Category / Research themes

Fusion: Sports Academic Group and School of Tourism to Advance Partnerships with US East Coast Universities

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, REF Subjects, Research themes

As part of the overall internationalisation dynamics spreading through the School of Tourism – especially concerned with creating opportunities for students – Dr Tim Breitbarth, Senior Lecturer in Sports Management, will travel to South Carolina and Florida end of October.

The project is funded through the BU Fusion Investment Fund, based on the trips’ three impact-focused objectives of, firstly and mainly, advancing partnership development for the sports academic group as well as the School of Tourism and potentially other Schools as well; secondly, Tim will collect further sets of empirical data for an established and awarded international collaborative research project on CSR and sport; and thirdly, develop and foster industry and research contacts aiming towards strengthening BU’s golf/sport management programmes and editing a first book on global golf business.

Main contacts and places to go are the University of South Carolina, which has the largest undergraduate sports and entertainment management programme of its kind in the USA, with more than 1000 majors and minors (recently been listed in the Top25 in the 2013 SportBusiness Global Postgraduate Ranking), and the University of Central Florida, where a university partnership agreement covering many subject areas is already well underway.

“My experience with the Fusion fund and the way it is managed is that coherent applications focusing on wider impact and multiple outcomes are very welcome,” says Tim, who already was successful with staff mobility and networking applications in the past. Please feel free to contact Tim (tbreitbarth@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you like to learn more about his upcoming trip.

Biodiversity, Environmental Change & Green Economy Research Theme

Research themes

Please note for your diaries – a research theme get together on  Wednesday   20-11-2013  –   12:00-14:00 in  TA133.

It is a while since we had a theme meeting for Green Economy and now that we have also had a theme merger, it seems appropriate to get together as the new and broader group, share ideas, and meet those who are new, or who have not previously attended a theme event.

More details will follow but we thought as a starter what we might usefully do, is discuss ideas for the next Fesitival of Learning, consider/share how our research contributes/might contribute to the region, and agree ways of cooperating/organising the theme in the future.

Please email me if you are able to attend so that I can try to organise catering,

 

Chris Shiel

Bournemouth University represented at the Launch of International Sport Coaching Framework in Durban, South Africa

REF Subjects, Research themes

Lecturer in Sport Psychology and Coaching Sciences, Emma Kavanagh was recently present at the launch of the International Sport Coaching Framework at the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) 9th global coaching conference in Durban, South Africa.  This marked a worldwide initiative to launch the ICCE global coaching strategy and standardise the practice of sports coaching across the world.

 

Whilst attending the conference as a delegate, Emma also presented a research paper in collaboration with Dr Abbe Brady from the University of Gloucestershire entitled “Humanization in High Performance Sport: Introducing a Value-based Framework for Coaches and Practitioners”.  This paper provided a vocabulary for articulating one of the foundations of the international coaching framework; creating an athlete centred coaching environment.

 

The paper was well received by both national and international delegates including some of the world’s leading experts in the field of sport and coaching sciences.  The paper was described as an area of fruitful and exciting opportunity for future research in coaching and performance. This has further enhanced Bournemouth Universities reputation as an emerging centre of innovative research in sport and coaching sciences.  In addition the conference has provided opportunity for further external collaborations with a number of national and international partners.

Reminder – CEMP open meeting this Thursday

    Reminder about this Thursday’s meeting which is an open invitation for people to come along, have a coffee and tell us how we can support collaborative approaches to pedagogic research & innovation.

The background:

This academic year CEMP will continue to publish a fortnightly research & innovation funding bulletin via this blog, like so:  CEMP bulletin 26.9.13

The Research & Innovation meetings will also continue, but we want to invite colleagues from the rest of the Media School and across BU to tell us how we can increase engagement and collaboration in all aspects of pedagogic / educational research and innovation related to media / technology.

Previously, the model has been like this –

The bulletin is posted on a Thursday – this contains information about funding calls and also monitors live projects and reports on the outcomes of all bids.

The next Thursday, we meet to discuss the calls in the bulletin and report on bids in progress.

The next Thursday, the updated bulletin is posted

….and so on.

So far, we’ve been successful in one of our two key objectives – increasing CEMP bidding activity, but less successful in the other – developing collaboration with other people in BU, either in response to the funding calls in the bulletin or to try to match peoples’ ideas for projects / innovation to funding opportunities. This second objective is a service / function CEMP can offer to the University, and we’d like more colleagues to access this.

