Category / BU research

Upcoming conference: Rethinking the Business to Business (B2B) label

BU research, Business Engagement, conferences, Events, Research communication, Research news, Research themes

B2B marketing is an important sector in social sciences and relevant to many academics and practitioners. The B2B label has become out-dated; lacks focus, clarity and accuracy as a descriptive classification; and fails to inspire interest and enthusiasm. This event calls on marketers to rethink the B2B label by engaging relevant stakeholders: researchers, practitioners and educators, in an in-depth conversation on what B2B means today.

4th B2B colloquium – welcome talk by Dr Kaouther Kooli

Led by Dr Kaouther Kooli academics from the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Management (BU) and Professor Merlin Stone from St Mary’s University are co-organising a conference aimed at rethinking the Business to Business label. This event calls on marketers to rethink the B2B label by engaging relevant stakeholders: researchers, practitioners and educators, in an in-depth conversation on what B2B means today.

4th B2B colloquium – parallel session

The conference is taking place on 18thDecember 2017 at St Mary’s University Twickenham. The half day event will engage the B2B community (researchers, practitioners and educators) in an in-depth conversation on B2B marketing with the aim to define what B2B is and exchange new ideas about how to advance academic and practitioner thinking in this area.

Guest speakers include Professor Merlin Stone, Professor Len Tiu Wright (University of Huddersfield) and a senior B2B practitioner.

Round tables will be facilitated by Dr Kaouther Kooli, Dr Julie Robson and Dr Elvira Bolat, all of Bournemouth University and specialists in B2B marketing. A detailed programme can be downloaded in here.

Attendance is free. We are welcoming all academics, PhD candidates, UG and PG students as well as practitioners.

If you wish to attend, please confirm your attendance via email at merlin.stone@stmarys.ac.uk

Location: St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. For instructions about getting to St Mary’s, see https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/directions.aspx.

In that past three years, the B2B SIG (Academy of Marketing) has published two special issues in Journal of Customer Behaviour and Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, featuring academic and practitioners’ research. At the moment Dr Kaouther Kooli is preparing new special issue for the Journal of Business to Business Marketing. If you wish to benefit from such amazing publishing and networking opportunities, do become a member of the SIG by emailing at kkooli@bournemouth.ac.uk or ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Photo of the Week: Birthing centre in Nawalparasi, rural Nepal

BU research

Birthing centre in Nawalparasi, rural Nepal

Birthing centre in Nawalparasi, rural Nepal 

Our next instalment of the ‘Photo of the Week’ series features Professor Edwin van Teijlingen’s image of a birthing centre in rural Nepal.  The series is a weekly instalment, which features an image taken by our fantastic BU staff and students. The photos give a glimpse into some of the fascinating work our researchers have been doing across BU and the wider community.

The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) visited one of the poorest parts of rural Nawalparasi District, Nepal to carry out fieldwork. The team visited a birthing centre at the health post in Thulo Khairatawa.  The photo shows the delivery room. It may look bare and basic to a westerner, but it is a major improvement compared to the situation a few years ago, thanks to financial support from Green Tara UK and Karuna Germany and health promotion support from Green Tara Nepal.

Research conducted by the CMMPH at BU evaluates the impact of (a) a health promotion intervention in the community around the birthing centre; and (b) training the maternity care providers in rural birthing centres of Nawalparasi. One obvious impact to date is the increasing number of rural women giving birth in small birthing units such as this one.

If you’d like find out more about the research or the photo itself then please contact Professor van Teijlingen

This photo was originally an entry in the 2017 Research Photography Competition. If you have any other questions about the Photo of the Week series or the competition please email research@bournemouth.ac.uk

HE Policy Update w/e 10 November 2017

BU research, Fusion, international, policy, Research news, Uncategorized

HE Policy Update

w/e 10 November 2017

A research funding crisis?

Follow this link to read the  A research funding crisis? summary with all the diagrams and charts.

Or read the summary below without the charts.

Ahead of the Autumn 2017 Budget the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has published How much is too much? Cross-subsidies from teaching to research in British Universities written by Russell Group PG Economics student Vicky Olive. The paper concludes that research within universities is reliant on subsidy by tuition fee funding. As international students pay higher fees more of their fees go towards research than home and EU students. The paper concludes that on average international students contribute £8,000 from their total fees towards research. While the figures vary between universities, in 2014/15 teaching income funded 14% of English university research (approx. £1 in every £7 spent).

The paper argues that although the UK has a leading global research performance (see diagram below) R&D expenditure is well below competitor nations and unsustainable in the long term.

