The Business School has seen the arrival of its new Deputy Dean of Research, Andy Mullineux (formerly University of Birmingham) as Professor of Financial Economics. Additional to his wisdom he comes with an AHRC Research Award worth £687K. End of April he will be chairing a session and give a paper at the International Conference on the Global Financial Crisis in Southampton. At the same time the new Head of Department of Accounting, Finance & Economics, Jens Hölscher (formerly University of Brighton), came to Bournemouth as Professor of Economics. He can draw on research funds won under the EU’s Jean Monnet programme and will chair a session and give a paper at a conference on The Pacific Rim Economies in Seoul, South Korea, at the end of April. Both of them have high aspirations to boost the research culture within the school.
Category / Research themes
Insurance and meerkats
What do insurance and meerkats have in common? On the face of it – very little. For comparethemarket.com, the well-known insurance aggregator, the combination has proven to be extremely successful and has captured the public’s imagination. The campaign achieved its 12 months targets in just 9 weeks and Aleksandr, the main character, has his own Facebook fans, is followed on Twitter and has received numerous marriage proposals.
Comparethemarket.com, or should that be Comparethemeerkat.com, was just one of the advertising campaigns reviewed by Dr. Julie Robson at a recent presentation on “Changes in Insurance Advertising” for the Bournemouth Insurance Institute.
Julie’s talk examined how advertising content, structure and style have changed over time. Beginning with one of the earliest forms of insurance advertising, as early as the 1700s, where fire insurance plaques were placed on the front of the insured’s building, signifying which company the property was insured with. She then tracked through the decades of change in advertising to today’s advertisements looking at visual prominence; the use of puns, metaphors and ambiguity; emotional vs. rational appeals; and the increasing use of digital technology within the sector.
Julie also examined what advertising works in a recession and how to get the most from your marketing budget before going on to look at some of the trends for the near future.
The Insurance Institute of Bournemouth has over 1,000 members and is part of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), the leading professional body for the global financial services profession.
Dr. Julie Robson specialises in financial services marketing. She has presented her research at internal conferences and published in academic journals on a range of marketing topics in the banking, insurance, broker and Islamic finance sectors. She has secured grants from the ESRC and HEIF to support this work and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Bank Marketing. Julie is currently Chair of the Qualifications Examination and Assessments Committee of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and a past President and current Education Secretary for the Bournemouth Insurance Institute.
CEMP Research & Innovation Cluster Bulletin / Agenda
The updated cluster bulletin and agenda for the next meeting is here: CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 18.4.3.13
The reading matter for the ‘think-tank’ discussion is here: Postill-Pink-socialmedia-ethnography
Please note that, due to Easter holidays, the meeting is a week later than usual – taking place now at 9.30am on Thursday 18th April in the CEMP office.
As always, anyone wishing to pursue a funding opportunity in the bulletin, suggest a project relating to pedagogy / innovation or just find out more about the cluster, you are VERY welcome to come to the meeting, just let me (Julian) know in advance. Same applies if you have ideas for collaboration but cannot attend the meeting.
FIF – Poole & Purbeck Portal – now live!
The new scientific community brought to you by the School of Applied Sciences is now online.
Watch the promotional video now and sign up today to engage the public with your research!
Stop Press: BU involved in first ever national health promotion conference in Nepal
(c) Sheetale “Ishwori and women in a health promotion group laughing when asked if men would help in the housework; part of addressing women’s status @GTNHP”
BU Professor Edwin van Teijlingen is involved in organisation of the first National Health Promotion conference in Nepal. The conference is held in Kathmandu over the Easter weekend (March 30th-April 1st). This is a unique collaboration between Bournemouth University, the Government of Nepal, international organisations such as the World Health Organization, USAID, the Nepalese media, and several universities and colleges; and will highlight the importance of health promotion at all levels in Nepal.
