Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
As part of the RKEDF Academics and Researchers can book onto the following sessions, either as a one-to-one meeting or a bespoke team session:
Please contact Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor if you are interested in any of these sessions.
Four PhD students, whom I had the pleasure of supervising, graduated yesterday with a Ph.D. I never had so many Ph.D. students graduating at the same time. Not all of these four students started at the same time. Moreover, two I was invited as a supervisor after the student had started, and for most I was not the lead/first supervisor . 
All four students have an internationally focused thesis:
Alice Ladur with her Ph.D. focusing on: Male involvement in facilitating the uptake of maternal health services by women in Uganda.
Peter Wolfensberger with his Ph.D.: Creating meaning- Understanding the experiences of people living with mental illness in Switzerland- A Qualitative Study.
Shaqaieq AShrafi Dost with her thesis: Factors that affect the management capacity, leadership and employee performance in the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), Afghanistan: A single embedded single-case study.
Orlanda Harvey with her Ph.D. study under the title: Male anabolic androgenic steroid-users: A mixed-methods study -The voice of the AAS-user.
Orlanda is a good ambassador for Bournemouth University’s PhD Integrated Thesis. The newly introduced Integrated Thesis allows Ph.D. candidates to incorporate papers in their thesis (e.g. instead of a chapter). Papers can be included that have been published or submitted for publication to an academic peer-reviewed journal. As the first BU student to submit an Integrated Thesis Orlanda paved the way with BU library staff to sort out the finer details around, for example, copyright issues and thesis formatting (https://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2020/08/27/supporting-integrated-theses-at-bu/ ).
In this COVID-19 year the graduation was on ZOOM, something I didn’t think would work as well as it did. I love the British-style graduation with the big audience, the ceremony, the gowns, the band, etc. In previous years I had always looked forward to ceremony in the BIC, the Bournemouth International Centre. This year because it was on ZOOM the event was smaller, shorter and more personal. This offered the opportunity to talk to students and colleagues which is otherwise nearly impossible in the hustle and bustle of thousands of people in the BIC.
Being a graduation it is also the end of an era for the student and the supervisor, and the beginning of a new one.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
NEW for 2021! Promoting research culture at BU and celebrating postgraduate researcher achievements, the Doctoral College are collating PGR student stories as PGRs complete their PhD, MRes, MPhil, EdD, EngD and DProf studies. These are a few recent inspiring stories, to be updated regularly from across the faculties. If you have a story to share after you receive your award, please get in touch doctoralcollege@bournemouth.ac.uk
Following on from yesterday’s blog post on the support on offer for research applications for external funding, this post will focus on what’s available from internal funding, and how all the support on offer grows research capacity at BU.
Research Funding Panels: To help us further develop our research capacity in line with BU2025, the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC) oversees research investment and performance. Under the auspices of the RPMC, Funding Panels have been established to have oversight of funding allocations, in order to further build the research environment, our external engagement and the quality and impact of research endeavours. There are seven funding panels and future calls will be released on the BU intranet. You can find out more information about each panel here, including previous funded projects. The panels include the extensive Research Impact Programme.
Strategic Investment Areas: As articulated within BU2025, our Strategic Investment Areas (SIAs) build on our existing academic strengths and future opportunities aligned to external priorities, including policy direction and funding. The four Strategic Investment Areas are:
Each SIA has an academic steering group and are supported by External Advisory Boards, made up of experts from industry and the not-for-profit sector, to ensure our research activities are informed by wider society. The purpose of these groups is to ensure that we align internal and external resources appropriately to secure the growth of BU’s research profile. All of our SIAs are inherently interdisciplinary and build on existing excellence within the University. You can find out more here, including the opportunities available to get involved and who to contact.
Stop Press: An open call for expressions of interest will go out on the BU intranet this week. The University are seeking to identify game changing research ideas and enable these to become a reality. Keep your eyes out for the launch of the call!
STEAMLabs: These offer the opportunity to meet new people from all disciplines and sectors, and to spend dedicated time developing novel ideas for research projects. We will select topics for STEAMLabs and advertise these for participants. For example, each year we run a STEAMLab for each of the four SIAs. These seek to come up with highly innovative and urgently required research which is ambitious in scope and will require a high level of expertise, commitment and funding. The research must address challenges in the topics advertised. As a result of each STEAMLab, we anticipate the development of innovative, ground-breaking and ambitious projects which have the capacity to attract significant, high value funding from the public and private sectors.