The paper argues that In 2014/15 the UK HE sector had a sustainability gap of £1 billion. This is described as a looming crisis because of a number of factors:

  • the focus on value for money for students paying tuition fees
  • Brexit threats to EU research funding
  • the unwelcoming nature of current immigration policy
  • the improvement of HE education in countries where the UK traditionally recruits international students
  • the impact of UK austerity policy which has seen limited science and research budget growth.

The Conservative Government’s has a target to increase R&D spend to 3% of GDP. The paper suggests that to realise this target the following would need to occur:

  • the UK would need an additional 250,000 full fee-paying international students;
  • Research Councils and Funding Councils to spend an additional £3 billion on funding research;
  • industry to contribute an additional £700 million;
  • charities to contribute an additional £830 million;
  • government departments to contribute £760 million extra each year.

Current R&D expenditure is 1.7% of GDP (25% of which spend by HEIs, 66% of spend by industry). The Government has announced additional investment of £4.7 billion by 2020/21 for R&D, however, the paper argues this isn’t enough and that other sectors must also increase their investment. The paper summarises recent Government policy related to R&D budgets.

The paper considers, and discards, the notion of only providing QR funding for 4* research.

In addition to her calls to increase research investment the author states her aim is to bring together UKRI and OfS to facilitate a sensible research funding model which neither underfunds or jeopardises research sustainability nor exploits students. The paper also urges universities to push back and recover a greater proportion of full economic cost from industry funders, particularly when the research is not directly for the public good.

Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI, commented : ”Anyone who wants to end cross-subsidies must say how they would fund universities’ various roles properly. There are three pressing issues. First, those who fund university research – public and private funders as well as charities – do not cover anything like the full costs. Secondly, the cross-subsidy from tuition fees to research is probably not sustainable at current levels. Thirdly, the Government wants a near doubling in research and development spending as a share of GDP, yet recent funding injections are only enough to stand still.

Our conclusion is that the Chancellor needs to find another £1 billion for research in this year’s Budget, with some set aside for the work universities do with charities. But even this level of additional funding would mean stagnation relative to other countries. So we also need a strategy for increasing research spending to OECD levels over the next few years and German levels thereafter – as promised in the 2017 Conservative manifesto.

The Times covered the report in University research subsidised with £281m from tuition fees.

Separately but relevant to this debate:

  • THE have written about the latest OECD data stating it shows a levelling off in global numbers of mobile students after the exponential growth of late 1990s and 2000s – read Data bite: international student flows in focus.
  • As we near the Autumn 2017 Budget parliamentarians have been calling on the Government to support their campaigning interests. This week Vince Cable (Lib Dem Leader) covers education and research and development in his pre-budget speech: “Long term studies by the LSE have shown that the two main determinants of poor UK performance on productivity are lack of innovation (R&D as opposed to basic science where the UK is strong) and low levels of skills. The former problem is being addressed by R&D tax credits and by the work of Innovate UK, in particular the Catapult network, which Liberal Democrats launched in government as part of the Industrial Strategy.
  • The latter is a far less tractable problem and despite the progress we made in the Coalition in raising the number and quality of apprenticeships, especially Higher Apprenticeships, the programme is now slipping backwards largely because of clumsy implementation of the apprenticeship levy and the neglect of careers advice and guidance….a budget built around the industrial strategy, prioritising education and skills, R&D and infrastructure would, at the very least, send the right signals.”

Interdisciplinary Research

HEFCE have opened sub-panel nominations for roles related to IDR within REF 2021 aiming to support and promote the fair and equitable assessment of IDR outputs and environment through:

  • the inclusion of Interdisciplinary Research advisers on each sub-panel
  • the continuation of the optional IDR flag
  • the inclusion of a specific IDR section in the environment template

In September HEFCE blogged on the importance of academics within interdisciplinary research culture in What creates a culture of interdisciplinary research? HEFCE described what the new IDR role may look like in Wednesday’s blog REF 2021: Where are we on interdisciplinary research?

Widening Participation and inclusivity

OFFA has commissioned a new evidence based research study: Understanding and overcoming the challenges of targeting students from under-represented and disadvantaged ethnic backgrounds.

HEA and Runnymede Trust will analyse existing practice across the sector and ‘produce a suite of practical guidance to support staff in a variety of different roles within universities and colleges in overcoming the challenges associated with this work’. The project is part of OFFA’s long-term aim to challenge and support universities and colleges to do more to address the differences in higher education participation, attainment and progression to further study or employment that persist between students from different ethnic groups.

Les Ebdon: “Black and minority ethnic (BME) students have been a key target group for OFFA for a number of years. But our research suggests that universities and colleges are struggling to target the activities they deliver through their access agreements where they are most needed…This project will help us understand how activities can be targeted appropriately and effectively towards students from disadvantaged and under-represented ethnic backgrounds, enabling OFFA to better support universities and colleges to accelerate progress in this crucial area.”