One of the opening plenary will be given by Prof. van Teijlingen, we will outline health promotion from a global perspective. A total of 75 papers will be presented at the conference, including one by HSC BU PhD student Ms. Sheetal Sharma. She will also present findings from the long-term research project that aimed to improve the uptake of maternity services in rural Nepal. Her PhD research is supervised by HSC’s Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell & Prof. van Teijlingen as well as Dr. Padam Simkhada from The University of Sheffield and Visiting Faculty at HSC. As part of the conference Prof. van Teijlingen and Dr. Simkhada will also run a skills-building workshop which offers training on writing up of findings health promotion research for academic journals.
There will be 250 participants from seven different countries including the USA, Canada, UK, India, Nigeria, the Netherlands and Nepal. This is the first ever conference of its kind to held in Nepal in the field of health promotion.
Prof. van Teijlingen said: “Nepal has a double burden of diseases. It experiences both the kind of infectious diseases associated with being a low-income country, and a growing burden of the kind of diseases commonly associated with lifestyles in high-income countries. Therefore, is it is encouraging to see that so many different organisations have signed up to the principles of health promotion.”
Ms. Sharma commented: “Nepal is an exciting country to conduct research in, with the diverse castes and motivated rural community volunteers; also among South Asian countries, its speed of development is considerable: the Maternal Mortality rate was halved despite a decade long civil war, Abortion is legal since 2002, same sex marriage since 2008. It is important to disseminate findings to relevant stakeholders.”
Dr. Simkhada and Prof. van Teijlingen are both Visiting Professor at two Nepalese universities. They have more than sixty of research articles publish in international journals on health-related issues in Nepal. Sheetal Sharma was funded by BU to travel to Nepal and attend the conference. Prof. van Teijlingen was interviewed for national television in Nepal regarding the Public Health conference.
The Health Promotion conference has its own web site see: http://hpconference.org.np/
Prof. van Teijlingen has been conducting research in Nepal for nearly a decade. Some of the work he is evaluating is supported by Green Tara UK, a Buddhist organization based in London.
The staff web pages for Edwin van Teijlingen: http://bit.ly/13zLRyc
Web page Sheetal Sharma: http://bit.ly/101TLuU
Twitter #GTNHP @GTNHP
Facebook Green Tara Nepal
Want a challenge? short term secondment opportunity @ the Bournemouth University Dementia Institute
The BU Dementia Institute is growing fast with staff or students involved in various ways from all BU schools. We have a short term secondment opportunity (3 months) to work with us as Project manager to help develop our profile, income streams and to work on selected existing projects. Interested? Take a look at http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/jobs/hsc184.html and drop me an email if you would like to discuss ainnes@bournemouth.ac.uk
To Initiate a Research Platform for Electric Vehicle (EV) Business Ecosystem Research
This project (sponsored by SMN Strand Santander Scholarships), is conducted by Dr.Ke Rong (Business School) and Dr.Nigel Williams(Tourism School) to initiate an university-industry research platform between UK-China for the emerging electric vehicle business ecosystem and business model research. This project would help BU secure an active position in the electric vehicle industry research. The research platform will integrate scholars of Santander Universities including two Chinese top universities (Tsinghua and CEIBS) and two UK top universities (Cambridge, Bath) as well as two committed EV companies. Based on this platform, the industrial fieldwork and one public seminar on EV industry development will be organized in China by engaging top scholars and practitioners which will expand BU’s reputation in China and UK. One journal paper of EV ecosystem would be developed based on our research.
For more information, please contact Dr Ke Rong (krong@bournemouth.ac.uk).
BU academics to look at access to maternity services in Nepal with Fellowship grant
A team from Bournemouth University will look at why women in Nepal don’t use health services when giving birth, after receiving the first International Fellowship for Midwives. The Fellowship is awarded by the charity Wellbeing of Women, in association with the Royal College of Midwives, for research into maternity services and women’s health from an international perspective. The team from BU will use the £20,000 Fellowship grant to look at the real and perceived barriers to women in Nepal giving birth within a health facility with a skilled birth attendant.