STEAMLabs used to be an all day event, in person, but we’ve amended them to online and for two hours duration. You can see here the details of the last event held in February on the SIA for Animation, Simulation & Visualisation. Check the blog for the next events coming up shortly. These will be for the remaining SIAs, Global Challenges and Industrial Challenges and will take place in April – July 2021.
Open Access Publication Fund: BU operates a dedicated central Open Access Publication Fund (OAPF). The BU Open Access Publication Fund policy and procedure has recently been reviewed and revised to reflect changes to this year’s budget. The newly revised policy and checklist can be found here. BU now also benefit from various Open Access agreements through JISC deals including with publishers like Wiley, Sage and Springer. Please see the recent blog post, including the relevant links to publishers.
RDS: I mentioned in the two previous posts the support on offer from Research Facilitators for bid development. In addition, RDS have several faculty-facing staff (an overview and contacts are here) and areas of expertise that can support you in your research activities. The latter include:
Growing research capacity at BU: Research is a key component of Fusion and plays a critical role in the achievement of our BU2025 outcomes to help us achieve our vision of inspiring learning, advancing knowledge and enriching society. In this context, BU2025 set out ambitious plans and targets for research at BU.
As Julie Northam said in her blog post on why BU research matters, research is a priority for BU. It is central to our institutional strategy and ethos and it is fundamental to Fusion. Our research capacity has grown considerably over the past few years. More staff are now engaging actively in research, as demonstrated through the proportion of staff submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This has increased from less than a third of staff (REF 2014) to over three quarters of staff (REF 2021). We have invested in the Strategic Investment Areas and new institutes (such as the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, IMSET and the Institute for Medical Imaging and Visualisation, IMIV) to bring research to life through programmes of research and collaborative, multidisciplinary research teams. We are applying for and winning longer and larger research projects with more being sent to the prestigious funders.
This weeks posts have outlined the support on offer to BU staff to develop their research activities, regardless of career stage, showing the commitment of the university to grow capacity and build on the excellent work of our ECRs through to the excellent Leadership of our Professors, ensuring research is inclusive to all. The posts have also highlighted the extent to which support is on offer for interdisciplinary work, especially through the opportunities shown above in today’s post.
This weeks three part posts have been a snapshot of what’s available to support you in your research as a BU staff member. Do contact RDS to find out more about how we can support you in your research career. Working together, we can continue to grow research at BU.
The first round for applications closes on Wednesday 17 March.
Bournemouth University has a small amount of funding available to facilitate and enhance research and development collaboration with external partners.
The purpose of the funding is to:
There is flexibility in the way that the fund can be used, provided that a strong case can be made, and the assessment criteria are met. Funding could be used in various ways, for example for consumables, staff, and for travel/events/meetings, where restrictions allow.
All funding will need to be spent by 31 July 2021.
Eligibility/What we can fund
The HEIF Small Fund is open to all researchers across Bournemouth University, including those who are already working with industry partners and those who would like to build up new networks. In particular, the panel would welcome the following types of applications:
Due to the nature of this fund, we particularly welcome applications;
In line with BU2025, we will positively encourage applications from under-represented groups.
Application process
To apply, please read the guidance and complete the application form
Applications must be submitted to heif@bournemouth.ac.uk
Applications will be reviewed by the HEIF Funding Panel (see Panel Information below), with recommendations submitted to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC) monthly. Once a decision has been made, this will be communicated to applicants. We aim to confirm the outcomes within two to three weeks of the closing date for that month.
The closing dates for each monthly assessment are as follows:
BU’s Funding Panels and Research Principles
The following funding panels operate to prioritise applications for funding and make recommendations to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC).
There are eight funding panels:
These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles
The following BU2025 Principles are most relevant to the HEIF Panel:
If you have any questions please email heif@bournemouth.ac.uk
On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 public health emergency had become a pandemic: 114 countries were affected, there were 121,500 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 people had succumbed to the virus.
One year on, we have now seen 115 million confirmed cases globally and more than 2.5 million deaths from COVID-19.
“Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly,” said the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on that day in 2020. But in the year since that announcement, the fates of many countries have depended on how leaders have chosen their words.
The impact of the pandemic was unprecedented and all governments faced challenges dealing with a severe but highly unpredictable threat to the lives of their citizens. And some governments responded better than others.