Principal Investigator, Jacqueline Stevenson, stated: “Our intention is not just to indicate the barriers institutions are facing, but also what they are able to do to address these entrenched and long-standing inequalities.”

 

 Scope call for inclusive workplaces: Scope has called on the Dept for Work and Pensions to develop universal, industry-standard information and best practice guidance for all businesses to support their employment and management of disabled people. Scope’s new research Let’s Talk found many disabled people struggle to share information about their impairment or condition in the workplace making it hard for them to access the support and adjustments they need to carry out their job.

 

Question to the Dept for Education: Office for Students

Andrew Percy (Con): Whether the remit of the Office for Students will include anti-discrimination on campus.

Jo Johnson (Con, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research & Innovation): The government has published a consultation on behalf of the new Office for Students (OfS) regarding the regulation of the higher education sector. It proposes that, in its regulatory approach, the OfS will look to ensure that all students, from all backgrounds can access, succeed in, and progress from higher education.

Higher Education (HE) providers are autonomous organisations, independent from Government, and they already have responsibilities to ensure that they provide a safe, inclusive environment, including legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (the Act) to ensure that students do not face discrimination.

The OfS, like some HE providers, will also have obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty in part 11 of the Act. This includes a requirement that the OfS, when exercising its functions, has due regard to the need to: eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other unlawful conduct in the Act, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations in relation to protected characteristics.

In addition, in September 2015 the government asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce, composed of university leaders, student representatives and academic experts, to consider what more can be done to address harassment and hate crime on campus. The taskforce published its report, ‘Changing the Culture’, in October 2016, which sets out that universities should embed a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and hate crime. This includes hate crime or harassment on the basis of religion or belief, such as antisemitism and Islamophobia. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is currently working with UUK to test the sector’s response to the Taskforce’s recommendations and the results of this will be published early in 2018.

 

House of Lord Questions – Disabled Student Allowance

Lord Addington (Lib Dem) has asked three parliamentary questions regarding the disabled students allowance.

Q1: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the need for third party advisers to have clarity of information about the respective responsibilities of higher education providers and claimants of those allowances.

Q2: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the benefits of issuing a guide to higher education providers about their responsibilities in relation to students claiming those allowances who fall into bands 1 and 2.

Q3: Whether the evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances will include consideration of the levels of information provided by higher education providers to students claiming those allowances about the respective responsibilities of those institutions and students.

The Earl of Courtown provided the same (non-)response to all three questions:

A: The evaluation of Disabled Students’ Allowances (DSA) will address a range of factors relating to the efficacy of support for disabled students, including the effect of recent changes to DSA policy.

 

Parliamentary Questions

 

Question to the Home Office – Visas: Overseas Students

Q -Jo Stevens (Labour): How much was accrued to the public purse from charging international students applying for Tier 4 student visas in each year since 2010.

A – Brandon Lewis (Con, Minister of State for Immigration): Visa income is not differentiated between the various categories in which they are received. Visa volumes by broad category (study, work etc) are published in the data section of this webpage: LINK Fees and unit costs are also published, for example, for 2017/18: LINK

 

Private Providers

Lord Storey (Lib Dem) has tabled two questions about the quality of private providers:

Q1 – On how many occasions in the last three years the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education has (1) raised concerns, and (2) taken action, regarding private colleges and providers of degrees

Q2 – What measures they are taking to provide quality assurance for students studying degree courses at a private college whose degrees are validated by a university

These are due for answer on Tuesday 21 November.

Consultations

Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

New consultations and inquiries this week:

  • Two Dept for Health consultations on nursing, and one on regulation and workforce development of the health services
  • Jo Johnson has announced the sector will be asked for their opinion on two year degrees in a forthcoming consultation

Other news

Student Engagement: Guild HE have written for Wonkhe censuring the limited nature of student consultation and engagement proposed through the new Quality Code and critiquing both the TEF and the Office for Students in Engaging students as partners: two steps forward, one step back.

HE Policy Briefings

Awareness of policy is integral to many roles at BU and with HE constantly in the news it can be hard to sort the wood from the trees to keep current. We’re running two short and sharp HE Policy Briefings during November and December; all are welcome so come along to learn more!

The briefings will:

  • present the latest policy developments for universities and how they may affect BU, our staff and students
  • cover the next steps for the Teaching Excellence Framework, including subject level TEF, and how this could impact BU
  • support you to consider actions you could take to prepare for change and challenges arising from these development.

Email organisational development to attend on: Wed 22 November 12-13:00 at Lansdowne or Thurs 7 December 12-13:00 at Talbot (mince pies included!)

