Category / Research themes

IHPRC celebrates 5th birthday

The International History of Public Relations Conference (IHPRC) celebrated its fifth birthday on the first day of the 2014 conference on Wednesday, July 2.

The conference chair, Prof Tom Watson, was joined in cutting the celebration cake by Prof Don Wright (BostonUniversity), Associate Professor Meg Lamme (UniversityofAlabama) and Associate Professor Natalia Rodriguez Salcedo (UniversityofNavarra), who were members of an advisory panel consulted on the establishment of the conference in 2009.

 The conference, which was opened by the Dean of The Media School, Stephen Jukes, has been attended by delegates from more than 12 countries. Some 33 papers and a Keynote Panel have been presented.

More than 150 papers have been offered by delegates from 30 countries in the past five years. The conference has established the field of PR history and spurred a big growth in journal and book publishing, with two more books launched at the 2014 conference.

 Planning is already beginning for the 2015 conference to be held on July 7-8.

(L-R) Prof Don Wright, Prof Tom Watson, Assoc Prof Meg Lamme & Assoc Prof Natalia Rodriguez Salcedo

 

Reminder: Upcoming seminar from Australian visitor Dr Terry Haines

Further to the previous announcement (http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/06/12/upcoming-seminar-from-dr-terry-haines-monash-university-australia/), a title and abstract is now available for the seminar:

Tuesday 8th July, 2pm, TA134, Talbot campus:

Dr Terry Haines, Monash University, Melbourne.

Reversing research and implementation science for practices that are widely provided, dogma heavy and evidence light.

Some widely provided health services have an absence of evidence for effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and/or safety yet persist in clinical practice. It is possible that these practices are wasting valuable resources, but alternately may be valuable assets to service provision. Provision of these services in the context of usual care is a considerable barrier to conducting a conventional trial. Our team has recently developed a novel research approach to conduct a trial for this context[1]. This approach turns a conventional stepped-wedge, cluster randomised controlled trial design on its head.  This presentation will outline the strengths and limitations of the stepped-wedge design relative to other experimental designs, describes how this design was turned into a novel disinvestment research design, and then describe its first application in a clinical setting. The clinical example involves the withdrawal of weekend allied health services from acute medical and surgical wards across three hospitals in Australia. The early results of this trial run contrary to current initiatives to create a 7-day a week health service.

Reference

1. Haines T, O’Brien L, McDermott F, Markham D, Mitchell D, Watterson D, Skinner E: A novel research design can aid disinvestment from existing health technologies with uncertain effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and/or safety. J Clin Epidemiol 2014 , 67(2):144-151.

If you are able to attend the seminar, please let Samuel Nyman know by email: snyman@bournemouth.ac.uk

Today’s slides from ROMEO project

Publishing

 

Thank you very much for all of you who attended today’s presentation of the joint project between the University of Aberdeen, Bournemouth University and the University of Stirling.  For those who missed the session or who asked for a copy of the slides after the session, please find these included in the BU Research Blog.

ROMEO Edwin June 2014

The project was funded by National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme (09/127/01).  Therefore, I must point out that “views and opinions expressed therein (and here) are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the HTA programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health.”

 

As with all HTA reports the final report and a ten-page summary are both freely available online, see:

www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.

R

Dr. Inventor – next generation “Google” search for researchers

Awarded & submitted bids, Research assessment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you eager to have innovative ideas?  Are you keen to find an effective method to solve your research problems? Do you want to speed up your research information collection? Cooperated among eight universities and companies around Europe, we are developing a virtual personal research assistant in our new European Commission funded project “Dr. Inventor – Promoting Scientific Creativity by Utilising Web-based Research Objects”. 

DrInventorDr Inventor aims to develop an intelligent software system utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation. By informing researchers of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, this system will help assess the novelty of research ideas and offer suggestions of new concepts and workflows for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor will be the first web-based system that supports the exploration of scientific creativity via a computational approach, which will overcome a lot of human limitations.

If you would like our system to work the way you envisage to do, please join our user requirement study by finishing a short survey (taking about 5 minutes) at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drinventor. You can tell us how you perform your research tasks, what is the most difficult part in your research, what you wish our system to do to help you. Your feedback will guide our design; your suggestions may steer the way how people undertake research in the next few decades.

