Category / Research themes

CEMP Research & Innovation Bulletin

Funding opportunities

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.

 

 

 

Don’t miss the ‘Festivity Mashup’ – today at 5pm in the Loft (food and drinks available)!

Research themes

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

Post-award


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.

 

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.

Tom Watson presenting at IPRRC 2013

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.

CEMP Research & Innovation Bulletin 14.3.13

Funding opportunities

The CEMP Research & Innovation Cluster bulletin for the meeting on 14.3.13 is here: Cluster bulletin and agenda 14.3.13.

The focus of the cluster is pedagogic research and innovation. Any colleagues interested in collaborating with CEMP to pursue any of the funding opportunities in the bulletin – please email Julian McDougall.

Cluster meetings take place every other Thursday. In the Thursdays in between, the bulletin will be posted here.

In Practice: Tourism and the public health agenda

The Perspectives in Public Health journal recently published an article on BU’s first Ideas Cafe: ‘Healthy Tourism: an oxymoron?’ 

Following on from discussion on the theme ‘Health Tourism – an oxymoron?’ at the Ideas Café hosted by Bournemouth University in December 2012, can public health be a part of the tourism agenda?

Statistics released by The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 2012 estimate that the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide is expected to increase by an average of 3.3% a year from 2010 to 2030. With this growth and expansion of the tourism industry set to continue, there is a growing call from the academic world for tourism to be healthier and to become a part of the public health agenda. This is a timely change, as the return of public health to local government will allow for new levels of collaboration across areas that have not been strongly associated in the past, including public health and tourism.

In light of this, the School of Tourism at Bournemouth University hosted a Health, Wellbeing and Ageing Ideas Café in December 2012 with the theme of Health Tourism: an oxymoron? The event contained an hour of lively debate and discussion…

Click here to read the full text of this article.

SILVER – Active ageing: Open call for robotic based pre-commercial solutions

Funding opportunities

In the European Union, countries are facing tough times in the health and elderly care sector: while populations age and require more care services, countries are under pressure to make these services more cost efficient and effective. The pan-European SILVER project (Supporting Independent LiVing for the Elderly through Robotics) aims to demonstrate how public services can be rejuvenated by procuring R&D services that will develop higher quality and more sustainable elderly care solutions.   

The SILVER project searches for new, innovative ways to acquire public sector health services by utilizing a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process designed for optimally matching R&D with procurers’ needs. The goal is to find new technologies to assist elderly people’s ability to continue living independently at home. By the use of robotics or other related technologies, the elderly are able to enjoy homelife even if they have physical or cognitive disabilities.

 Registrations for the competition can be made via the SILVER webpage at www.silverpcp.eu/call-for-tender/registration

 SILVER (Supporting Independent LiVing for the Elderly through Robotics) is a research and development project to establish and to execute a Pre-Commercial Procurement process suitable for the conditions for cross-border project implementation across several EU countries. It is funded by the European Union under the ICT cooperation part of the Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7). The project started in January 2012 and will run for 51 months. SILVER has partners in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and United Kingdom.

 Status: OPEN

Open Date: 1st March 2013

Registration Close Date: 5th June 2013

Close Date: 12th June 2013

Website: www.silverpcp.eu/

e-mail: competitions@silverpcp.eu

Phone number: +44(0) 300 321 4357

Media School team wins US grant for CSR research

Awarded & submitted bids, REF Subjects, Research themes

A three-member Media School research team has been awarded a grant for research into Corporate Social Responsibility communication amongst employees.

Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson (L-R) gained the grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication, a research center at the Penn State College of Communications.

They will be conducting a study in the UK and Romania to link with a previous study undertaken in Greece by Dr Theofilou. The study supports travel and the employment of research assistants for research in summer this year. Prof Watson, the project PI, has been named as a Page Legacy Scholar for 2013.

“Within the Media School’s Public Relations Research Group (the PRRes Gang), there is considerable expertise in CSR,” said Prof Watson.

“Dr Grigore is an organiser of an international CSR conference to be held at BU in the autumn, whilst Dr Theofilou is pioneering research into harnessing ‘scepticism’ as a factor in developing effective CSR communication within corporate organisations.

“This grant is very positive recognition of BU’s standing internationally within public relations and corporate communications research.”

# Arthur W. Page was a highly respected pioneer of public relations and corporate communications in the US from the late 1920s to the late 1940s at the telecoms giant, AT&T.

(L-R) Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson

 

Global trends reports: environmental concerns at record lows

This is a disappointing global trend which shows a decreasing concern for the environment.
http://www.globescan.com/commentary-and-analysis/press-releases/press-releases-2013/261-environmental-concerns-at-record-lows-global-poll.html
We need to debate what is behind this – is it a reflection of a society that is becoming apathetic, is it because governments have not been doing enough, is it a reflection of the financial situation? At a time when the earth faces so many challenges and people need to be engaged to secure sustainable development, these issues merit further exploration.
On a more positive note I have had a sly preview of NUS data on students perceptions of the role of universitites and SD – students generally believe (and expect) universitites should do more. The NUS results will suggest a much more positive picture.

In relation to the role of universities, I have just contributed the ‘leadership’ chapter to a new book  The Sustainable University: progress and prospects. The Chair of our Board at Bournemouth University has contributed a ‘vignette’ about the role of Chairs. The book offers some explanations of why progress to date has hardly been transformational.  Details available at

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415627740/

Chris

Dr. Peter Bridgewater, Chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, is coming to BU tomorrow!

Research themes

The Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme would like to invite you to their seminar tomorrow from 11am to 1pm in the Coyne Lecture Theatre. Dr. Peter Bridgewater, Chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, will lead the seminar and discuss “Biodiversity governance in the Anthropocene”.

Peter has had a glittering career in the science-policy interface. He currently holds a position as the chairman of the JNCC and has held many reputable positions in the past, including but not limited to: chair of the International Whaling Commission, Secretary General of the RAMSAR convention of wetlands, Chief Scientist UK Nature Conservancy Council and a position on the Board of the Millenium Assessment.

The seminar will be held in the Coyne Lecture Theatre from 11am to 1pm . All are welcome, so please come by if you’re interested in hearing more from Peter!

Dr. Peter Bridgewater, Chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee is coming to BU!

Research themes

The Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme would like to invite you to their seminar on 5 March. Dr. Peter Bridgewater, Chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, will lead the seminar and discuss “Biodiversity governance in the Anthropocene”.

Peter has had a glittering career in the science-policy interface. He currently holds a position as the chairman of the JNCC and has held many reputable positions in the past, including but not limited to: chair of the International Whaling Commission, Secretary General of the RAMSAR convention of wetlands, Chief Scientist UK Nature Conservancy Council and a position on the Board of the Millenium Assessment.

The seminar will be held in the Coyne Lecture Theatre from 11am to 1pm on 5 March. All are welcome, so please come by if you’re interested in hearing more from Peter!

Competition open!

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion

The website is now live and features all the details of how to enter the competition.

The competition has already been presented to students at BU and AUB – we go on the road next week to start promoting it at other UK universities.

Details of both the competition and the festival can be found at www.bfxfestival.com