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                        Policy & Public Affairs Officer

65111                                                                                        65070

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter                   |                     policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

Here are the five ancient Britons who make up the myth of King Arthur

BU research, Research communication, Research news

File 20171110 29349 14uw211.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1

Holly Hayes/Flickr, CC BY-NC

King Arthur is probably the best known of all British mythological figures. He is a character from deep time celebrated across the world in literature, art and film as a doomed hero, energetically fighting the forces of evil. Most historians believe that the prototype for Arthur was a warlord living in the ruins of post-Roman Britain, but few can today agree on precisely who that was.

Over the centuries, the legend of King Arthur has been endlessly rewritten and reshaped. New layers have been added to the tale. The story repeated in modern times includes courtly love, chivalry and religion – and characters such as Lancelot and Guinevere, whose relationship was famously immortalised in Thomas Malory’s 1485 book Le Morte D’Arthur. The 2017 cinematic outing, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, is only the most recent reimagining.

But before the addition of the Holy Grail, Camelot and the Round Table, the first full account of Arthur the man appeared in the Historia Regum Brianniae (the History of the Kings of Britain) a book written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in around 1136.

We know next to nothing about Geoffrey, but he claimed to have begun writing the Historia at the request of Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, who persuaded him to translate an ancient book “written in the British tongue”. Many have concluded, as Geoffrey failed to name his primary source and it has never been firmly identified, that he simply made it all up in a fit of patriotism.

Whatever the origin of the Historia, however, it was a roaring success, providing the British with an heroic mythology – a national epic to rival anything written by the English or Normans.

Story teller

As a piece of literature, Geoffrey’s book is arguably the most important work in the European tradition. It lays the ground for not just for the whole Arthurian Cycle, but also for the tales surrounding legendary sites such as Stonehenge and Tintagel and characters such as the various kings: Cole, Lear and Cymbeline (the latter two immortalised by Shakespeare).

As a piece of history, however, it is universally derided, containing much that is clearly fictitious, such as wizards, magic and dragons.

If we want to gain a better understanding of who King Arthur was, however, we cannot afford to be so picky. It is Geoffrey of Monmouth who first supplies the life-story of the great king, from conception to mortal wounding on the battlefield, so we cannot dismiss him entirely out of hand.

A full and forensic examination of the Historia Regum Britanniae, has demonstrated that Geoffrey’s account was no simple work of make-believe. On the contrary, sufficient evidence now exists to suggest that his text was, in fact, compiled from a variety of early British sources, including oral folklore, king-lists, dynastic tables and bardic praise poems, some of which date back to the first century BC.

Here be dragons? George Reyes/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

In creating a single, unified account, Geoffrey exercised a significant degree of editorial control over this material, massaging data and smoothing out chronological inconsistencies.

Once you accept that Geoffrey’s book is not a single narrative, but a mass of unrelated stories threaded together, individual elements can successfully be identified and reinstated to their correct time and place. This has significant repercussions for Arthur. In this revised context, it is clear that he simply cannot have existed.

Arthur, in the Historia, is the ultimate composite figure. There is nothing in his story that is truly original. In fact, there are five discrete characters discernible within the great Arthurian mix. Once you detach their stories from the narrative, there is simply nothing left for Arthur.

Cast of characters

The chronological hook, upon which Geoffrey hung 16% of his story of Arthur, belongs to Ambrosius Aurelianus, a late 5th-century warlord from whom the youthful coronation, the capture of York (from the Saxons) and the battle of Badon Hill is taken wholesale.

Next comes Arvirargus, who represents 24% of Arthur’s plagiarised life, a British king from the early 1st century AD. In the Historia, Arthur’s subjugation of the Orkneys, his return home and marriage to Ganhumara (Queen Guinevere in later adaptions) parallels that of the earlier king, who married Genvissa on his return south.

Constantine’s statue in York. chrisdorney/Shutterstock

Constantine the Great, who in AD 306 was proclaimed Roman emperor in York, forms 8% of Arthur’s story, whilst Magnus Maximus, a usurper from AD 383, completes a further 39%. Both men took troops from Britain to fight against the armies of Rome, Constantine defeating the emperor Maxentius; Maximus killing the emperor Gratian, before advancing to Italy. Both sequences are later duplicated in Arthur’s story.

The final 12% of King Arthur’s life, as recounted by Geoffrey, repeat those of Cassivellaunus, a monarch from the 1st century BC, who, in Geoffrey’s version of events, was betrayed by his treacherous nephew Mandubracius, the prototype for Modred.

All this leaves just 1% of Geoffrey’s story of Arthur unaccounted for: the invasion of Iceland and Norway. This may, in fact, be no more than simple wish-fulfilment, the ancient Britons being accorded the full and total subjugation of what was later to become the homeland of the Vikings.