So – we’d like to review how we do this, in order to get better at the second objective, and to this end the first R&I meeting of this year is an open forum and everyone is invited to either come along and contribute to the discussion or to add a comment to this post if you have ideas but can’t make the meeting.

Meeting details:

Thursday 26th September 10-12

CEMP’s new office (CAGO2) – with tea, coffee and pastries!!!

Key issues for discussion:

  • How can CEMP support people in developing research / innovation projects?
  • What are the structural obstacles and how can we overcome them?

When we’ve got everyone’s ideas / requests for how to proceed, we’ll decide how to go ahead.

I hope we’ll see you there or read your ideas on the blog.

Julian

BU Sport Students and Academic Succeed at European Association for Sport Management Conference in Istanbul

REF Subjects, Research themes

As part of its internationalisation activities the Sports group within the School of Tourism had four students and a scholar significantly contributing at the Student Seminar and the main conference of the European Association for Sport Management (EASM) in Turkey from 7 to 14 September.

The 4.5-full-day Student Seminar saw 60 students from 13 countries working in mixed international groups along management cases. Keynotes on those topics of current special interest were given by the NBA Europe Marketing Director, a recently retired UNICEF Programme Director, Professor March Krotee from North Carolina State University and Dr Tim Breitbarth, Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University.

BU students John Bryson, Stefan Ferencz and Oliver Johnson won their case competitions with their respective teams, and therefor had the chance to present at the 21st EASM conference. After the four winning groups’ presentations in front of a large audience, the jury decided on Oliver Johnson and his team as the overall winner of the management game. They were awarded during the conference’s closing banquet, which took place during a nightlong boot trip on the Bosporus.

Students present dissertation research to academic community

Beyond all four students’ great work as BU ambassadors during the Student Seminar, Luke Frary and John Bryson presented their dissertation research to the interested academic community, guided by Tim and Dr Andrew Adams, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management. Before his presentation, Luke had the chance to personally discuss his work on leadership over breakfast with 86-year old Professor Packianathan Chelladurai, arguably the most globally renown sport management and leadership scholar. John was asked by NBA Europe Marketing Director Naci Cansun to send his research results on the impact of CSR in professional sport and thoughts on managerial implications.

All students had to go through a very competitive application process and a good proportion of the overall trip was funded because of the students’ very strong applications to the BU Global Horizon Fund and the School of Tourism internal funding scheme. Besides their successes related to the conference, all students generally benefitted from the process of actively engaging and working with the large intercultural sports and business community.

Dr Tim Breitbarth workshop Lead Convenor at EASM conference

Despite its small presence at the world’s largest sport management conference, the BU Sports group made a big impact also due to Tim’s role as Lead Convenor of a very well-attended 1.5-day workshop on social responsibility management in professional sport, which for the first time brought most of the key researchers on the topic from North America, Australia and Europe together. In addition, experienced practitioners from Euroleague Basketball and German Society for International Cooperation were invited as keynote speakers and added to the discussion.

The workshop is part of the process which will lead to a special issue on the topic in Corporate Governance – The International Journal of Business in Society, with Tim leading a the guest editor team, which also features three colleagues from England, Germany and The Netherlands (www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=4564).

Luke Frary with Andrés Guerrero, International Development Cooperation Expert and recently retired UNICEF Programme Director
Oliver Johnson (third from left) with his team from Finland, Germany and The Netherlands, which won the EASM 2013 Student Management Game.

Stefan Ferencz during group work

John Bryson with two of his team members from Germany and The Netherlands

Dr Tim Breitbarth, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, with Professor Birol Cotuk, Dean Marmara University School of PE and Sport and Chair of the 21st EASM Conference, Istanbul/Turkey

Health Survey for England

Research themes

Did you know?

Over eight in ten (84%) people aged 65 and over agree that ‘marriage is still the best kind of relationship’, compared with fewer than four in ten (38%) people aged 18-34.

from : British Social Attitudes 26th Report

The Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Research theme had an excellent meeting with representatives from the Health Survey for England team at NatCen. This is Britain’s leading centre for independent social research, a not-for-profit organisation, dedicated to making an impact on society and advancing the role of social research in the UK.

Their research covers all areas of social policy, and findings have direct, practical application in terms of understanding social behaviour and informing policy. They bring to life what is really going on in Britain today.

The work is carried out by experienced researchers using innovative, high quality research methods, earning them an international reputation for delivering robust and rigorous research.