My colleagues and I recently carried out a comparative study of how 27 countries responded to the emergence of the virus and first wave, and how they communicated that response to their citizens.
We invited national experts to analyse their government’s communication style, the flow of information on coronavirus and the actions taken by civil society, mapping these responses onto the numbers of cases and deaths in the country in question. Our work reveals contrasting responses that reflect a nation’s internal politics, suggesting that a government’s handling of the pandemic was embedded in existing patterns of leadership.
Read more of our coverage of the first anniversary of the pandemic:
COVID-19: how to deal with a year of accumulated burnout from working at home
Pandemic babies: how COVID-19 has affected child development
With news of the spread of COVID-19 flowing across international borders, domestic preventative measures needed to be explained carefully. The WHO proved ill-equipped, provided equivocal and flawed advice regarding international travel, even from Hubei province, and equivocated on the efficacy of wearing masks. So much came down to how individual leaders communicated with their citizens about the risks they faced.
Experts in crisis management and social psychologists emphasise the importance of clarity and empathy in communicating during a health emergency.
So who did well and who missed the mark?
We found two major examples of this style of communication working well in practice. South Korea avoided a lockdown due to clearly communicating the threat of COVID-19 as early as January, encouraging the wearing of masks (which were common previously within the nation in response to an earlier Sars epidemic) and quickly rolling out a contact-tracing app.
Each change in official alert level, accompanied by new advice regarding social contact, was carefully communicated by Jung Eun-Kyung, the head of the country’s Centre for Disease Control, who used changes in her own life to demonstrate how new guidance should work in practice.
The transparency of this approach was echoed in the communication style of the Ghanaian president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Akufo-Addo took responsibility for coronavirus policy and explained carefully each measure required, being honest about the challenges the nation faced. Simple demonstrations of empathy earned him acclaim within his nation and also around the world.
“We know how to bring the economy back to life. What we don’t know is how to bring people back to life,” he famously said.
South Korea and Ghana adopted a consistent tone highlighting the risks of the new pandemic and how they could be mitigated. Nations that fared less well encouraged complacency and gave out inconsistent messages about the threat of COVID-19.
In March 2020, just three weeks prior to placing the country under lockdown and catching COVID-19 himself, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson downplayed the threat, and said he had been shaking hands with infected people, against the recommendations of his expert advisers. Today, the UK has one of the highest per capita death rates from COVID in the world.
Avoiding a full initial lockdown, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – who also contracted COVID-19 – called for normality to continue, challenging expert guidance and polarising opinion along partisan lines. Such practices led Brazilians to mistrust the official information and spread of misinformation, while adhering to containment measures became an ideological, rather than a public health, question.
Meanwhile, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced a snap lockdown with just four hours notice, which caused an internal migration crisis, with poor labourers leaving cities to walk hundreds or thousands of miles to their rural homes. Understandably, the labourers prioritised their fears of homelessness and starvation over the risk of spreading COVID-19 around the country.
None of these responses effectively considered the impact that coronavirus would have on society, or that credibility is earned through consistency. The poor outcomes in each case are a partial reflection of these leadership mistakes.
Of course, the unfolding of the pandemic was not solely down to good or bad communication from leaders. Health systems and demographics may also have played a role, and the worst impacted nations not only had strategic weaknesses but are also global transport hubs and popular destinations – London, New York, Paris and so on. With hindsight, closing borders would have been wise, despite the contrary advice from the World Health Organization.
Still, it’s evident that leaders who adopted clear, early, expert-led, coherent and empathic guidance fared well in terms of their standing with the public and were able to mitigate the worst effects of the virus.
On the other hand, those who politicised the virus, exhibited unrestrained optimism or took to last-minute decision-making oversaw some of the nations with the most cases and deaths.
Darren Lilleker, Professor of Political Communication, Bournemouth University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
RKEDF:
Research Training Events in March
The following training events are coming up this month. These are all online events. Please book now!
| Tuesday 9th March 10:30 – 13:00
High Quality Public Engagement This will develop your public engagement skills to help you to deliver excellence. |
| Tuesday 23rd March 10:00 – 13:00
Impact Planning Apologies – this is now cancelled. |
| Wednesday 24th February 09:00 – 11:00
Dealing with Rejection Professor Edwin van Teijlingen will share some practical hints and tips on how to constructively and effectively deal with a journal rejection. |
| Wednesday 24th February 12:00 – 13:00
AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowships Information Session This is the theme for this week’s Funding Development Briefing. Contact ResearchDev@bournemouth.ac.uk to book. |
| Wednesday 24th February 15:00 – 16:00
Early Career Researchers Network Meeting The theme of this month’s network briefing is BU’s Strategic Investment Areas, and how Early Career Researchers can get involved. |
BOOKING: Unless otherwise stated, to book, please email OD@bournemouth.ac.uk with evidence of approval from your Head of Department or Deputy Head of Department.