Arthur, as he first appears, in the book that launched his international career, is no more than an amalgam. He is a Celtic superhero created from the deeds of others. His literary and artistic success ultimately lies in the way that various generations have reshaped the basic story to suit themselves – making Arthur a hero to rich and poor, elite and revolutionary alike. As an individual, it is now clear that he never existed, but it is unlikely that his popularity will ever diminish.

Dr Miles Russell, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Exploring Plankton Diversity in Southampton Water

BU research, student research

Undergraduate students in the department of Life and Environmental Sciences investigated the diversity of phytoplankton and zooplankton in Southampton water as part of their third-year Biological Oceanography module. Using the research vessel RV Callista at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS), samples were collected at 5 locations, or “stations”, between Calshott and the Itchen River. Environmental data was collected at each station using an array of sensors, measuring parameters such as temperature, salinity, chlorophyll and oxygen concentration. Phytoplankton were collected at two depths at each site, representing deep and shallow water. Zooplankton was caught using a plankton net, with a 120µm mesh to catch zooplankton in the net. These samples were subsequently analysed back at the university.

Trawls and grab samples were also used to investigate the benthic (bottom dwelling) communities living on the seabed and to analyse the oxygen conent of the sediment. Benthic animals found included starfish, fish such as gobies and flounders, cuttlefish, crabs and ‘moss animals’ (bryozoans).

Back at BU, the phyto- and zooplankton samples were analysed using microscopy. A variety of diatoms and dinoflagellates were found in the phytoplankton samples, and barnacle larvae, copepods and the larvae of marine worms were found in the zooplankton samples. Microbes too small to be seen under the microscope were counted using flow cytometry, a technique used to identify cyanobacteria and other minute cells.

The study demonstrated the great diversity of planktonic and benthic life in Southampton water, and highlighted the importance of monitoring and understanding the microscopic life of the sea since the microscopic life , as the base of the food web, is crucial in sustaining the larger and better understood forms of marine life.

 

 

 

 

Creative Writing for Academics with Kip Jones

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

A two-day FREE workshop in creative writing with Kip Jones for Bournemouth University staff and students only.

Writing week: Wednesday 3 Jan and Thursday 4 Jan.

Wed: 9:30 – 3:30

Thurs 9:30 – 12:30 (followed by lunch at La Piccola Italia)

Executive Business Centre, 7th Floor

Places are limited, but the workshop is free. Please express your interest by emailing Kip asap. You will be expected to attend for both days, and attend the lunches. You are asked to buy your own refreshments and lunches, but we will eat together at a restaurant each day. The first day we will go to the International Centre next to EBC for lunch. The second day, we will have a concluding longer lunch at La Piccola Italia Restaurant, near EBC. Writing is a very solitary endeavor. Sharing of experiences and conviviality are important components of a balanced approach.

Summary: The Creative Writing workshop will be a unique event in that it will not be a typical ‘writing retreat’ (with trees to hug and lots of time to ruminate), but rather a very active experience with lots of exercises, suggestions and supportive feedback on participants’ work from Kip Jones and other participants.  The point is to encourage both students and academics who would like to include more creative writing in their outputs, particularly those whose writing includes reporting on narrative and other qualitative methods of research.  It also helps immensely in the move to publishing in the wider world of blogs and online outlets, moving work to media and film, auto-ethnography and even fiction.
Justification: The important point of Creative Writing for Academics is to help academics and students achieve the goal of seeing more of their work read by wider audiences; in other words, impact. By providing an intense two-day experience for participants to engage in developing writing skills, the playing field is levelled and opportunities for facilitated learning developed. By engaging in creative writing, it becomes possible for all to write more clearly, more simply, even more creatively, when writing not only for academic publications, but also for outlets previously unimagined.

Methods: The workshop will present opportunities to work with academic material and expand its means of production and dissemination to new and creative levels through interfaces with techniques from the arts and humanities, including blog and magazine writing, film treatments and scripts, and poetry and fictional exercises. These intellectual exchanges encourage joint exploration of how researchers can engage with principles and tools from the arts in order to expand and extend the possibilities of dissemination of research data. Concepts of creativity itself will evolve and be transformed by participants’ outlooks and willingness to engage with unfamiliar territory. These processes comprise ‘facilitated learning’—in that knowledge will be gained as a secondary goal through a process of developing new relationships through small group problem-solving and self examination, grounded in personal past experience and knowledge.

New projects in the Student Project Bank!

BU research, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team

There are new projects in the Student Project Bank! Projects are available to all undergraduate and postgraduate students at BU and can be used for their dissertation, assignment, unit or group work. Members of staff may also choose a project to set to their students.