          

 Jian J Zhang & Xiaosong Yang

National Centre for Computer Animation, The Media School, Bournemouth University

 

Epidurals PhD researcher wins EPSRC award

PG research

Congratulations to SciTech’s Dr Neil Vaughan who has won the EPSRC’s ICT Pioneers ‘Transforming Society’ award. The accolade, which recognises the most exceptional UK PhD students, was awarded to Neil at a ceremony in Westminster last week for his innovative epidural simulator project.

The simulator uses software to replicate the epidural process, thereby assisting in training for this delicate procedure that is performed over 1000 times each day in the UK.

Neil’s supervisor Dr Venky Dubey said: “This is an exceptional achievement for BU and the collaborating partner Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Neil was up against stiff competition from top universities, including the University of Oxford, University College London and the University of Bath.”

The clinical project was proposed by the senior consultant anaesthetist at Poole Hospital, Professor Michael Wee, who also co-supervised the PhD.

Neil’s work was judged by a panel of technical experts from academia and industry. He triumphed through a rigorous selection process over a six month period, which included a written proposal, video and poster presentation. This culminated in a high-profile research showcase, where finalists pitched their project to representatives from the EPSRC, Hewlett Packard, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), BT and an audience of hundreds.

For more information about the project view the news item on the research webpages.

Trip to Stirling University’s Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals Research Unit (NMAHP-RU)

Awarded & submitted bids

I have recently returned from an amazing opportunity to go to Scotland and attend the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals Research unit (NMAHP-RU) at Stirling University for two days. I landed at 2200 at Edinburgh airport and was lucky enough to have a fantastic taxi driver that acted as tour guide on the 40 minute drive from the airport to Stirling University pointing out Stirling castle, Edinburgh Bridge and the kelpies monument that was lit beautifully against the dark skyline. I was staying at Stirling Management Centre which is onsite at Stirling University.

Day One

My first day on the 17th was a beautifully sunny and hot one. I had a meeting with Dr Helen Cheyne of the NMAHP-RU who is involved in decision making research, with interests and paper’s on interventions in labour, identifying labour and intrapartum care assessment to name but a few. The meeting was informal and involved a lovely walk around campus which is extremely large with its own woodland area and lake; home to beautiful wildlife. We discussed my study as well as the related work she had done in the field followed by a history of Scotland’s maternity care services and current practices around discussing place of birth.  Overall a thoroughly thought provoking and useful meeting, Helen also put me in touch with a fellow Phd student with interests in my study topic who I have been in contact with. We then attended the Research Unit which was large and open planned where I met all of her colleagues, some of which I had meetings with.

Following lunch my second meeting was with Dr Julie Cowie a researcher interested in complex interventions, ehealth and mixed methodologies all related to my study. We sat outside and made use of the glorious sunshine whilst discussing my choice of methods and how to choose the most appropriate decision analysis framework.  Again I received a lot of helpful advice and information to support my study, making the meeting an extremely valuable one.

Then came the time to give my presentation; the moment that I had been dreading since I knew I was going on this trip. Luckily everyone had been extremely welcoming and kind and my fears had subsided slightly. The presentation had gone as well as I could have hoped and what followed was a great discussion that yielded useful points to consider.  Unfortunately technology wasn’t on my side and the link to the decision support tool wouldn’t open ….. Luckily enough my supervisors had warned me from their previous experience that this could happen and I had taken screen shots to input into the presentation so a massive crisis was averted!  The high of the presentation ended my first day at the research unit, I returned to the hotel elated. I made use of their fantastic gym facilities and Olympic size swimming pool!

Day two

Yet another beautifully warm and bright day (I joke not) consisted of further meetings. The first with Dr Purva Abhyankar an expert in the field of decision making and the use / implementation of decision aids within health related settings. She has had numerous publications in the decision aid field and has a wealth of knowledge to access, providing me with a list of area’s to read into and books to further my knowledge. Followed by a meeting with Dr Pat Hoddinott who is a former GP and has a particular interest in the design and delivery of complex interventions such as a decision support tool to support health behaviours around childbirth, we discussed at length my chosen methodology with possibilities of adding some new ideas such as the ‘think out loud’ technique.  I left the meetings with my head swimming with new knowledge and a new boost of excitement, ideas to research and consider.

Overall

Walking back to the hotel that afternoon I felt a sense of achievement, I had my first travel experience on my own without have a meltdown, I completed my first presentation to peers that new nothing of my study and left with some encouraging comments and a sense that my knowledge level had doubled with all of their expert advice and suggestions. Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable, thought provoking and memorable trip with not a cloud or drop of rain in sight.