They work around the full range of social policy areas such as

Health & Lifestyle

Social & Political Attitudes

Children, Schools & Families

Crime & Justice

Employment, Skills & Education

Income & Welfare

Social Inclusion

Transport & Environment

There is a wealth of data available in the form of raw statistics and reports and including a ‘blood bank’.

Please click on the link below to find out more or please contact Rachel Craig

Senior Research Director, Health Survey for England

Direct line: 020 7549 7012

NatCen Social Research  Rachel Craig Rachel.Craig@natcen.ac.uk

 

 

BUDI works for Internationalising Dementia Education and Research

By Mariela Gaete-Reyes

 Thanks to the Fusion Investment Fund, SMN Strand Santander Scholarships 2012-13, I was able to visit Chile and Colombia as a BUDI ambassador this summer. The objective of the visits was to undertake collaborative work with two institutions and to develop networks with other institutions and academics in both countries to explore the possibilities of working collaboratively with them in the future.

In Santiago I did scoping interviews with 8 key actors working in dementia, which explored the social-economic and political situation of people living with dementia in Chile and their families. These interviews are the basis of a research grant proposal for a comparative study (underway), in which I worked with Dr Paulina Osorio at Universidad de Chile; she is an anthropologist with a PhD in Sociology. What was evident from the interviews was the absence of public policy relating to dementia in Chile, and consequently, the scarcity of state support. Although this can be expected in a country where there is not welfare state, it means that families have to arrange, do and/or pay for all the care. Connected to this is the prevalence of a medicalised view of dementia in Chile which is reflected, in part, in the lack of social research around dementia.

I visited Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile, and had a meeting with Dr Patricio Fuentes. He is a consultant neurologist and has 20 years of experience working with people with dementia. Dr Fuentes is part of the medical and scientific advisory panel (MSAP) of Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI). In his role, he provides expert advice and acts as the Chilean ambassador for ADI. Dr Fuentes expressed his interest in working collaboratively with us in research.

I got in contact with Corporación Profesional Alzheimer y otras Demencias COPRAD. This is a multidisciplinary organisation constituted by professionals that seek to contribute to the preservation of mental health and the improvement of the quality of life for people living with Alzheimer and other types of dementia, and also their family carers. I had a meeting with the vice-president of this association, Andrea Slachevsky, who is a consultant neurologist and has a PhD in Neuroscience (Paris). Her interests are in public policy and she, together with the corporation and other actors, has been working to put forward a National plan for dementia, this is called: Plan Nacional de Enfermedad de Alzheimer y Otras Demencias.

I had two meetings with the director of Corporación Alzheimer Chile, Nubia Alvarado. This organisation was created by family members of people with dementia and they have several services for individuals with dementia and their families. This organisation subscribes to ADI. Nubia Alvarado also expressed interest in working with us. I also visited the Instituto Nacional de Geriatria, a geriatric hospital, and had a meeting with the Director of the Hospital, Dr. Juana Silva. They have different levels of care for older people: ambulatory, daytime hospitalisation (four hours), this service is provided when somebody needs to be seen by different specialists; the objective is preventing longer periods of hospitalisations; and hospitalisation. Instituto Nacional de Geriatría has a unit which focuses on training, research, dissemination and extension. When I visited they were about to start a course on dementia care. Dr. Juana Silva manifested her interest in working with BUDI.

 

Instituto Nacional de Geriatría. Photos: Courtesy Instituto Nacional de Geriatría.

 
There were at least three people who expressed interest in coming to BUDI as visiting scholars at some point. Jean Gajardo, OT, MSc in Social Gerontology, who is doing a PhD in Public Health at Universidad de Chile. Javier Nuñez, who is a GP and works in matters relating to Dementia, and Agnieszka Bozanic a neuropsychologist who has worked with individuals with dementia and their families. Carolina Perez who works at Instituto Nacional de Geriatría is thinking about undertaking a postgraduate course (MSc or PhD) and was interested in hearing what we could offer.

After being in Chile, I went to Colombia and met a colleague from BUDI, Ben Hicks, to undertake an academic exchange in collaboration with Universidad del Rosario. We had a four day activity programme in Bogota and Nocaima. Our activities in Bogota included giving lectures/presentations at the University and MEDERI hospital to medical and OT students about the work we do at BUDI and other dementia related themes. We also participated in discussion panels. We visited Hospital Universitario de Barrios Unidos to observe a session of the programme PERMEA (Programa de Estimulación y Rehabilitación de la Memoria y la Atención), for the stimulation and rehabilitation of the memory for people with dementia and other memory problems.