“There is evidence that access to skilled birth attendant is likely to lead to a better outcome for the mother and baby,” said Lesley Milne, senior lecturer in Midwifery at Bournemouth University, who will lead the project. “If they don’t, it is more likely to end in a maternal mortality, and we are trying to determine why women in Nepal don’t access health services.”
Lesley will be supported by Vanora Hundley, Professor in Midwifery at BU, Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research at BU, and Dr Padam Simkhada, from the University of Sheffield. The year-long project will start on April 1 and the money received as part of the Fellowship will enable Lesley to go to Nepal for three weeks in September to undertake the research. She said: “This would not be possible if we had not been awarded this money. It’s fantastic to have received this grant and we are really pleased about it.” She added: “There is an under-utilisation of health services in Nepal. It is about getting women to use the services available and trying to find out why many of them currently don’t. I will be going out to Nepal to observe and also undertake some interviews of health personnel of both a rural hospital and a hospital in Kathmandu, to try to see what they think is preventing women from accessing services.” Lesley added that possible reasons for women not accessing health services could include having to travel a long way, having had poor previous experiences or their cultural beliefs.
Bournemouth University has been building links with Nepal across a number of areas and academic schools, including the School of Health and Social Care, and both Lesley and fellow researcher Professor Edwin van Teijlingen have experience in the surrounding area. Lesley said that she hoped the research could be a springboard for future study. “I hope that we may have a great insight into why women aren’t accessing services and hopefully will be able to address that in the future,” she said.
Face Blindness Public Awareness Campaign Gets Underway!
Research from BU’s Centre for Face Processing Disorders was featured in a CBBC documentary today. The film was entitled ‘My life: Who are you?’ and followed the journey of Hannah, a teenager with face blindness, as she participated in one of our training programmes and discusses the difficulties of everyday life. The documentary also featured Hannah meeting another girl with face blindness for the first time, and her encounter with Duncan Bannatyne who also has the condition.
We are so pleased with the documentary, and felt the producers did an excellent job in portraying the condition with scientific accuracy, and in demonstrating the difficulties associated with face blindness. Despite Hannah’s struggles she still maintains a positive attitude to life and the film does an excellent job of presenting her as the remarkable young lady that she is, who was so keen to make the film in order to raise public awareness of the condition. Hannah’s story illustrates how life can be affected by brain injury, but her remarkable positivity shines through as the programme follows her journey.
If you missed the programme you can watch it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbbc/episode/b01rlyc9/My_Life_Who_Are_You/
We recently launched an e-petition that aims to promote public and professional awareness of prosopagnosia by campaigning for its discussion in the House of Commons. We need to gain 100,000 signatures to make this happen, so if you were moved by the documentary, please do add your signature:
http://www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org/awareness/e-petition
Our public awareness campaign has only just taken off so watch this space for more activities!
Realities of fieldwork: Sheetal Sharma, HSC PhD student on fieldwork in rural Nepal.

Open air focus group in rural Nepal, (c) Sheetal Sharma 2013.
Roosters crowing, cows mooing, bleating goats, birds chirping, mobile phones ringing, children screaming, laughing and running around while women, breastfeeding, talk over one another excitedly in the sun as they need to leave us soon to drop the children off to school and/or head to the field to cultivate the season’s crop this spring it is wheat, last summer, rice. Women do this work as most of their husbands are away in the capital, Kathmandu or in the Arab Gulf. This is the reality of conducting focus groups in rural Nepal.
Although we, as researchers, spend considerable time to perfect the ideal ‘tool’ of the interview schedule and imagine the transcription clear and the background; a researcher must be prepared for every eventuality. Noise, din and interruptions: Today a dog nibbled on a nearby goat and a few men kept creeping to listen in why was this videshi (foreigner) recording conversations and making notes. The women shooed them away as today was a discussion on contraception; also that the discussion of the focus groups should be in ‘controlled environment’, safe, quiet; and in Nepal where women are not the main decision-maker for their reproductive health, it should mean a lieu women should be able to discuss freely these issues. In this Green Tara’s (www.greentaratrust.com) intervention area, which my PhD, supervised at HSC BU by Catherine Angell, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen and University of Sheffield’s Padam Simkhada, aims to evaluate both quantitatively and qualitatively, shows one the decision-making outcomes improved: increased the use of contraception in the Pharping area from 4.3% (2008) to 24.6% (2012) after 5 years of health promotion conducted by two auxiliary nurse-midwives.
