research Group went on to inform a recent ‘Portion Distortion’ campaign from the British Heart Foundation.  Not only did the research support an effective campaign, it was also used to influence public health policy in the Department of Health and prompted major food companies to re-shape their business strategies.

A further example from the MRC Institute of Hearing Research demonstrated how researchers were able to develop a new test to measure listening attention by measuring sound comparison and reaction times.  It looks at how quickly people respond to sounds, how quickly people can pick out changes in relevant information in sound and how well people ignore irrelevant information in sounds.  The test is being used in research training and testing, with versions available for both children and adults.

So what can be learned from this?  The report showcases only a few exciting and inspiring research projects funded by the MRC – clearly there is far more going on than can be reported.  However, it is an excellent example of the research work going on across the country and shows the wide range of impacts and outcomes research can have in areas such as policy, product development and industry collaboration to name but a few.  While research impact is still an emerging area, this latest report from the MRC shows why it is so important to measure it, as the contribution MRC-funded projects are making to society as a whole is clearly substantial.

You can find out more about BU’s research impact work here or by contacting the Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team.

Congratulations to BU Visiting Faculty on latest publication

PG research, Publishing

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada for the paper on financial barriers to the uptake of antenatal care in a rural community in Nepal.1   The first author (a native Nepali-speaker) conducted 50 face-to-face interviews with women and their families in rural Nepal.  These interviews were thematically analysed after transcription.

This latest paper adds to our knowledge into user costs related to maternity services in Nepal as we had already published our findings on users costs in the largest obstetric hospital in the capital. 2

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Simkhada, B., van Teijlingen, E.R., Porter, M., Simkhada, P. & Wasti, S.P. (2014) Why do costs act as a barrier in maternity care for some, but not all women? A qualitative study in rural Nepal International Journal of Social Economics 41 (8), 705-713

 

  1. Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E., Sharma, G., Simkhada, B., Townend, J. (2012) User costs and informal payments for care in the largest maternity hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Health Science Journal 6(2): 317-334.  www.hsj.gr/volume6/issue2/6212.pdf

 

Congratulations to Dr. William Haydock

Publishing

 

Congratulations to William Haydock, researcher in HSC, for his recently published paper in Capital & Class 38 (3): 583-600. 

The paper “‘20 tins of Stella for a fiver’: The making of class through Labour and Coalition government alcohol policy” is available from: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/38/3/583.abstract

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Cyber Security seminars for 2014-2015 start with a bang

Fusion

Yesterday, we held the first of this academic year’s cyber security seminars.  We hosted Dr John Lyle from Facebook, who spoke to a packed audience in the Barnes Lecture Theatre about some of the challenges fighting spam at Facebook.  After his talk, John described how impressed he was with some of the thought provoking questions raised by audience.

Our next seminar will be on Tuesday, 25th November and will be delivered by Dr Andrea Atzeni from the Computer and Network Security group at Politecnico di Torino.  Andrea will be visiting us that week as part of our Fusion funded Bournemouth European Network in Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS) project.  Watch this space for more details about  Andrea’s talk.

Our interdisciplinary seminar series on Cyber Security is a wonderful opportunity to hear interesting, thought-provoking talks on a variety of topics related to security and privacy.  Although some of these speakers will be academic, their talks will be approachable and require nothing more than a general interest in security, and an enquiring mind.  We’re also interested in ideas about possible speakers or seminar topics, so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

Understanding the constructions of the ‘other’: co-produced knowledge and understanding of ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorism’

Fusion, student research

Last year, I put together a small HEA individual grant to build upon our earlier research concerning terrorism and social work education, and civil unrest and welfare in Muslim countries. Unfortunately, the bid was unsuccessful but one should never let a good bid go to waste. Given that it was education focused, based around co-production and student enhancement – a ‘fusion’-based project! -I thought rather than try somewhere else for funding I would embed it into the third year undergraduate Sociology unit Terrorism, Protection & Society, where it would have sat if successful.