SPB068: Raising the Profile of Bradford Abbas Village

The aim of this project is to provide better information about the village for visitors and members of the community. The information is to be both historical and current; i.e. an ‘interpretation board’ that explains the history, people and places associated with the village; and the ‘village plan statement’ located on the Parish Council website. This project will involve working with Bradford Abbas Parish Council and Bradford Abbas History Society.

SPB073: Mapping of signing up user journey for financial products

Harmoney is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to help people to manage their money better, particularly so that it doesn’t cause worry, stress, or mental distress. Their initial service is providing advice on welfare benefits and debt problems. This project involved mapping the signing up user journeys of existing online current account and budgeting products, particularly those built for smartphones (like Monzo) and new innovative services (like Squirrel). You will be looking for similarities between the maps and assessing what works well and what doesn’t.  These findings will be used to make recommendations for our product.

SPB074: Mapping of user journey of financial products

Harmoney is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to help people to manage their money better, particularly so that it doesn’t cause worry, stress, or mental distress. Their initial service is providing advice on welfare benefits and debt problems. This purpose of this project is to map the user journeys of existing online current account and budgeting products, to undertake tasks such as setting up regular payments, making transfers, checking balance. You will be looking for similarities between the maps and assessing what works well and what doesn’t. These findings will be used to make recommendations for our product.

SPB075: Harmoney cyber security

Harmoney is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to help people to manage their money better, particularly so that it doesn’t cause worry, stress, or mental distress. Their initial service is providing advice on welfare benefits and debt problems. Map out security methods used by existing services of online current account products.  What are the options?  What direction might these tools be going in in relation to security?  Are costs considered? What is the user preference?  These findings will be used to make recommendations for our product.

SPB081: Cherry Tree Nursery Website Revamp

Cherry Tree Nursery is part of the Sheltered Work Opportunities project, a registered charity based in Bournemouth serving the local Community. We were set up to address the great need for meaningful occupation, in a supportive and pressure free environment, for adults with severe and enduring mental illness. Cherry Tree Nursery’s website is out dated and needs a revamp to bring it in line with modern website design and to attract new visitors to the charity.

Apply now

A complete list of projects is available here. Send us an email to request a project brief and application form.

Faculty of Media and Communication PGR Conference

BU research, conferences, PG research, Research communication

On 1st November, PGRs and supervisors gathered in the Share Lecture Theatre for the inaugural Faculty of Media and Communication PGR Conference. Proceedings were introduced by Professor Iain MacRury and Professor Candida Yates, who provided entertaining talks involving Dr Johnson’s reflections on academia, and the role of women academics.  Then it was over to the PGRs to present papers on research as diverse as the role of Saudi women journalists and social media, the Italian cop thriller of the 1970s, understanding copyright law, and radio history.

Before lunch the opportunity to “Draw Your PhD” was seized enthusiastically, and for half an hour the only sound was the scratching of biros whilst participants created some classic interpretations of the PhD experience in cartoon form. The results were extremely entertaining, and reminded us that most students experience similar traumas and joys during the PhD process.

After further papers in the afternoon, Dr Sue Sudbury delivered the key-note lecture, reflecting on her practice-led PhD, based on empowering women from Uttar Pradesh to make videos of their daily life. Finally, the wine reception at the end of the day provided further opportunities for networking.

This was a productive and enjoyable occasion, ably organised by third-year PGRs Katy Vaughan and Kate Terkanian. It is hoped that next year the organisational baton will be grasped by new students, so that this conference will become a yearly, student-led event.

Written by Jan Lewis (Postgraduate Research Administrator, Faculty of Media and Communication)

Professor Julie Turner-Cobb wins the British Psychological Society Book Award!

BU research

The textbook winner for the British Psychological Society Book Award 2017 is Child Health Psychology: A Biopsychosocial Perspective by Professor Julie Turner-Cobb. It is the first textbook to focus specifically on child health psychology, taking an interdisciplinary and life-course perspective and drawing on theories and models within.

The Society’s Book Award recognises excellent published work in psychology. Professor Julie Turner-Cobb said she was absolutely delighted to win the award and thrilled that her book has received great recognition and positive reception as a result. She was first nominated for the award by one of her PhD students based at the University of Bath: “They are a big supporter of the book and were inspired to do their PhD as a result of an issue raised in the chapter that addresses the experience of being a young carer. It was a nice surprise and a huge compliment to be nominated.”

Child Health Psychology: A Biopsychosocial Perspective is primarily targeted at postgraduate students on MSc Health Psychology programmes but is also relevant to students taking final year undergraduate units in health psychology and related areas. Beyond this, the textbook is also relevant across a number of health disciplines outside of psychology where a biopsychosocial perspective on child health is being considered.