Mariela Gaete-Reyes giving a talk at Universidad del Rosario.

 

Ben Hicks giving a talk at Universidad del Rosario.

As part of our academic visit we went to Nocaima a rural community close to Bogota. In Nocaima we were introduced to the Healthy Municipality project and had the opportunity to interact with Semillas de Amor, a group of elderly people. We also visited a care home which depends on the church and on donations of the local community. The care home has 33 residents and only one carer and she manages to do all the care and take them to the GP when needed. Finally, we visited Universidad Nacional de Colombia and held a meeting with the Faculty of Nursing to explore collaborative work in ‘Care for carers’, which is a training programme offered to carers of people with chronic illnesses.   

Hopefully from this visit we will be able to continue working in collaboration with the institutions we visited in Chile and Colombia in dementia research and education. So, many thanks again to the Santander Scholarship.

 
Institutions visited:

Santiago, Chile

  • Instituto Nacional de Geriatría.
  • Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile, Geriatric section.                                 
  • Corporación Profesional Alzheimer y otras Demencias COPRAD.    
  • Corporación Alzheimer Chile.
  • Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales.  

 

Bogotá, Colombia

  • Universidad del Rosario, Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) and Facultad de Jurisprudencia (Faculty of Law).
  • Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de enfermería (Faculty of Nursing).      

BU establishes Food & Drink Research Group

Delicious links

Early September saw the official launch of the recently formed Food & Drink Research Group (at Bournemouth University).  This cross-university research group has current membership from all schools, while formally residing under the ‘Leisure, Recreation & Tourism’ theme (See: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2012/10/BU-Research-Themes-information-060913.pdf).  The Food & Drink Research Group focuses on a wide-range of food and drink issues ranging from consumers’ food choices to local food and drink production and distribution to healthy eating, to name.  Group members have also studied the different meanings people attach to food and eating, for example among students in Dorset and pregnant women in Nepal.

Academics associated with the Food & Drink Research Group are involved with studies focusing on consumers, the hospitality industry, food producers, wholesalers, distributors and the retailing industry. In addition, members have researched food labelling, aspects of nutrition, health promotion and education. The research group aims to act as a hub to all food and drink research activity across the University. In the spirit of Fusion, the group is focusing on student consultancy projects, PhD research, and engagement with industry.

The next meeting of the Food & Drink Research group is scheduled for November 6th at 10.30 in The Retreat at Talbot Campus.

Anybody member of staff interested in joining the group should contact Rhyannan Hurst (email: rhurst@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

Fusion Funding: Linking level I & H through Design and Engineering Research

Fusion

Background:

Through the BSc Design Engineering Level I Design Projects (DP) unit we aim to enhance student understanding of key theory through practical implementation. For their Level H Advanced Technology and Innovation (ATI) unit the students are expected to examine a technical area of engineering, develop their understanding and produce a research paper. This Fusion co-creation project aims to link these activities by implementing Level I DP solutions to solve Level H ATI research problems.

Context:

Level I BSc Design Engineering students were each asked to design a Fatigue Testing machine and, in order to this, they had to develop basic understanding of fatigue and fracture mechanics. These student solutions represent a wide range of designs but can essentially be condensed to two underlying technologies: Pneumatic actuation & Electric motor drive.


By providing the basic building blocks and adaptable elements students can create simple fatigue testing machines to support their ATI research through experience of research lab work yielding research output and practical understanding.

Progress:

The basic design of outline systems and a reference platform have been finalised and part orders generated. This represents specifying 135 component items including structural framework, mechanical drive systems, pneumatics, programmable logic controller (PLC), data acquisition (DAQ), load cell and amplifier, motor controller and motor gearbox unit etc. Hopefully these elements will begin arriving shortly and custom components can be produced in Tolpuddle House before the end of September.

Next step:

The next stage is to build up reference platforms in both Pneumatic and Mechanical configurations. Oh, and learn how to programme a PLC, DAQ software and a SCADA package, doh!

About us:

Dr Nigel Garland is the senior lecturer is Sustainable Design within the School of Design Engineering and Computing.

Dr Zulfiqar Khan is the Director of the Sustainable Design Research Centre.

Find out about the Creative, Digital and Cognitive Science research theme

Research themes

As we start the new academic year, this is an opportune moment to reflect on the activities within this theme over the past 12 months and consider how the theme will develop in the future.