I would like to thank the NMAHP-RU and all those that took the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me and again to Santander for the funding to make this trip possible.

Strong Presence of our Computing Research at RCIS’14 Conference in Morocco

PG research

Our research in the area of Human-Centred Software Systems has been presented through three full papers in the IEEE Eighth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), which was held on May 28-30 2014 in Marrakesh, Morocco.

http://www.rcis-conf.com/rcis2014/

Our presented papers in RCIS 2014 are:

  • Mahmood Hosseini, Keith Phalp, Jacqui Taylor, Raian Ali. The Four Pillars of Crowdsourcing: A Reference Model.
  • Malik Almaliki, Cornelius Ncube, Raian Ali. The Design of Adaptive Acquisition of Users Feedback: an Empirical Study.
  • Raian Ali, Nan Jiang, Sherry Jeary, Keith Phalp. Consideration in Software-mediated Social Interaction.

The papers were presented by Dr. Nan Jiang, and the PGRs  Mahmood Hosseini and Malik Almaliki. It was a great opportunity for knowledge exchange and to maximize impact and visibility of our research. Interesting ideas as a follow up of our research were discussed and a number of overseas colleagues expressed interest in visiting us to do a joint work.

To get the presentations, please visit our Slideshare at: http://www.slideshare.net/Sociad-BU/

 

 

‘Intelligences’ theme of PR conference

Dr David MacQueen and Prof Tom Watson of The Media School both chaired panels and presented papers at the PR Meeting #4 conference in Barcelona last week.

The conference, which features research on critical approaches to public relations and strategic communication, had a focus on ‘intelligences’ this year.

Dr McQueen chaired a session which included fellow speakers from the the US, Spain and New Zealand. His paper, jointly authored with Graeme Baxter of Robert Gordon University, considered community resistance to corporate power in Scotland and Ireland.

Prof Watson presented a critical review of repetitive research issues in PR, in a session which also included speakers from Australia and Sweden. On the final afternoon of the conference he was a panel speaker on academic writing and publishing.

“This conference is a top event as it has broad international participation and always pushes into new research territory,” said Prof Watson. “This year, it was built around Howard Gardners’s work on intelligences, which brought forward aspects such as competitive, professional, spiritual, digital, emotional, dialogic, wicked and feminist intelligences.”

(L-R) PR Meeting # organisers Prof Jordi Xifra (Pompeu Fabra) and Prof David McKie (Wakato) with Prof Tom Watson

Maternity, Midwifery & Baby Conference

Fusion, Research themes, Training

A recent free Maternity, Midwifery & Baby Conference held in London offered an ideal opportunity for Bournemouth University to showcase two innovative projects. The first, co-presented by Dr. Sue Way and Sian Ridden, a 2nd year midwifery student, focused on a joint chiropractic and midwifery newborn clinic which was set up with Fusion principles in mind. There are a number of aims of the clinic, of which the main is to optimise women’s opportunities to breastfeed successfully by providing chiropractic care for babies and breastfeeding support and advice to mothers. There are two further important aims, one of which, is to enhance student (undergraduate midwifery students & chiropractic students) learning opportunities and secondly, to provide networking and collaborative opportunities for students and staff in relation to research and dissemination of findings around these particular topics. When it was Sian’s turn to present, she was confident and articulate. She discussed a case study and how her knowledge was enhanced by being part of the clinic. Sian found attending the clinics provided her with a great learning experience and it was empowering that she was able to provide breastfeeding support under the guidance of the experts in the respective fields (Alison Taylor and Dr. Joyce Miller). Preliminary breastfeeding results from the clinic are promising. More details to follow in due course. Finally the seminar concluded by discussing the re-launch of the clinic in September, and to raise awareness of the re-launch, a free local conference (funded by Fusion Funding) for the community will be taking place on the 12th July 2014. For further information on the above clinic or the conference please contact Alison Taylor on ataylor@bournemouth.ac.uk or Dr. Sue Way on sway@bournemouth.ac.uk .

 

The second seminar presentation took place after lunch and it focused on a study which is currently taking place involving five 3rd year midwifery students and the feasibility of incorporating newborn infant physical examination (NIPE) competencies into the pre-registration midwifery programme.  Traditionally these competencies are usually achieved post qualification when midwives have a number of years’ experience under their belt. However BU midwifery students felt differently and Luisa Cescutti-Butler discussed how the study was initiated by Luzie who asked the question: “why couldn’t they learn all the necessary skills in the third year of their programme”? Luzie took to the podium and presented her section like a duck to water. She didn’t shy away from the difficulties from taking this extra study on, but was quite clear that the benefits for women in her care were worth the extra work.  The presentation generated quite a lot of heated discussion with some midwives in the audience quite adamant that students should not be taking on this ‘extended’ skill. However Luzie was able to stand her ground and confidently counter ague as to why students should gain these skills during the undergraduate programme. She received a resounding clap and cheers from the audience.