You can see all the Organisational Development and Research Knowledge Development Framework (RKEDF) events in one place on the handy calendar of events.
If you have any queries, please get in touch!
Following on from yesterday’s blog post on the support on offer for research training and development at different career stages, this post will focus on writing and developing research applications for external funding and publications.
Horizon Scanning and finding funder opportunities: The Research Facilitators within RDS will horizon scan research funders’ strategic agendas and potential funding opportunities to ensure that BU are ready to respond to these opportunities, maximising BU’s chance of success. We provide information on the latest news from funders’ and government through blog posts, workshops and direct contact with you.
The Research Facilitators regularly send targeted funding opportunities to each Head of Department for dissemination. All Academics will have a Research Professional account, which enables personalised searches for new funding opportunities. You can also find the latest funding opportunities, targeted by RDS, on the left-hand side of the BU Research Blog homepage, together with a red button ‘view current funding opportunities’, which will take you to the latest opportunities from major funders (please note that whilst off campus you will need to follow the link shown to Research Professional in order to access the page).
Funder Briefing events: The Research Facilitators also run weekly funder briefing sessions which anyone can join. Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the MSTeams invite for these sessions. Sessions are recorded and so for those who can’t make the interactive session, you can view them here when convenient to you. The next one is being held on 10th March at 12 noon and is a spotlight on NIHR funding.
Bid writing support: In addition to the training and development on offer, we also have one-to-one support available connected to bid writing. The Research Facilitators within RDS offer one-to-one support to ECRs and those applying for high values to major funders. In addition, we have External Application Reviewers (EARs) who can help support the development of research applications that meet the following criteria:
Your Research Facilitator will be able to discuss your needs and approval for an EAR will be considered and awarded by RDS.
Writing academy: The Writing Academy will enable you to develop the skills required to improve the quantity and quality of your publications and to develop a publication strategy which best represents you as an academic. The academy is a great opportunity for academics who are new to publishing or would benefit from some additional direction and coaching. You’ll have access to an external consultant who will advise you on techniques and style. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your ideas and issues with your peers. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your publishing goals and prepare a plan to accommodate writing within your day to day routines.
The next dates for the WA are 13th – 16th April 2021. You can book on here (apologies, but the page isn’t live just yet but will be shortly). In the meantime, contact OD@bournemouth.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.
Tomorrow’s post will focus on the internal funding support available to you, as well as how all the support on offer grows capacity and inclusivity at BU.
At BU we promote and celebrate the work done to engage public audiences with BU research.
The public engagement with research team in Research Development and Support (RDS) can help promote your event to relevant audiences through our regular newsletter and social media channels. It also helps us to stay informed on the public engagement work being carried out by BU.
Please note: we are keen to promote BU public engagement with research activity wherever possible, but completing this form does not guarantee that we will be able to promote your event. To be considered for inclusion, your event or activity must be;
Event descriptions may be edited for consistency in style with other content. If you have any questions about this process, please contact us.
We will reshare this form once a month.
Following on from the excellent articles detailing why BU research matters, and the experiences of our academics (big thank you to those who posted articles last week), this week will see a series of posts outlining the support on offer to BU academics to progress their research activities and how to access that support.
It’s been a challenging year, with many opportunities for development being postponed or delivered online, with the latter losing that ability to make a real connection and interact with peers to form relationships that can lead to collaborative and long-term research opportunities. However, there is still much on offer to support research careers, at all levels, and we’re learning (from some slightly torturous experiences) how to ensure that online delivery is just as engaging as face-to-face. One of the things we’re changing is the delivery of the RDS induction for new academics and researchers. You can sign up here to attend the next induction being held on 19th May 2021.
RKEDF: The Research Development and Support (RDS) team have a range of development and support options available to BU academics. The majority of these are badged under the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF). You can click on the link above to see the range of opportunities available. These cover all research interests and various career stage events. The range of support includes applying to major funders (pathways for Research Councils, International funders (includes EU), charities, academies, and NIHR), how to apply, how to manage your award, how to build a team, impact, publishing, REF, and various options for research career based training.