“There was no textbook devoted to health psychology as applied to children. I wanted to bring it together to highlight it and provide a child health focus for health psychology as a discipline.”

The first part of the book covers topics related to events and circumstances that can influence a child’s health during childhood and adolescence including the prenatal environment; whilst the second part examines how children cope when they are ill, how they deal with pain, the experience of parental ill health and bereavement.

“It takes a strong biological stance in many respects, but also gives attention to psychosocial issues in relation to context and individual differences,” Professor Turner-Cobb said, “There is also a chapter in the first part of the book that examines methodological and ethical issues in child health psychology, that includes assessment using endocrine and immune biomarkers of stress but also discusses the utility of using a range of different paradigms and settings.”

Professor Turner-Cobb was inspired to write Child Health Psychology as she wanted to draw attention to the scope of work on psychological factors associated with child health. “There are a number of excellent textbooks on health psychology that have aspects covering child health and there are many textbooks devoted to developmental psychology, but there was no textbook devoted to health psychology as applied to children. I wanted to bring it together to highlight it and provide a child health focus for health psychology as a discipline.”

For more information about the book, please email Professor Julie Turner-Cobb (jturnercobb@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Academics! Book your place now for the ‘Engaging with policy makers’ session next Thursday

BU research, Events, policy, Research communication, RKE development framework, Training

Need any help with understanding how to use your research to influence public policy? Looking for support and guidance on how to effectively engage with policy makers?

Policy-makers often use research evidence to help inform policies and solutions for issues that affect everyone on a daily basis. They can incorporate a range of individuals, including those who are elected into political positions, civil servants who work in government departments or those working in professional governing bodes, meaning there are a variety of ways in which research can lead to influencing policy.

Research can be particularly influential in policy making as it could provide the basis for an evidence-based change or amendment to legislation. This can be a very powerful way of developing research impact, but it can also be a very complex process.

Join us at next week’s session with BU’s Policy Advisor, Jane Forster, who will help you develop an understanding of the process of influencing public policy and how to use your research to influence policy makers as part of the Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework.

Title Date Time Location
Engaging with policy makers Thursday 16th November 2017 10.00 – 12.00 Talbot Campus

By the end of the session, you should have a good understanding of and feel confident to use your research to engage and influence policy makers effectively in order to develop your research impact.

Book your place here!

BU Briefing – Trophic positioning of meiofauna revealed by stable isotopes & food web analyses

BU research

Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field. 

This paper examines seasonal food webs of the invertebrates inhabiting the streambed of the chalk River Lambourn in England. Researchers conducted analyses of gut content (a dietary “snapshot”) of macro and meiofauna, as well as stable isotope analyses (determines the feeding links of an organism as it reflects its assimilated diet) of meiofauna to examine seasonal food webs of the chalk stream.

This study stresses the importance of temporal variations in food and consumer species composition for a comprehensive understanding of food web structure, asserted by similar changes in trophic structure depicted by gut content and stable isotope analyses.

Click here to read the briefing paper.

For more information about the research, contact Professor Genoveva Esteban at gesteban@bournemouth.ac.uk 
To find out how your research output could be turned into a BU Briefing, contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

 

Doctoral training partnerships funding call (DTP2) – Town hall meeting

BU research, Funding opportunities, student research

When: 30 January 2018
Where: London

On 19 October 2017, NERC announced that its second round of investment in doctoral training partnerships (DTP2) would be made through a fully open competitive call. This decision was made following the outcomes of the mid-term evaluation of NERC’s existing DTPs in 2016-17.

The DTP evaluation concluded that this mechanism of delivering PhD studentships provides valuable training and that NERC should continue to support PhD studentships in this way. A fully open competitive call will ensure that they build on the success of existing investments while enabling innovation and change within the DTP community. It will ensure that all eligible organisations are able to compete for access to NERC studentships based on excellence, determined by a robust and consistent assessment process.

The DTP2 call will be launched in early January 2018, at which point an announcement of opportunity will be published on the NERC website. To ensure clear communication regarding the scope and expectations of this call, NERC will be holding a town hall meeting for interested parties to discuss the call in more detail with NERC staff and to network with potential DTP partners. The meeting will take place once the call has been launched.

The event

The purpose of the town hall meeting is to provide an opportunity for those interested in applying to the DTP2 call to receive detailed guidance about the scope and requirements of the call, raise any questions with NERC staff and network with prospective DTP partners. The meeting will commence with a presentation from NERC staff, followed by a plenary question and answer session, and will conclude with an open session to include lunch and networking.