40 minutes later recording (with 2 digital recorders) and once the demographic data and recording is double-checked and any last questions answered we set off walking 2 hours downhill visiting a tea-shop on the way for a cup of chai.
Edwin van Teijlingen and Emma Pitchforth, Qualitative Research: Focus group research in family planning and reproductive health care J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2006;32:1 30-32doi:10.1783/147118906775275299
http://jfprhc.bmj.com/content/32/1/30.citation
CEMP Research & Innovation Bulletin
Here is the updated CEMP Research & Innovation bulletin and agenda for the next cluster meeting – CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 28.3.13_KE
The cluster meeting is on Thursday March 28th, 9.30-11.30 in the CEMP office.
Thanks to Kris Erickson for these updates.
The ‘thinktank’ reading for discussion at the meeting is SURRENDERING THE SPACE Convergence culture, Cultural Studies and the curriculum
Thanks to Ashley Woodfall for this.
Expressions of interest in the funding opportunities in the bulletin and / or to confirm meeting attendance, please email julian@cemp.ac.uk.
CEMP and CIPPM Researchers co-publish reports on parody for the UKIPO
Dr. Kris Erickson (CEMP), Dr. Dinusha Mendis and Professor Martin Kretschmer (CIPPM) have co-authored a series of reports commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) on parody and pastiche. Empirical and legal research is presented in a sequence of three reports published by the UKIPO in March 2013. The three studies commissioned by UKIPO evaluate policy options in the implementation of the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property & Growth (2011).
Study I authored by Dr. Kris Erickson presents new empirical data about music video parodies on the online platform YouTube
Study II authored by Dr. Dinusha Mendis and Professor Martin Kretshcmer offers a comparative legal review of the law of parody in seven jurisdictions
Study III authored by Dr. Kris Erickson, Professor Martin Kretschmer and Dr. Dinusha Mendis provides a summary of the findings of Studies I & II, and analyses their relevance for copyright policy.
All three reports can also be found here
Study I presents new empirical data about music video parodies. A sample of 8,299 user-generated music video parodies was constructed relating to the top-100 charting music singles in the UK for the year 2011.
Study II discusses of the legal treatment of parodies in seven jurisdictions that have implemented a copyright exception for parody. The jurisdictions include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, and USA. Study II identifies possible regulatory options for benefiting from a parody exception to copyright infringement, and distils the (economic and non-economic) rationales developed by legislators and courts. The report concludes by setting out a list of policy options.
Study III brings together the legal analysis and the empirical data. Each of the policy options identified in Study II is examined for its likely impact on the empirical sample gathered in Study I.
The research team comprising of Dr. Kris Erickson, Dr. Dinusha Mendis and Professor Martin Kretschmer presented the following key findings arising from the three Studies:
- Parody is a significant consumer activity: On average, there are 24 user-generated parodies available for each original video of a charting single.
- There is no evidence for economic damage to rights holders through substitution: The presence of parody content is correlated with, and predicts larger audiences for original music videos.
- The potential for reputational harm in the observed sample is limited: Only 1.5% of all parodies sampled took a directly negative stance, discouraging viewers from commercially supporting the original.
- Observed creative contributions were considerable: In 78% of all cases, the parodist appeared on camera (also diminishing the possibility of confusion).
- There exists a small but growing market for skilled user-generated parody: Parodists who exhibit higher production values in their works attract larger audiences, which can be monetized via revenue share with YouTube.
Don’t miss the ‘Festivity Mashup’ – today at 5pm in the Loft (food and drinks available)!
You are invitied to join the Leisure and Recreation research theme for their Ideas Cafe, titled “A ‘Festivity Mashup'”!