We held several meetings with mixed results. On the upside, we introduced ‘elevator pitches’ from staff who had ideas for funding applications/research papers and wanted to work collaboratively with other members of staff. This format worked extremely well with staff being able to cross-pollinate ideas, knowledge and skills in order to get some forward momentum in their projects.

We also held a number of these sessions with the Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth research theme. This proved to be a real winner and ensured that research themes were not seen as silos.  On the downside, this theme stills lacks a certain amount of staff engagement to develop real critical mass.

In terms of developing this theme in the future, two opportunities stand out. Earlier this year BU signed a ‘Manifesto for our Creative and Digital Economy’ with local businesses and councils. The aim of this initiative is to enhance the creative and digital economy of Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and Dorset. We hope that staff working within this research theme will play a major role in helping to create a thriving international hub driving economic growth. Secondly, this theme has now incorporated the research centres of the School of Design, Engineering & Computing and hopes to integrate  research into Design Simulation, Sustainable Design, and Smart technology to name but a few.

We will be running a number of research meetings during the coming academic year, so please come along and make your contribution to a thriving and societally import research theme.

Dr John Oliver

The Media School

 

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    Find out about the Leisure, Recreation and Tourism research theme

    Research themes

    The past year has seen an increasing level of activity in this research theme, with lots of collaborative research and bidding taking place.  Following numerous events in BU’s Festival of Learning,  July saw BU hosting the ‘Making Waves’ conference, the annual conference of the Association for Events Marketing Educators.  Over 130 delegates from around the world attended the conference, and feedback shows that they found it a useful and thought-provoking conference, with interactive sessions that made it a true “event experience”. 

    This summer has also seen the award of the 2015 Leisure Studies Association conference to Bournemouth University.  This conference will be titled “Creating Leisure” and as the LSA conference is the largest annual conference in leisure research in the UK it provides BU with a great opportunity to showcase the best of our leisure research.  This will be part of a succession of major international conferences held at BU in the Leisure, Recreation and Tourism theme, from the Advances in Tourism Marketing Conference (2009), the 3rd Conference of the International Association for Tourism Economics (2011), the International Conference on Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainability (2012) and the AEME ‘Making Wages’ conference (2013).

    Last academic year also saw greater activity in seminars, ideas cafés and a festivity ‘mash-up’, and we are looking forward to a stimulating programme of Leisure, Recreation and Tourism events this year.

    Prof Adam Blake

    School of Tourism

     

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      CEMP Research and Innovation meetings: an invitation

      Funding opportunities

           This academic year CEMP will continue to publish a fortnightly research & innovation funding bulletin via this blog.

      The Research & Innovation meetings will also continue, but we want to invite colleagues from the rest of the Media School and across BU to tell us how we can increase engagement and collaboration in all aspects of pedagogic / educational research and innovation related to media / technology.

      Previously, the model has been like this –

      The bulletin is posted on a Thursday – this contains information about funding calls and also monitors live projects and reports on the outcomes of all bids.

      The next Thursday, we meet to discuss the calls in the bulletin and report on bids in progress.

      The next Thursday, the updated bulletin is posted

      ….and so on.

      So far, we’ve been successful in one of our two key objectives – increasing CEMP bidding activity, but less successful in the other – developing collaboration with other people in BU, either in response to the funding calls in the bulletin or to try to match peoples’ ideas for projects / innovation to funding opportunities. This second objective is a service / function CEMP can offer to the University, and we’d like more colleagues to access this.

      So – we’d like to review how we do this, in order to get better at the second objective, and to this end the first R&I meeting of this year is an open forum and everyone is invited to either come along and contribute to the discussion or to add a comment to this post if you have ideas but can’t make the meeting.

       

      Meeting details:

      Thursday 26th September 10-12

      CEMP’s new office (CAGO2)

      Tea, coffee and pastries to be served!

      Key issues for discussion:

      • How can CEMP support people in developing research / innovation projects?
      • What are the structural obstacles and how can we overcome them?

      When we’ve got everyone’s ideas / requests for how to proceed, we’ll decide how to go ahead.

      I hope we’ll see you there or read your ideas on the blog.

      Julian

       

      Don’t get left behind with the new BU Research Themes

      Guidance, Research themes

      BRIAN

      As posted by Matthew Bennett yesterday, the Research Themes have changed.  Information about the changes to each Research Theme can be found here.