It takes some courage to stand up in a room full of people and present, and Sian and Luzie were brilliant.  Both students did Bournemouth University and in particular the midwifery team proud. For further information on the above study please contact Luisa Cescutti-Butler on lcbutler@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

 

Congratulations to Sheetal Sharma (HSC)

Publishing

Congratulations to HSC PhD student Ph.D. Sheetal Sharma who was co-author on a blog today on the recently published Lancet series on Midwifery.  The blog is illustrated with some of Sheetal’s beautiful photos from her Ph.D. research fieldwork in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

Bournemouth University

 

 

BUCfE Connects with Gaming Students at FODI

Members of the CfE team were delighted to connect with Gaming and Music final year students at the FODI event to explain upcoming proposed entrepreneurial programmes.

Speaking during Glyn Hadley’s and Christos Gatzidis’ lectures, the Student Entrepreneurship Manager had the opportunity to give a high level overview of the Bournemouth University Graduate Incubator’s offerings including:

  • Hackathon
  • Bootcamp
  • Competition
  • 12 months incubation space

The Business Ideas Hackathon was the main focus of the talk.  The Hackathon will be a 36-hour business idea hack to identify and develop out innovative potential high growth businesses.  Running in the Autumn semester 2014, the Hackathon will enable students to devise and code a new business from the ground up and provide an environment to test out the proposed business model.  Students from SciTech will team up with students from HSC, Media, Tourism and Business, for instance, to code a solution to a real-world problem or to scope out a potential fast-growing business.   The focus is on innovation, creativity and on high growth with fusion of different disciplines being key to success.  Whilst this initial presentation was to SciTech, students from any disciplines are invited to apply and presentations will be given to all schools in September.   Bournemouth University students about to enter their final year are invited to register their interest at this stage at our Hackathon page.

Designed to hone and refine business ideas, the Bootcamp will be for participants of the business idea hackathon or those who already know what business they want to do.  The Bootcamp will enable participants to build out their business plans and to start to develop their offering and their pitch.

The Bootcamp feeds into the Business Idea Competition:  a Dragon’s Den-style event where businesses pitch to win 12 month’s free incubator space and business support at the Centre for Entrepreneurship.

SciTech students had left their industry placements for the day to attend the FODI event, with some of the students showcasing their work to the general public.  During the event, BUCfE incubator business Static Games were able to feature their new game, Mendel’s Farm, and sign up beta testers for their imminent release.

The CfE team are immensely grateful to Glyn Hadley and Christos Gatzidis for allowing us some time to present to their students.

Two New Books for Social Workers

Fusion, Publishing

Bournemouth University and Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy Professor Jonathan Parker has recently published two key books.

The fourth edition of the best-selling textbook Social Work Practice, published by Sage, represents a milestone in the book’s history. First published in 2003 to introduce the new qualifying social work degree in the UK, it formed one of the first books in the highly popular Transforming Social Work Practice series from Learning Matters, now an imprint of Sage publications, and edited from the outset by Professor Parker. The book rapidly became a best-seller, consistently in the top-three best-selling social work textbooks in the UK. The work was translated into Japanese, used in Southeast Asia and Europe and has proved popular during Professor Parker’s recent study leave in Malaysia.

The concept for the second book Active Ageing: Perspectives from Europe on a vaunted topic (Whiting & Birch), an edited collection celebrating the European Year of Active Ageing in 2012, was conceived during a weeklong symposium, held at the University of Málaga in April 2012. Academics and students from Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the UK lauded the contribution that older people make to our societies through the exploration and critical analysis of the concept of active ageing. Written in a context of increased population growth and ageing, and continuing fiscal pressures, the editors, Maria Luisa Gomez Jimenez and Jonathan Parker, brought together thirteen chapters comprising diverse insights into ageing and active ageing that offer a contribution to our understanding of these complex areas of modern human life.

Entertainment on the move – Innovation Contest

Funding opportunities

Investment of up to £100k is on offer for digital innovation in the music, publishing and games sectors.