When: 20 March 2013, 5pm – 7pm
Where: The Loft, Poole House, Talbot Campus
‘Festivity’ is an expanding and critical phenomenon that is impacting on all areas of life from events, technology and gaming, health and wellbeing, media and digital culture, to tourism, fashion and food. ‘Festivity Mashup’ is an informal ‘eat, drink and discuss’ session that explores these areas, their research and practical applications as well as future. Don’t be worried, not all festivity is about ludic behaviours, role inversion and communing in liminoid environments. So, if you like research with a difference, where casual sociability and soft engagement mingles critique and a hint of intrigue join us in the Loft on March 20th, starting at 17:00….
Potential themes:
· Gamification of the Live and Lived Fantasy
· Mediated Lifestyles: Communities of Convergence
· Wellbeing and Wonder: Edutainment in Action
· Festivalization of the Everyday
· Festive Identities from Parade to Protest
· Journeys of Emotioneering & Imagineering
. Meanings, Value and C2C Co-creation
· Globalising Cultural Policy: Place Wars
· Festival for Whom?: the Politics of Place
· Experiential Dreams in the Age of the McFestival
· Consumerism, Sustainability and Post-Festivity
· Digital Brandscapes: New Worlds of Performative Play
If you are interested in attending please let Naomi Kay (nkay@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Julia Hastings Taylor (jhastingstaylor@bournemouth.ac.uk) know.
My Swedish visit
For the past couple of years those of us in the Centre for Media history have been building up our relationship with Lund University where Media History is taught and actively researched. The connection owes a lot to my colleague, Kristin Skoog, who is Swedish but specialises in BBC radio history.
Although I have visited Lund a number of times I have only now spent a week here and in my role as a Visiting Fellow I was asked to contribute to the teaching and research programme.
So I found myself talking to a group of possibly bemused second year undergraduates about BBC radio broadcasts during the second world war. Maybe this was a bit reckless because, as you may know, Sweden was officially neutral during the war and I did wonder how they would respond to the rather gung-ho nature of BBC war reporting. In fact they were very interested and perceptive in their comments.
My next task was to interview two media history PhD students with their supervisors present. Despite not really knowing much about their subjects the conversation seemed to be productive and I certainly learned a lot (about the history of A4 (!) and ‘balloonings’ in Stockholm).
My main challenge was to address the impressive media history research seminar and this time I was prepared with my latest, not entirely legally obtained, audio from the BBC sound archive on the Suez crisis of 1956. Surprisingly I saw in the audience Bente Larsen, a leading figure in Danish radio archives who had popped over ‘the bridge’ (yes, that bridge) to listen. I followed the very impressive and calm young Danish academic, Heidi Svømmekjær, and all went well.
I should add that I do not speak a word of Swedish and so could not use the library. But everyone in Sweden seems to speak very good English.
It has been an extremely stimulating and valuable experience and I would be happy to talk to anyone out there who is interested in building Swedish links.
One final comment; as a guest I was given my own profile page on the Lund University website http://www.kom.lu.se/en/research/mediehistoria/guest-researcher/ What a shame we at Bournemouth are not able to design web profiles of this standard!
Hugh Chignell, Professor of Media History, The Media School. 15.3.2013
The research collaboration with Cambridge on the emerging strategic management scheme- Business Ecosystem
I (Dr.Ke Rong) as the principal investigator have received an award from the Bournemouth Small Grant scheme. This project has set up the collaborative research partnership with Dr.Yongjiang Shi (ys@eng.cam.ac.uk), the director of centre for international manufacturing of University of Cambridge. We have explored a new strategic management territory- business ecosystem in a multidisciplinary working environment by integrate the research methods from operation management (Dr.Yongjiang Shi’s expertise) and strategic management (Dr.Ke Rong’s expertise).
