Category / BU research

Call for expressions of interest: Thrivership UK 2017

Would you like to be a part of the largest collaborative event in 2017 to improve the quality of life for those who have been affected by cancer? Living Well Active and the Student Project Bank are inviting students and staff from across BU to register their interest in helping shape the Thrivership UK 2017 Four Nations Convention: From Survivor to Thriver.

On 13th July 2017 Bournemouth University will bring together leading organisations from the four nations representing cancer related charities and survivorship projects, sport and physical activity, NHS and local governments to share best practice, research and innovative ideas to improve the services, experience and outcomes for people living with a cancer diagnosis. This event will also host a health and wellbeing clinic for 200 people living with cancer.

In order to make this event a success, Living Well needs support with:

  • Event development, management, marketing and administration
  • Branding and marketing materials design
  • Website development
  • Social media development and promotion
  • Media capture of event (film/photography)
  • Interviewing participants in the event
  • Event impact evaluation
  • Literature review around improving cancer survivorship
  • Event day support/management

Interested in taking part?

There will be a presentation and Q&A session with the founder of Living Well Agency on 6th December at 11:00 in the Lawrence Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus. Register your attendance here. Refreshments will be provided.

Taking part in this event is a great way for students to enhance their CV, gain real-world project experience and contribute to people’s potential to live active and happy lives with and beyond cancer.

BU’s Clinical Academic Doctorates; an example of good practice in new official guidance

The Association of UK University Hospitals (AUKUH) has today released new guidance, Transforming healthcare through clinical academic roles in nursing, midwifery and allied health professions: A practical resource for healthcare provider organisations

The guide is aimed at NHS organisational leads with the responsibility for developing and embedding clinical academic roles for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. Clinical academics serve as a crucial connection between the NHS and universities, working to train future generations of healthcare workers while engaging in research which can improve outcomes for patients and help increase efficiency.

The guide contains practical information, case studies and templates. One of the case studies highlighted is BU’s innovative clinical academic doctorates. The pragmatic four-year clinical doctorate model enables midwives and nurses to remain in practice while conducting a piece of research to meet clinical priorities. The four-year clinical doctorate is a joint development involving academics at Bournemouth University and clinical colleagues at NHS trusts. The doctorate is structured to enable students to spend two days a week in clinical practice and three days conducting research. All research projects are jointly developed to meet an identified clinical need.

The model originated for midwives in Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, where we have eight fellows, and has now been adopted by the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Poole Hospitals NHS Trust and Dorset County Hospitals NHS Trust (Way et al., 2016). The model is also being extended to other disciplines, with our first nurse fellow at Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Trust.

 

Professor Debbie Carrick-Sen, Co-Chair of the group which produced the guidance, says:

‘Creating this resource has required a significant amount of collaboration from colleagues across healthcare and we are truly grateful to them. The energy that has gone into it is a huge credit to the professions involved. Through this guidance they have the means to share their immense successes, learn from each other and ultimately work to the benefit of patient care.

‘The guidance will be the starting point. We have established a network of organisational leads with the responsibility for its development and for using it to implement clinical academic roles across the UK. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to begin a nationwide dialogue and to transform health and social care in the UK.’

 

Way S, van Teijlingen E, HundleyV, Westwood G, Walton G, Wiggins D, Colbourne D, Richardson C, Wixted D, Mylod D (2016) Dr Know. Midwives, 19, 66-67.

Midwifery Graduation: Honours & Awards

alison-sheenaAlongside Bournemouth University’s midwifery and other health and social care students who graduated in last Friday’s ceremony, BU honoured prominent midwife Sheena Byrom OBE with an Honorary Doctorate for her services to the profession. Sheena Byrom gave an inspiring speech at Friday’s Graduation.  Sheena said, “If they can keep in their hearts the passion and the drive they had when they first came to the university, it will help them to be more resilient and keep them motivated towards what they want to do. Healthcare is a blend between love and science and both are equally important. In practice, it is key that they have the skills, but the things that makes the difference are love and compassion.”

rachelalisonedwinAlongside Sheena two students from the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health(CMMPH) graduated with a PhD in Midwifery.  Dr. Alison Taylor received her PhD for her qualitative research on breastfeeding. Her thesis is entitled ‘It’s a relief to talk ….’: Mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding recorded on video diaries.  Dr. Rachel Arnold was awarded her PhD for her research Afghan women and the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital.