      Research Themes are captured on BRIAN and so it is important to ensure you are still linked to the correct theme(s) in BRIAN when the new version is released later this month. 

      Over the next week, we will be emailing users affected by the revision to the themes to confirm which of the new themes are most relevant to them.  We will map those affeced across to the new themes.  If the new theme is no longer relevant then we will inform them how to change this.

      If you don’t already identify any research themes in your BRIAN profile, this is a good chance to add that information.  The new Staff Profile Pages, which will go live in October, will be based around Research Themes and so it is important that you have identified at least one.

      Find out about the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing research theme

      Research themes

      Behaviour and lifestyle factors are major contributors to morbidity and mortality; some are well recognised such as unhealthy diet and lack of exercise while effects of others such as social isolation and social relationships are less clear. We are a vibrant group and experienced in working with communities, voluntary organisations, businesses, local authorities and health and social care providers. We lead on a range of local, national and global projects and publish in top international journals.

      Work within this theme has a broad focus across several disciplines within the fields of health and nursing, midwifery, nutrition, social work and social policy, and psychology. The main research activities include:

      •             Promoting public health and effective nutrition

      •             Addressing social exclusion and improving social relationships

      •             Older people and marginalised groups and interagency working;

      •             Psychological interventions in chronic conditions;

      •             Socioeconomic investigation;

      •             Midwifery, maternal and perinatal health;

      •             Qualifying and post-qualifying social work practice and education;

      •             Visual cognition;

      •             Tourism and wellbeing;

      •             Mental and physical wellbeing across the lifespan;

      •             Early year’s development

      We have a membership of approximately 90 academics across the University and have a very active PhD group led by Ashley Mitchell (HSC).

      Highlights this year have included our success at securing an EU IAPP award (VeggiEAT), worth 1.6 million Euros and active participation in the Festival of Learning where the theme hosted over 29 events.

      Each term we have a meeting with the next one being on September 18th in EBC 202 where we are fortunate to have Rachael Craig Senior Research Director, Health Survey for England who will share with us the data sets and blood samples that are available for us to use for research purposes.

      If this interests you please sign up and come along to the next meeting, we would love to see you.

      Assoc Prof Heather Hartwell

      School of Health and Social Care

      School of Tourism

       

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        Find out about the Biodiversity, Environmental Change and Green Economy research theme

        Research themes

        Staff and students have been extremely but successfully busy undertaking policy-relevant, interdisciplinary research science aimed at: increasing understanding of environmental change and its impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems services, the physical environment and human livelihoods, evaluating environmental management options and policy responses, developing sustainable solutions to enhance environmental conditions and human wellbeing.

        Research into the green economy has included carbon storage and management, renewable energy, green tourism, sustainable design, leadership of sustainable development, and the linkages between the environment and the economy. 

        Our research continues to be internationally recognized, as demonstrated in publications in leading journals like Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ISME Journal (Nature’s Group), Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, PLoS, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Quaternary Science Reviews, and Journal of Human Evolution, amongst many others. We recently launched a globally unique Masters degree in the Green Economy, which is delivered by distance learning.  Fish Ecology was defined as a world leader by SCOPUS citation rankings in 2012.

        PhD student numbers have increased by 200% since 2007 due to our success at attracting external funding for BU’s novel match-funded PhD programme, and increased success at winning externally funded PhD studentships.

        Our contribution to the Festival of Learning was substantial – we organised 16 events and activities, all of them well attended and enjoyed by attendees. This included a series of events to commemorate the centenary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace. As the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin, as well as founding the discipline of biogeography, Wallace has left a substantial scientific legacy. A wildlife walk was held culminating in a visit to the monument marking Wallace’s final resting place. One suspects that Wallace himself would have enjoyed the wildlife walk most of all, complete with encounters with snakes, beautiful butterflies and remarkable slaver ants – all elements of Dorset’s wonderful biodiversity.  Wallace 100 Celebration does not end here! A forthcoming event will take place on 12th of October in partnership with Thomas Hardye School (Dorchester).

        The Poole & Purbeck Portal successfully launched in March this year, funded by Fusion. The portal is an on-line community to promote better understanding of our region’s unique natural and heritage assets.  Exciting opportunities, knowledge and expertise are shared on the Portal, creating a gateway for new collaborations across the region.  We invite you to join us by registering your interest on http://www.pooleandpurbeckportal.co.uk/

        Dr Genoveva Esteban

        School of Applied Sciences

         

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