Those expressing an interest in attending will be invited to propose questions to be addressed at the meeting – this will enable NERC staff to tailor the content of presentations and ensure that they address as many commonly asked questions as possible. Common queries raised following the publication of the call will also be addressed at the meeting.

Following the presentations and Q&A, the meeting will be unstructured, providing an opportunity for attendees to network with one another and discuss potential partnerships, as well as to talk further with NERC staff regarding specific questions.

Attendance at this meeting is not a pre-requisite for submission of a DTP2 proposal. A summary report of the meeting will be published on the NERC website as soon as possible after the event.

How to apply

To express your interest in attending the meeting, you must complete the online registration form.

The closing date for registration is 16:00 on 1 December 2017.

There are a limited number of places available and so the submission of an application is not a guarantee of a place at the meeting. If the event is oversubscribed, NERC will limit the number of attendees per organisation to allow for even representation from across the NERC community – this will be done in discussion with the individuals and organisation, as appropriate. Those applicants offered a place will receive a formal invitation confirming attendance once all applications have been processed. NERC will aim to confirm the final list of attendees by early January 2018.

Contact

NERC Research Careers

Standing up for Science workshop for STEM & social science early career researchers

BU research, Events, Featured

Sense about Science is holding a Standing up for Science workshop at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society on Thursday 30 November 2017. This full day event is for STEM and social science early career researchers (PhD students, post-doctoral fellows or equivalent).

Want to find out how to make your voice heard in public debates about science?

Image result for voice of young science workshop

At this workshop, you will meet researchers who promote science in the face of hostility and are recognised for their achievements, learn from respected science journalists about how the media works, how to respond and comment, and what journalists want and expect from scientists.

These workshops are very popular and places are limited.

To apply, please complete the application form and email Rachel Bowen (rbowen@bournemouth.ac.uk) to let her know that you wish to attend.

Closing date for applications: Monday 13 November, 5pm.

 

Image result for sense about science workshop

For more details about the workshop, get in touch with Ana Skamarauskas (ana@senseaboutscience.org).

BU welcomes the ERASMUS+ Research Team

BU research, EU

On the 25th-27th October 2017, Dr Ben Hicks (Psychology and ADRC) and Professor Wen Tang (Department of Creative Technology) welcomed the ERASMUS+ project team to Bournemouth University. The team consisted of practitioners based at Alzheimer’s Valencia, Alzheimer’s Greece, Alzheimer’s Slovenia, Alzheimer’s Romania and IBV. Since October 2016, thanks to funding from the European Commission, the team has been developing an e-training platform to promote the use of Serious Games with people with dementia. This meeting-the third since the project began- enabled the research team to present the work they had been undertaking within their associated countries and discuss the next stages of the project. This included:

  • Selecting and evaluating a range of Serious Games with people with dementia and their care partners;
  • Creating guidance information on using the Serious Games; and
  • Developing training materials for health practitioners wishing to use the e-training platform

The e-training platform is beginning to take shape, although the training materials are not yet publically available. If you would like to access the web platform it can be found at: http://adgaming.ibv.org/

Although the meetings were long (and the discussions incredibly fruitful), the research team still had time to visit BU facilities and live the student experience for a day. This included having lunch within the Fusion Building canteen, undertaking Virtual Reality Navigational testing within the Psychology labs and buying two-for-one pints in Dylans at the end of the day!

The next project meeting will take place in Bucharest, Romania, in February 2018, where plans to disseminate and evaluate the training delivered to health practitioners will be discussed.

Welcoming the research team

The meetings begin

Experiencing student life at Dylans

Photo of the Week: Tracks in the sand- tracking criminals

BU research

Tracks in the sand: tracking criminals

Tracks in the sand: tracking criminals

Our next instalment of the ‘Photo of the Week’ series features Professor Matthew Bennett’s image footprints in the sand, which represents his research into tracking criminals.  The series is a weekly instalment, which features an image taken by our fantastic BU staff and students. The photos give a glimpse into some of the fascinating work our researchers have been doing across BU and the wider community.

Within our lives we leave thousands of individual footprints – in the snow, on the beach, in the park and sometimes even muddy prints on the kitchen floor!  Tracks are more numerous than any other form of trace evidence, and record a unique snap shot in time about the track-maker.  Not only do they record details of the shoes worn, but information about our body mass, style of walking and the specific wear on the soles of our shoes that record information about the history of our footfall.  Reading these clues digitally provides an important forensic tools and HEIF-funded BU research (www.DigTrace.co.uk) in this area is shaping forensic practice both in the UK and overseas.

If you’d like find out more about the research or the photo itself then please contact Professor Bennett.

This photo was originally an entry in the 2017 Research Photography Competition. If you have any other questions about the Photo of the Week series or the competition please email research@bournemouth.ac.uk