Information in brief:

The IC tomorrow programme aims to stimulate innovation and economic growth in the digital sector and is offering four businesses up to £25k each to encourage digital innovation in the area of entertainment on the move in music, book and magazine publishing and games/interactive entertainment:

  • music on the move with the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI)
  • books on the move with the Publishers Association (PA)
  • magazine content on the move with the Professional Publishers Association (PPA)
  • interactive entertainment/games on the move with UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie).
Further details:
  • Deadline: noon on Tuesday 29 July 2014
  • Full details: Click here
  • Awards: 4 x up to £25k

Stripping Back the Layers: Women’s spiritual quest for religious authenticity

Fusion, Women's Academic Network

Having failed to get it externally funded, I decided to hell with it! I would do the project anyway. It was too important a topic to abort on such flimsy grounds; and anyway in the social sciences funding has never been a precursor to undertaking excellent and original scholarship, and this promised to be that.

 

I have long been fascinated by religion and spirituality as integral to cultural diversity, and this interest has underpinned much of my scholarship in both social work and sociology. Gender studies are equally a passion and so it seemed natural to form a happy union of the two.

 

For the past eighteen months, and thanks to recent Fusion Funding for part of the project, I have been undertaking a cross-cultural study of women’s experiences of religious commitment across several faith groups in the UK and Malaysia. Both countries share a common historical heritage through the ties of colonialism, where additionally wide-scale migration has forged multicultural and therefore multifaith societies. Each modern nation also struggles to resolve the contradictions and paradoxes created through multiculturalism and claims to a specific national religion.

 

The aim of the study is to examine the constructions and meanings that women bring to religious beliefs and daily practices, which may be distinctive to those of men, particularly given the extremely powerful influences of patriarchy in organised religion. Thus, the working assumption behind this study is that women will bring their own gendered priorities and understandings as women (and variously as wives/partners, mothers, daughters and sisters) to their individual religious and spiritual beliefs.

 

For an in-depth ethnographic study the participant sample is extensive, and where by the end of this year, 48-50 individual narratives will complete the data gathering stage. The level of complexity is high for not only does this study cover two contemporary societies, but it also seeks to cover representatives from several different faith groups. Thus, in Southwest England I am seeking to capture the voices of Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim women, as well as hoping to access female followers of one of the ‘New Religions’.

 

Across Malaysia, I have covered the same groups but substituted Jewish participants for Hindus.  I also hope to access indigeneous Animists to compare with the revival in pre-Christian ‘nature religions’ that may be found in the evocatively pagan, Dorset/Somerset/Wiltshire landscapes.

 

Such a large and highly diverse sample group represents a major study of contemporary, gendered faith practices in modern, multicultural societies; and where despite woman-centric theological re-interpretations, such as, for example, Christian feminists theologies or Malaysia’s ‘Sisters in Islam’, the insights from this study are already proving to be original and profound. My initial hypothesis has been both affirmed and challenged by participants struggling to engage with the politics of ethnicity, culture, gender constructions and gender oppression; together with the business of daily negotiating the politics of church/temple/mosque/synagogue – not forgetting, of course, the politics of the home and family.

 

Participant accounts have been deeply moving at times; and where to my surprise, I have been frequently thanked for giving participants the opportunity to be able to express that which is so important to their individual integrity and sense of purpose in life – and yet which remains a submerged discourse. There are many reasons, political, social and personal for religious expression among women to be largely unheard (and sometimes even a forbidden) discourse in both countries. These too are critical issues of context that are analysed alongside the narratives.

 

With REF2020 beginning to appear over the horizon, I will seek to do justice to these remarkable narratives in my analysis and the research monograph and peer-reviewed papers being planned. However, what is strikingly apparent is the intense interest participants hold towards their own spiritual journey, where they are also eager to read the finished publications in order to find further insights and connections with other women: impact in itself.

 

What this reveals to me is that not only is the area of inquiry extremely rich in theme, nuance and contemporary relevance, but that in respect of social impact (however one defines that term) much more is needed of me. Accordingly I am pondering deeply on how I may return and somehow multiply the fruits of this research to the global community of women for whom it carries such intense meaning and many shared commonalities in an otherwise divided world.

 

Volunteering to be a participant

If this Blog has resonated with you as a woman embracing a religious faith, or as someone who may know of such, I would be extremely grateful if you would contact me directly on scrabtree@bournemouth.ac.uk. Muslim, Jewish and ‘New Religion’ women’s voices in England are still under-represented in the study but all participants from other faith groups are equally welcome.