Congratulations to all BU undergraduates and Rachel, Alison and Sheena!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

14:Live with Dr Ashley Woodfall

Do you want to get creative for an hour? Do you have an interest in creative research methods?

14:Live is back on Thursday 17 November with Dr Ashley Woodfall.8115-rkeo-14live-digital-signage-v3-0

Join us as we get creative and discuss Mess and Mayhem: Creative/Reflective Methods at Play. This mess and discussion led session will be a space to discuss the use (and abuse) of creative research methods. How can they help trigger meaningful research interactions, and how the outcomes might be understood?

This session will be exploring research in a creative environment from drawing, to molding, to improv’ and beyond. We ask if creative reflective methods can share something of your own life world and whether these methods can help unlock metaphorical insights that are missed through more traditional approaches.

Come along on at 14:00-15:00 on Floor 5 of the Student Centre for an hour of mess and mayhem. There will be free drinks and snacks!

If you have any questions then please contact Hannah Jones

Islam and Social Work: Culturally sensitive practice in a diverse world

islam%20and%20social%20work-pbk_qcThe complexities of multiculturalism as a social ontology and as a political discourse have taken a rapid and alarming turn to the right in a political moment of increasing social turbulence on issues that revolve around national identity, ethnicity and religion. It is therefore timely, if regrettably so, that the second edition of Islam and Social Work makes its debut this month.

The first volume went to press in 2008, in my first year at BU, and my co-authors and I were overwhelmed when the book was showered with positive reviews. Regarded as not only the best, but the sole European text on this conspicuously important topic, it was also viewed as having no counterpart in the Global North (where the subject of social work and minority ethnic groups has been a dominant theme in the social work literature for decades). Since then it has been regularly cited and I been privileged to have anonymously reviewed dozens of papers on Islamic interpretations of social work practice. I have learned that Western social work is no longer the epicentre of practice – there are other worlds out there. I feel that this earlier book was, if nothing else, pivotal to opening the door much wider to be able to hear from our Muslim social work colleagues around the world, whose practice can challenge the restrictive, bureaucratised and therefore often inhuman professional processes in the UK

Strangely, however, over the years, despite the world having changed so very much since in terms of the shifting geo-political axes of power, the rise and fall of despotic regimes, the call for accountability of Western leaders implicated in invasion of Gulf nations, the Arab Spring, global terrorism, Al-Qaeda and later the monstrous birth of imploding Daesh – no one has produced a text to supersede the old first edition. And so, reader, we, Fatima Husain, Basia Spalek and I decided to produce the 2nd edition, which has been fully revised and updated, rewritten virtually from scratch, and I believe we have produced a book that is specific in detail, expansive in scope and completely international in outlook.

We hope that this will be a text that is the first port of call for all social work students across the globe who are interested in learning more about competent and sensitive practice with Muslim service user and client groups across the lifespan, as well as discovering the many beauties and wise profundities that are embedded, but often overlooked, in the youngest of the Abrahamic religions, Islam.

Professor Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Professor of Social & Cultural Diversity

EPSRC Postdoc & Early Career Fellowships for Environmental Change

EEPSRC logoPSRC is inviting Outline Proposals for EPSRC Challenge Fellowships in the LWEC theme. Fellowships are offered at both the Postdoctoral Fellowship and Early Career Fellowship level.

The closing date is 05 January 2017. Applications are sought that address the challenge question:

How can our cities, their hinterlands, linking infrastructure, rural surround and the regions they are in, be transformed to be resilient, sustainable, more economically viable and generally better places to live?

Background

EPSRC‘s Living With Environmental Change theme is keen to support the next generation of leaders in adapting to and mitigating climate change. This is a strategic activity focusing on a key challenge within the EPSRC LWEC theme and on bringing new thinking into the area.