After ten months, we successfully completed the project. Specifically, our pilot research explored the evolution and construct of a business ecosystem. This pilot project also led to a funding bid by combining ideas in a multidisciplinary working environment ( strategic management and operation management) and fostering new and long term collaboration with prestigious universities like University of Cambridge. Two journal papers on the business ecosystem have been published and two others are submitted.
Besides, the co-investigator and I also organized a research seminar on ‘Shanzhai business ecosystem’ in the Academy of Management Annual conference in Boston, 08/2012. More than 20 worldwide scholars attended and they recognized that our business school had dedicated to this emerging research theme- Business Ecosystem.
Engage with Dorset HealthWatch via Twitter!
Healthwatch is the new independent, consumer champion for health and social care services in England. The local Dorset HealthWatch are holding a tweetchat on Wednesday 20th March from 1-2pm.
The idea is to discuss how social media can be used to encourage volunteering and participation in Healthwatch during a lunchtime twitter session. Dorset HealthWatch tweet under @HwatchDorset, and the hashtag for the event is ‘#HwatchDorset’.
Twitter chats are discussions that take place on twitter, at a specific time around a predetermined subject. They use a hashtag (#) as a flag that binds a conversation together. Tweetchats are an excellent way to use Twitter to discuss topics with peers.
If you’re already on twitter just use the hashtag #HwatchDorset on Wednesday 20th March between 1pm and 2pm. If you’re new to twitter – register here http://www.twitter.com then search for @HwatchDorset and ‘follow’ and remember to include #HwatchDorset in your tweets.
Please use and promote #HwatchDorset – the first, 10th and 20th retweet we receive will win a £20 shopping voucher. We will also make a donation of £150 to a community group nominated by one lucky chat participant – be in it, to win it…..
This is a great opportunity to engage with a local health third sector organisation on the social media.
Squeezing the pips from a conference with social media
Please forgive the self-publicity, but I would like to share my recent use of social media to promote BU, research, a conference and papers.
Last week, I attended the annual International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) in the US, where I presented three papers, one with a US co-author. It’s the largest conference in the field, drawing 101 papers over three days and attendance in the order of 150-175 academics, graduates and some practitioners.
To broadcast involvement in the conference, I used my personal blog to present a daily summary of interesting papers: http://fiftyonezeroone.blogspot.co.uk/. The blog posts have had over 210 visits so far and were also circulated on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. There have been many re-tweets (RTs), plus appreciative emails and direct messages via Twitter.
A short summary of “top 10 research tips” was written for the prmoment.com website which has around 30,000 users, worldwide. It was posted on the site’s blog and is included in this week’s publication: http://blog.prmoment.com/ten-pr-research-tips-from-bournemouth-universitys-professor-tom-watson/
The outcomes of this type of activity will be long-term and hard to measure, but as I was the only UK delegate at IPRRC this year, it has given BU, our research and industry knowledge an international platform of expertise and insight to present ourselves. The capital cost was almost nil, as I used my own netbook, Wi-Fi was free and the time component was less than an hour a day. Try this approach at your next conference or internal event.
Interested in eHealth? Join the Psychology Research Centre for an informal forum!
On Wednesday 27th March, 2013 the Psychology Research Centre will be holding an informal forum for anyone who is currently doing, or interested in doing, research related to eHealth (e.g. research interests may include understanding how people (e.g. potential patients, patients, health professionals) use the internet for health information and/or intervention). We are informally calling this forum CHIRP which stands for Centre for eHealth Internet Research and Practice and it is open to any staff or postgraduate students at BU who would like to meet up to discuss research plans, ideas and potential collaborations.
The topic of eHealth fits well into the BU research themes of ‘Health, Wellbeing & Ageing’ and ‘Technology & Design’ and we are currently aware of members in DEC and HSC who are currently conducting research in this area.
The aim of this meeting will be to get together and understand common research interests therefore we would ask you to come prepared to talk for around 3 minutes about the current work you are doing (feel free to send a powerpoint slide with details of you interest too).
The forum will be held at 3pm in room P405 at Poole House and Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided. Please contact Sarah Williams in Psychology by early next week if you are interesting in attending.