The project encourages active student engagement in learning, employing a methodology of co-production of knowledge in which skills to collaborate in producing critically informed and societally beneficial knowledge will be developed. Students are reading, critically, major UK newspapers, identifying and analysing those articles that mention ‘terrorists, terrorism or terror’ and associated concepts. From this they are engaged in identifying the processes by which our dominant cultural frames are constructed and can be challenged. The project findings, once 30-days worth of newspapers have been scoured for relevant articles, will be widely disseminated through the production of academic papers, a submission to eBU and through conference presentations.

Students following the Terrorism, Protection & Society module, engage in learning how the ‘other’, in this case ‘terrorist’, is constructed within popular debate and within the public media in the UK. As part of the project rooted within the unit, students will also analyse the media’s use of target terms (terrorist, terrorism, terror and so on) through a content and discourse analysis, and debate the potential consequences of this for contemporary society and for developing a deeper and more nuanced understanding that can assist in restraining social conflict, violence and the ‘othering’ of those who may be associated with core characteristics of ‘terrorists’ according to the socio-cultural master-narratives created by media representations.

Students will produce a paper with academic staff for the eBU on-line journal; most co-production of academic papers with students occurs at postgraduate level and this project has a degree of originality in promoting co-production of academic knowledge with undergraduate students, something we have done already in respect of edited books. Other academic outputs will be developed and students demonstrating interest and capacity will be invited to participate in their production.

Alongside the academic publications envisaged, this proposal meets BU’s fusion objectives in seeking also to add to the corpus of evidence of pedagogical benefits for students of knowledge co-creation and includes a focus on the student experience of the processes of learning.

Thus, as part of the teaching and learning students engage with, the project has wide reach and significance for student learning and pedagogical development by enhancing social and cultural understanding amongst students who will soon graduate, alongside producing autonomous and critically thinking individuals who can translate their learning and core skills into the employment market.

This week students energetically engaged with the preliminary data extraction and coding of those newspaper articles dealing with concepts and issues that were termed or could be termed as terror, terrorist, terrorism, extremism and so forth. The work undertaken helped to put in perspective some of the first two weeks’ lecture material and allowed the students to bring their own critical understandings to this complex and emotive area.

So far, the project has illuminated to me what an incredibly versatile and intellectually agile student body we have; people who will be an asset to the workforce of the future and a credit to our university! I am looking forward to the following weeks as the project unfurls.

 

Professor Jonathan Parker

 

Sociology students engaged in research

 

Desperate for uninterrupted quality time on your grant application? Come to the Residential Research Retreat!

The Research Design Service South West (RDS SW) is offering a unique opportunity to researchers in health and social care across the South West of England.

The Residential Research Retreat provides an opportunity for research teams to develop high quality research proposals suitable for submission to national peer-reviewed funding schemes. The aim of the Retreat is to provide the environment and support to promote rapid progress in developing proposals over a relatively short time period. The Retreat is open to health professionals and academic partners working within the South West. 

At the Retreat you will be supported by a range of academic experts while developing your research proposal. Away from the workplace, you will work intensively on your proposal, while learning how to maximise its chances for successfully securing a grant. You will learn how to develop your idea into a viable and first class research proposal and experience research project planning at a professional level.

A delegate from last year’s Retreat said, “This has been an extremely valuable exercise and has really helped build an understanding of what is expected from NIHR funded projects. In order to ensure that new researchers are able to make feasible, rigorous, well-designed bids for funding, this week is essential.”

The Retreat will be held at the Ammerdown Conference Centre, near Bath in Somerset from  31st May to 5 June 2015 inclusive. To win a place on the Retreat, applications should be submitted by 1pm on Wednesday 7th January 2015.  Applications will be reviewed competitively and places awarded to the most promising team proposals. The application and further information is available at http://www.rds-sw.nihr.ac.uk/rrr.htm.

Don’t forget, your local branch of the Research Design Service is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us or send us an email.