A previous call was issued on this topic in 2015 and eight Fellowships funded.

The research required to answer this challenge requires a broad based, problem- directed and multidisciplinary approach. In this call EPSRC is particularly interested in proposals that help fill research gaps in this area:

  • Proposals that use an Engineering, Physical Sciences, Computer Sciences or Mathematics led approach to the challenge
  • Proposals that address Energy related aspects of the challenge

The balance of the research described in the application should be within the remit of EPSRC. They would particularly like to encourage applicants from across the EPSRC research landscape to apply.

Full call document

AHRC International Co-Investigator policy adopted

ahrcFollowing a successful trial period and in line with the commitments made in the Council’s current delivery plan, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has decided to incorporate provision for International Co-Investigators into its core eligibility requirements and standard funding terms and conditions. Therefore, following the expiration of the current trial period on 31st December 2016, applicants will be able to continue to include international co-investigators on research grant, networking and follow-on proposals in line with the current provisions under the trial as outlined in AHRC’s Research Funding Guide.

AHRC will continue to monitor the impacts of this provision and will keep the provisions for international co-investigators under periodic review. For some specific funding calls (e.g. those which are internationally collaborative or focused) AHRC may adjust the provision for international co-investigators in line with the aims of the call; where this applies details will be provided in the specific call document.

BU excavations at Cotswold long barrow reported in Current Archaeology

Current Archaeology, the UK’s best-selling archaeological magazine, features news of BU’s discovery of a previously unrecorded Neolithic long barrow in the Cotswolds in its December issue that goes on sale today. The excavations, directed by Professor Tim Darvill and Dr Martin Smith from the Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science, revealed a large stone-built mound dating to around 3800 BC. Such mounds served as territorial markers as well as burial places for communities living in the area. The work forms part of a larger study looking at the history and development of the Cotswold landscape since prehistoric times and includes collaboration with staff from the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

Academies launch fund for interdisciplinary research

APEX Awards In partnership with the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society (‘the Academies’) and with generous support from the Leverhulme Trust, the APEX award (Academies Partnership in Supporting Excellence in Cross-disciplinary research award) scheme offers established independent researchers, with a strong track record in their respective area, an exciting opportunity to pursue genuine interdisciplinary and curiosity-driven research to benefit wider society.
  • support outstanding interdisciplinary research which is unlikely to be supported through conventional funding programmes
  • promote collaboration across disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the boundary between science and engineering and the social sciences and humanities
  • support researchers with an outstanding track record, in developing their research in a new direction through collaboration with partners from other disciplines
  • enable outstanding researchers to focus on advancing their innovative research through seed funding

Am I eligible to apply?

Applications should be within the remit of more than one of the Academies.

You can apply for this scheme if you are:

  • an exceptional researcher with a strong track record as an established independent researcher (this can include engineering researchers, humanities and social sciences scholars and scientists)
  • based at a UK University or not-for-profit research institution for at least the duration of the project
  • applicants will be expected to collaborate with a research partner from a different discipline from their own or a different university in the UK

Before applying, please ensure that you meet all the eligibility requirements, which are explained in the scheme notes. Please also refer to the FAQ for further guidance.

What is the scheme’s value and duration?

This scheme provides:

  • an award of up to £100,000 to fund staff costs of which no more than 25% may be used for associated research costs.
  • this can include consumables, equipment, collaborative travel expenses
  • costs of a teaching replacement to relieve the applicant and/or collaborator from some of their teaching and administrative duties
  • grants can be held for up to 24 months

Note, requests for any other salary costs e.g. for research assistants, post-docs or studentships etc. cannot be included in the application. Note that awards under this scheme will not pay indirect and estate costs.  All awards must start between 01 September 2017 and 01 November 2017.

What is the application process?

Applications should be submitted through the Royal Society’s electronic grant application system (e-GAP2). Applications will be peer-reviewed and assessed by a cross-disciplinary panel with broad ranging expertise drawn from the fellowship of all three Academies.

Further details about the award, including information on how to apply and the assessment criteria, can be found in the scheme notes.

If you are interested in applying then please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer.