Category / BU research

NEW Online Ethics Checklist Launches TODAY!!

BU research, Research Ethics

I’m pleased to announce that the new online ethics checklist is live! Click HERE to access the online ethics checklist. Please keep in mind that if you submit a checklist, the person you indicated as you supervisor will receive an email notifying them of your submission.

Our IT developers have done a fantastic job creating an easy, collapsible, web-based form to replace our current paper checklist; the best part is that the form is collapsible, so it is entirely researcher specific. Not only will this online form streamline the submission process across the University, it will also provide a central repository for all approved checklists to facilitate the improvement of compliance within the Schools. The new online ethics checklist will soft launchs today for two months of beta testing and will fully launch on 1 January 2013. This two month period will give us time to beta test the checklist with a handful of student groups across BU to ensure all the technical bugs are sorted out.

Would you like to be involved in the beta testing? If so, please get in touch with me and we’ll set everything up! I’ve already had a handful of volunteers to test the checklist, but please let me know if you’d like to get involved. Additionally, please let me know if you’d like a sneak peek of the online checklist – I’m more than happy to give you a quick tutorial.

The link to the new checklist will be made available on the Research Ethics website.

 

BRIAN Unavailability due to upgrade – 1/11/12

BU research, Guidance

BRIAN is likely to be unavailable between 9am and 12noon on Thursday, 1st November 2012 whilst the system upgrades to a new version.  I say likely as the issues experienced yesterday with the network have put all systems at risk.  I will issue a blog post tomorrow to state whether or not the upgrade will take place and I will also put a warning notice on the log-in screen for BRIAN informing users of when the system will be unavailable.

The upgrade will include a new look user profile page within BRIAN and so your home page will look different, however, all functions will remain the same.  There will be the addition of a ‘Favourites’ tab, which will allow for a separate display of publications that you have flagged as a ‘favourite’ (please note that ‘favourites’ are only available in BRIAN and not replicated in the web based external staff profile pages).

If you choose to make a publication ‘invisible’ (you may choose to do this for publications of a sensitive/controversial nature) then this will be hidden in your external profile page.  However, if you co-author with another BU academic, the publication will only be hidden for the author who has selected to make it ‘invisible’.  Therefore, you will need to discuss with all relevant BU authors whether a publication will be visible externally by one or none of you.

There will be an improved link between Supervisors and PhD students.  When Supervisors add their PhD students to their BRIAN account, this currently creates a false link for the student in the external staff profile pages.  The upgrade will enable a hyperlink within the Supervisors external profile page to the Students external profile page.  More details will follow on this.

The authors for publications will be displayed in the external staff profile pages as ‘BU Authors’ and ‘Other Authors’.  The BU Authors will be hyperlinked so that users can go directly to a BU staff members profile page.

There will be a number of changes to the REF module, which will mainly benefit the RKEDO team.

There are a number of developments still to take place on BRIAN.  This includes the Grants module, which should go live shortly.

Please note that the user guides and videos will contain screen prints of the previous homepage.  These will be updated in due course.

ESRC Festival of Social Science, What Constitutes Evidence for Copyright Policy?

BU research

ESRC Festival of Social Science,

What Constitutes Evidence for Copyright Policy?

Thursday 8 November 2012, 10.30 am – 6 pm

Executive Business Centre, Bournemouth University


What the Workshop is about?

This interactive event offers the opportunity for discussion on evidence for copyright policy between social scientists, policy–makers and producers and users of copyright works. The event, which is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, will take the form of panel and round table discussions between policy–makers from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), stakeholders from the creative industries and academics from economics, sociology, law and cultural studies with expertise in copyright. The focus is on what evidence from these fields of study is relevant and useful to policy–makers and those seeking to put their case to them.  For more information see http://www.cippm.org.uk/news/2012/june/ne001-esrc-social-science-festival.html

How I can participate if I cannot attend?

The event will be complemented by digital interaction which will include an effective micro-blogging infrastructure to encourage participation and dissemination of information for those who are unable to attend.  There will also be write-ups following the Workshop detailing the events of the day.

If I am unable to attend, can I ask questions on the day from the expert panel?

Yes, it will be possible by using the hash-tag #cippm2012

There will be an opportunity for chosen ‘virtual questions’ to be raised and answered at the event, which in turn will be published on Twitter.  The tweets on the day will be captured on Storify which will be made available on the CIPPM website http://www.cippm.org.uk/  following the event.

We invite you to ‘tune in’ and join us in the discussion on the 8th November using the Twitter hash-tag #cippm2012

CIPPM associate director quoted in Financial Times

BU research, Featured academics

Prof. Ruth SoetendorpProfessor Ruth Soetendorp, Associate Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) in the Business School has been quoted in the Financial Times.  http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=ruth+intellectual+property The article titled ‘Students Need Better Education about Intellectual Property” (IP) goes on to reveal the recent research findings published by the National Union of Students (NUS), the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the Intellectual Property Awareness Network (IPAN).  According to the research, it has been established that “that while 80 per cent of students believe knowledge of IP is important, many students are not even aware of the potential scope of IP education. And even where it does take place, IP education is often restricted to plagiarism. Furthermore whilst 82 per cent of students feel it is important to know about IP to ensure everyone receives recognition for their work and ideas, significantly less make a connection between IP and commercial success”.

Professor Ruth Soetendorp, Head of IPAN’s Education Group is quoted as follows:

“This research highlights shortcomings in student IP understanding and its teaching in Further and Higher Education which have negative implications for the UK economy.  The UK needs to be world class in the creative arts, innovative in its product and systems designs, and pioneering in manufacturing processes.  In a global market these need to be underwritten by a proper understanding of IP embedded in an educated workforce.”

The Full Report can be found here http://www.nus.org.uk/PageFiles/12238/2012_NUS_IPO_IPAN_Student_Attitudes_to_Intellectectual_Property.pdf and the IPAN media release, quoted in the Financial Times can be found here http://www.ipaware.net/node/77

Bournemouth University is one of only two universities in the UK to have an innovative IP syllabus for final year law students. The Intellectual Property law unit which is offered to final year law students culminates in a collaborative project which brings together Law students and Design, Engineering and Computing (DEC) students.  The project requires the Law students to provide IP advice to DEC students on their final year ‘inventions’.  The project brings ‘IP law to Life’ and provides the type of IP understanding and commercial awareness that both parties need.

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/newsandevents/News/2012/july/contentonly_1_7896_7896.html

The IP-DEC Project at Bournemouth University was pioneered by Professor Ruth Soetendorp in 1995.

Want to learn more about how to network effectively?

BU research

Networking is crucial in academic life and critical for participation in EU funding. In today’s world, to develop a strong academic career, publications aren’t enough; network relations can play a huge role.  Being well connected and carrying out research in cooperative partnerships significantly increases your chances of attaining a professorship and will allow you to grow your research career by participating in a range of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects.

Networking can be daunting and exhausting. To help you identify key players and how best to approach them as well as learning  how to network effectively with a range of stakeholders, expert Dr Martin Pickard of Grantcraft will deliver 3 hours of  fantastic guidance in this session on Talbot campus.  Booking is essential through the Staff Development website.

Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme seminar on Thursday!

BU research

The Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme is holding its first seminar of the academic year on Thursday 1 November. The seminar will be held in Kimmeridge House KG03 at 1200. Tea and coffee and biscuits will be provided.

The seminar will be quite informal and will be used as an opportunity to discuss ideas that are in development as well as presenting completed results. Additionally, this will be an opportunity for new PhD students in the theme to give a brief (about 5 min) overview of their PhD, and meet staff with overlapping interests. So far the following people have offered: Farah Al-Shorbaji, Adrian Blake, Katharine Bowgen, Danny Sheath and Ann Thornton. Their PhDs cover a range of subjects including the genetics, behaviour and ecology of fish, the effect of eutrophication of coastal habitats, and the effect of environmental change on birds.

The next Environmental Change & Biodiversity seminars will be held on 22 November in Stevenson Lecture Theatre at 1200 and on 13 December in Christchurch House CG13 at 1200. Richard Stillman is the theme leader, so please let him know if you would like to present at one of the upcoming seminars.

Pool of external bid advisers – nominations sought!

BU research

As part of the Grants Academy programme we’re looking to set up a pool of external experts who can provide reviews of drafts of funding proposals for Academy members which will help develop bid writing skills and hopefully increase our chance of winning grants. Dr Martin Pickard (who facilitates the Grants Academy workshops) will provide some of this support, particularly for EC bids, however we are also setting up a pool of external reviewers with experience in different disciplines and of different funders who can be called upon to offer their advice.

I am interested to know whether any BU academics would be willing to nominate any of their external peers to potentially be invited to join the pool of external reviewers.

Nominations should be for senor academics who are experts in their field with significant experience of winning grant funding and/or significant experience of sitting on review panels. To avoid potential conflicts of interest it would be ideal if these people are recently retired or semi-retired, however this is not essential.

If you can think of anyone who would be suitable please could you email me their details.

Research by BU’s Dr Andrew Mayers will appear on ITV Daybreak this Thursday

BU research

In a bid to tackle children’s sleep problems, BU’s Dr Andrew Mayers in the School of Design, Engineering and Computing, has been running workshops for parents at Bournemouth primary schools for several years now. The workshops started because staff at Winton Primary School noticed that pupils were struggling to get through the day without falling asleep, and were often difficult to engage because of tiredness. Andrew welcomed the opportunity to work with the school, an activity that reflects the ambition of the university to undertake more public engagement. The success of these workshops have been receiving a great deal of national media attention, with previously reported features in the Daily Mail, TES, and an interview with Talk Radio Europe. To follow on from that, Andrew’s work with children’s sleep at Winton Primary School will feature on ITV Daybreak on Thursday November 1st, as part of a series that the channel is showing across the week. It is due to be aired at around 6.50am. While Andrew welcomes the media attention, he hopes that this will help publicise his ambition to develop a professional online resource for children’s sleep, working in collaboration with some of the leading UK sleep charities.

Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference

BU research, Research news

The first Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference was held in Liverpool this week. The conference brought together 150 researchers and clinicians from across the globe to discuss women’s health in both low and high resource countries. Keynote speakers included France Donnay from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Beverly Winikoff from Gynuity Health Projects.

BU was well represented with poster presentations from Vanora Hundley, Professor of Midwifery, and Emma Pitchforth, Visiting Fellow.

Vanora’s presentation examined the Use of oral misoprostol to prevent postpartum haemorrhage in home birth settings in low resource countries; a topic that has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent weeks. Emma’s presentation looked at Evidence response mechanisms in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health in Asia and the Pacific.

One of the unique features of this conference was the mix of presentations. Presenters came from a variety of disciplines and alongside the well known international speakers were oral presentations from undergraduate students and early career researchers. This was a great opportunity to share experiences and build collaborations, and I would recommend that both staff and students look out for next year’s call for abstracts.

Register Online to attend Bournemouth University Dementia Institute Internal Conference

BU research

BUDI continues to work towards a truly collaborative approach to dementia and with this in mind our first internal conference will take place on the 31st January.  The theme of this conference is creative collaboration.  We are keen to explore new innovative approaches to all aspects of living with dementia and caring for people with dementia.  If you have an idea or a piece of work that you think could work well or has a potential link with dementia, then this is the opportunity to showcase your idea.  Abstracts are invited for posters and presentations and should be submitted by Friday 16th November at 12noon.

Abstracts should be no longer than 250words and the details can be found on the staff development page.

Presentations will be 10mins duration with five minutes allowed for questions.

Posters should be of A0 portrait size and an award will be given for the best poster on the day.

More to follow shortly.

Patricia Mc Parland

Project Manager BUDI

Prof. Anthea Innes Inaugural Lecture

BU research, Featured academics

Anthea’s inaugural, to be held on 14th November, entitled “Dementia: personal journey to policy priority” is currently fully booked.  If you would like to be added to the waiting list please send an email to Michelle O’Brien at mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk. 

BUDI are also holding a BU internal conference entitled “Creative collaboration” on 31st January and would welcome your attendance (please see BUDI website http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/dementia-institute/ for further details or contact Patricia McParland, BUDI Project Manager on pmcparland@bournemouth.ac.uk.)

NEW Online Ethics Checklist Launches on 1 November!!

BU research, Research Ethics

I’m pleased to announce that the new online ethics checklist is developed and ready to go live! Our IT developers have done a fantastic job creating an easy, collapsible, web-based form to replace our current paper checklist; the best part is that the form is collapsible, so it is entirely researcher specific. Not only will this online form streamline the submission process across the University, it will also provide a central repository for all approved checklists to facilitate the improvement of compliance within the Schools. The new online ethics checklist will soft launch on 1 November for two months of beta testing and fully launch on 1 January 2013. This two month period will give us time to beta test the checklist with a handful of student groups across BU to ensure all the technical bugs are sorted out.

Would you like to be involved in the beta testing? If so, please get in touch with me and we’ll set everything up! I’ve already had a handful of volunteers to test the checklist, but please let me know if you’d like to get involved. Additionally, please let me know if you’d like a sneak peek of the online checklist – I’m more than happy to give you a quick tutorial.

The link to the new checklist will be made available on the Research Ethics website as well as being placed on myBU.

The Haunter

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research

Joe Flintham (Media School) and Andy Pulman (Health and Social Care) recently received funding of £2000 from the Research Development Fund to help push forward with a project called ‘The Haunter’. This collaborative work with Tim Wright (digital writer and Visiting Fellow in the Media School) is an experimental narrative piece which brings together site-specific stories, walks in landscapes and homebrew electronics, in order to explore Thomas Hardy’s poetry.

The Haunter is a live event in which participants are tasked with carrying a haunted box around a prescribed route in the environs of Dorchester. At key points, the box, rumoured to be the same one which contained Thomas Hardy’s heart before it was interred at the graveyard at Stinsford, recites poetry written by Hardy following the death of his first wife Emma. The walkers’ journey through poetry and landscape leads them to encounter feelings of grief and absence, to unveil abandoned dreams and stories ended, and perhaps to reflect on lost or neglected love in their own lives.

 

In the immediate experience, the walk explores themes of bereavement and regret, and the interplay of places and memories, but it is also an experiment in new hybrid forms of narrative: the experience created by ‘The Haunter’ draws on new opportunities offered by site-specific media and the role that place and environment can play in the telling of a story; social and participatory dramatic experiences in which audiences play an embodied role in the enactment of a story; and the affective possibilities opened up by the interaction with physical objects.

 

In order to make these narrative explorations possible, a further hidden layer of experimentation is necessary: to build hybrid objects which are at once familiar and humane (such as hand-crafted wooden boxes) and at the same time, smart and technologically equipped (context-aware and digital-media capable). In order to deliver the experience of The Haunter, it has been necessary to develop custom electronic devices crossed with antique knick-knacks. This harnesses the smarts available in the newest mobile phones, but wraps their powers into a century-old world of caskets and poems, sea-side courtship memories and tracks through Hardy’s Wessex.

 

The result is a participatory narrative whose writing, delivery and design is built with the necessary openness to collaboration and experimentation: the walkers encounter not only the box and its poetry, but also landscape, weather, and each other; the writers of the story must interweave the given words of the poems and the medium-specific affordances of phsyical devices with the vagaries of walker behaviour; and the makers must match the predetermined world of system code and electronic hardware capacities with the richly unpredictable world of human behaviour and narrative imagination.

The RDF funding has facilitated the development of a prototype and specifications for a device that can be used to deliver site-specific media experiences that are applicable in a variety of settings such as heritage projects, health-walking and locative story-telling. The funding has also made it possible to allow students to learn the kinds of disciplines involved – physical computing, GPS systems and electronics, etc. Finally, we are currently exploring opportunities with potential partners who can support us developing the project further.

 

More information:

Tim Wright – Location-based Storytelling

Andy Pulman – Health Walking

Joe Flintham – Hauntology

REF Updates

BU research, REF Subjects, Research assessment

Are you new to REF?

If you are completely new to REF, or even if you know about REF but would like to find out more, we can recommend the ‘REF2014: A brief guide for research users’ document as a general introduction to what REF is and what it means.

You can find the document here.

BU Staff Circumstance Disclosure Form – DEADLINE 31 October 2012

For all REF eligible staff, it is really important that you read the BU REF Code of Practice (please click on the ‘REF’ tab from the menu bar at the top to access the document) in order to fully understand the processes and procedures employed by BU in preparing for the REF2014 assessment. The BU Staff Circumstances Disclosure process is especially important to you if you are an Early Career Researcher, you work part-time, you have been on leave or on a career break. For more information on how this applies to you, and also all other related documents, please click on the ‘REF’ tab on the menu at the top of the page. If you are still unsure after reading all the relevant documents and have questions you would like to ask, please send an email to: refcircumstances@bournemouth.ac.uk

REF Frequently Asked Questions Updated

The FAQs section of the REF official website has recently been updated. You can click on this link to see them.

 

 

 

 

Justice for Survivors at the International Criminal Court – PhD student’s publication success

BU research

Twelve months into her PhD, Law research student Ellie Smith has published an article entitled ‘Investigating Rape at the International Criminal Court: The Impact of Trauma’ in the Issues in International Criminal Justice Journal. Ellie’s current research focuses on the scope for narrative truth at the International Criminal Court, survivor perceptions of justice, and the nature of rehabilitation as a legal remedy for survivors of gross human rights violations. A second article is currently under review with the A-rated Journal of International Criminal Justice.

Ellie joined the University on a full-time studentship. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre on Human Rights, University of East London, and has 10 years of experience in the conduct of multi-disciplinary (legal and clinical) and intersectional research in the field of justice for victims of gross human rights violations, including for eight years as Lead Researcher for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. She is a member of the Victims’ Rights Working Group to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, and has also served as a member of the Expert Advisory Panel to the British Home Office on the Trafficking of Women. Ellie achieved a Degree in law from Girton College, Cambridge University (1992) and a Masters Degree in Law from the London School of Economics (2000). She qualified as a solicitor in 1994.

You can access a copy of Ellie’s article online here: http://www.iccsn.com/IICJ2012.pdf

School of Tourism’s Adele Ladkin on her FIF Staff Mobility Project: Visiting the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Themis Foundation in Andorra

BU research, Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance, Uncategorized

Professor Adele Ladkin has received £5,000 funding from the FIF staff mobility strand to undertake two week long visits to the UNWTO Themis Foundation Headquarters in Andorra.

As part of its Capacity Building Programme, the UNWTO.Themis Foundation provides educational courses and workshops for tourism industry experts.  These are in a range of subjects, for example tourism marketing, adventure tourism and sustainable tourism.  Because of the nature of these courses and the demand for different topics, subject experts from the tourism industry and public sectors are recruited as tutors to deliver the courses.

Adele and Ms Sònia Figueras, the UNWTO.Capacity Programme manager at the UNWTO Themis Foundation are engaged in collaborative work to produce a teaching guide and intensive training course for tutors responsible for delivering tourism capacity building courses and workshops as part of the UNWTO.Capacity Programme.  The Themis Foundation enables UNWTO Member States to devise and implement education, training and capacity building policies, plans and tools that fully harness the employment potential of their tourism sector and effectively enhance its competitiveness and sustainability.  Working with Ms Figueras, Adele will provide input into teaching methodologies commonly used in tourism programmes.

The collaboration has arisen as the School of Tourism is part of the Themis TedQual Network and aims to support activities undertaken in the areas of education, training and tourism capacity building. The impact of the collaboration will be practical through the dissemination and use of the teachers guide and the training course by highly experienced tourism subject experts. The collaboration and pedagogic approach will also be presented at an appropriate tourism educator’s conference. This knowledge exchange opportunity demonstrates the Schools commitment to supporting tourism education initiatives.

Adele will be spending time in Andorra at the headquarters of the Themis Foundation to work directly on the course materials as well as on-line collaborative working. The visits will enable Adele to spend a concentrated period of time working on the project, and will also give her further insight into the activities of the Themis Foundation.  She plans to undertake the first visit later this year – weather permitting as the mountain roads into Andorra are often covered in snow!

Lifelong Health & Wellbeing Sandpit – places still available

BU research

Feedback from BU staff who have participated in academic sandpits is always positive: “Sandpits stimulate creative thinking and encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. They are an opportunity to learn from others whose approaches to research may be different from your own” – Prof. Adele Ladkin, School of Tourism, EPSRC Sandpit Participant

Sandpits provide an intensive, interactive and free-thinking environment. A group of participants from a range of disciplines and backgrounds use this space to get together to become immersed in a collaborative thinking processes in order to construct innovative approaches to issues or questions.

As sandpits involve diverse participants, they force catalysation, collision and collaboration. This produces unique and innovative outputs and fosters new partnerships.

We are facilitating with expert bid writer Dr Martin Pickard of GrantCraft, three 1-day sandpits at BU which focus around relevant Research Council UK cross-thematic areas. The first is  Lifelong Health & Wellbeing Sandpit which is being held on 24.10.12

Attending this sandpit will:

  • facilitate you networking with other researchers across BU who you wouldn’t normally come in to contact with
  • allow you to get a fresh perspective from a different discipline on the same issue
  • enable you to be part of a multidisciplinary team who potentially bids for Research Council funding
  • give you a truly unique experience

Spaces are limited for each of the sandpits and you can register for a place on the Staff Development website.

Value of conference attendance?

BU research, Research news, Uncategorized

October is the month of the annual Alzheimer Europe (www.alzheimer-europe.org) meeting. This year three BUDI team members attended the rather nice setting in Vienna a draw for everyone, although we all had very different agendas and expectations. Alzheimer Europe is one of my personal favourite conferences as I’ve been going for years and it creates the opportunity to meet with new and catch up with a range of international colleagues, and is actually the main reason I go to these kind of events; yes it is good to present the work, and as a team we had two posters and three oral presentations this year, which is not bad for an Institute only in existence for 6 months, but it is the networking aspect that provides inspiration and creates new ideas and new collaborations that motivates me to go to these kind of events.

Patricia McParland is BUDI’s project manager, she has presented at a few dementia conferences in the last 3 years but for this conference her main concern was to ensure her cutting edge work doctoral work, that she is in the final throes of writing up, on public awareness of dementia is getting out there as this is an area of increasing policy concern both in the UK and internationally and many are starting to work in this particular area. As well as presenting a poster on her doctoral work that received positive attention, she presented a paper reporting on one of BUDI’s project about Dementia Friendly Tourism. The concept of Dementia Friendly Tourism has caught the imagination of many we speak to about our dementia work and this proved to be the case again in Vienna. Colleagues from France, Spain and Jersey were particularly interested in this project and keen to explore how these ideas could be applied to their regions; we will see what transpires over the coming months in the way of collaboration but this is a nice example of the added value of going to a conference.

Clare Cutler is a research assistant in BUDI and has just started her PhD exploring experiences of war and dementia, as an Early Career Researcher Clare was thrilled to be attending her first interational conference, and her excitement was contagious! but she was also rather anxious about giving her first presentation on one of BUDI’s projects, GRIID, Gateway to Rural International Innovations in Dementia, on behalf of an international team. She needn’t have worried as she went down a storm; mainly because she said at the beginning that she was nervous, this was her first presentation and then let out a big sigh as she finished. This created a huge amount of goodwill to her personally as well as her giving a presentation on an innovative interational partnership project. We had received the support of Alzheimer Disease International (www.alz.co.uk) to conduct part of this study and the opportunity for further discussion about working together to target rural areas and developing countries is another of the added value benefits that being in Vienna brought for me this year.

I presented a paper on a recently completed evaluation of a telehealth project to diagnose and follow up people with dementia living on the Shetland Isles and Grampian, rural areas of Scotland. The added value of this work relates to the INTERDEM (www.interdem.org) meeting that was held the day before the conference. (This is another example of added value by the way, going to other meetings around a conference.) Interdem is an application/invite only pan European network of highly active psychosocial researchers in the dementia field; as a member I was also able to take my BUDI colleagues in their student roles, a new doctoral and just about to complete doctoral student, to this full day meeting and they found this an amazing experience as many of the ‘names’ of long established dementia academics are part of this group which is always a buzz to meet people you’ve quoted for the first time, who offered real warmth, enthusiasm and support for their work. The Interdem meeting this time round was a mix of presentations (including one from the task force on technology and dementia that I co-lead)  and working groups developing bid ideas, collaborative papers and general brain storming about how to take forward new work in the field. The technology task force has been working on a bid around exergaming and dementia and we used the lunchtime slot to meet to work up our ideas further  (more added value) as well as updating Interdem members about our progress with this bid during the meeting itself. But we also discussed new bid ideas and telehealth, the focus of my Alzheimer Europe paper, was one of the favoured topics; one of our jobs now is to see the details of a long-awaited funding call  (JPND) due out December 2012 and get writing another EU bid.  We also agreed to write a collaborative paper on technology and dementia, but a successful meeting is one that generates new work from my point of view!

My other bit of dissemination work was a poster about ongoing research evaluating dementia care in Maltese hopsital wards. The added value about this relates to the conference venue being in Malta next year and I am sure this has partly influenced the invitation, of the Maltese Dementia Society member who is a long standing collaborator of mine as well as being the local organisor for the 2013 meeting, for me to give a plenary there next year!

So in all, the value of going to conferences for new researchers, is undoubtedly to present their work, to meet esteemed colleagues and the resultant ‘buzz’ this brings, to learn about other research in the field and to start their own networks (a good example of this is Patricia joining a writing team for a methods related paper, more added value!). For me it is a chance to catch up with people and to discuss potential new collaborations. In previous years it has also been about keeping a profile of the work of my team, this year it was about starting to create a profile for a new BU team to an international audience. I am pleased to report that all boxes were ticked this time round!