For a quick overview of what’s coming up, you can click on OD’s calendar of events for the latest development opportunities. The RKEDF events currently run until the end of June 2021 but we are planning a new programme to start from September 2021. Each event listed in the above links will have an online booking process (if a date is given for an event). There are currently events for public engagement, impact, publications, search strategies, and the monthly events run as part of the Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN). Where no dates are given, these may be past events, but we’ll be looking at options for the academic year 21/22 and advertise these from August.
Presentations and support documentation from past events can be found on Brightspace. Just click on ‘content’ and ‘pathways’ and navigate to the pathway that is of interest to you. The right-hand page will show you what’s on offer. As an example, clicking on the ‘research council’ pathway will show presentations from funders who have visited BU, such as AHRC and MRC, an overview of the research councils, how to approach your case for support, confronting your unsuccessful bid, and videos of funder briefings, such as the UKRI’s Future Leader Fellowships scheme. Do have a browse to see what might be of interest to you and help support you in your research activities. If you have trouble accessing the content then please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Career stage development: As part of the RKEDF, the Academic Career Pathway to Research Funding identifies what type of external funding you should be aiming for depending on your level of career. This covers Student, Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professor, and Professor. Each of the funding types identified link up to the training and development on offer through the RKEDF. You can view what’s been provided in the past and expectations to what will be on offer for 2021/22. When developing your research plans for the year, three years and even five years, do consider what type of grant will be suitable for you at your career stage and work with your faculty mentor to realise your plans. You can also consult an RDS Research Facilitator who can discuss plans with you and direct you to the right support including the funder briefings that are on offer weekly (see part two tomorrow for further details).
Early Career Researchers Network: As mentioned above, the ECRN, run by academics for academics, offers monthly sessions for ECRs on a range of topics. Chaired by Professor Ann Hemingway (FHSS) and Dr Sam Goodman (FMC), sessions are held for general discussions, networking, and specific topics to support early career researchers. Still to come in 20/21 is:
If you’d like to join the network, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can read an article by Dr Rachel Arnold on the benefits of attending the ECRN.
I hope the above has provided a useful outline of the general support that is on offer to you as a BU academic and signposted you to how to get involved. Tomorrow’s post will focus on support for writing and developing research applications for external funding and publications.
High Quality Public Engagement
Tuesday 9th March, 10:30 – 13:00
Have you already had some experience of public engagement with research but are looking to take stock and develop a more strategic approach ?
In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to examine a series of frameworks and tools that can be used to develop high quality public engagement. In applying these tools – through case studies, activities and discussions – delegates will develop a more strategic approach to their public engagement practice.
See the staff intranet page for more information and for booking details.
If you have any queries, please contact Adam Morris.
NIHR Research Design Service are pleased to offer the opportunity to attend the next in its series of ‘Researcher Road Shows’ – Using health and social care datasets in research: Practical advice to support your research journey.
This event is taking place via Zoom and is aimed at all those seeking practical guidance on how to find, access and gain approvals to use health datasets, including early career researchers:
Monday 15 March, 10am to 2.30pm: ‘Lifting the Lid on Data – Meet the Data Custodians’
Wednesday 17 March, 10am to 2.30pm: ‘Navigating the system’
Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU)
We can help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.
Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice
Feel free to call us on 01202 961939 or send us an email.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the news media have played an instrumental role in providing the latest updates and information. An increasing number of people, however, have sometimes avoided the news, finding negative coverage has a detrimental effect on their mood and wellbeing.
A new collaborative project will explore how constructive journalism – also known as solutions journalism – can increase audience engagement and empower communities to tackle the problems they face in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Constructive journalism breaks from traditional journalism’s focus on reporting social problems to also feature how people respond to problems, in order to help audiences to feel more motivated, inspired and empowered to deal with challenges.
Early evidence shows that this style of journalism also leads to greater engagement, with articles read more deeply and shared more widely.
The project is being undertaken by Bournemouth University (BU) in conjunction with Newsquest, one of the UK’s largest publishers of local and regional newspapers, with training and consultancy provided by the US-based Solutions Journalism Network, and the Association of British Science Writers.
Dr An Nguyen, Associate Professor of Journalism at BU, is leading the project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the UK Research and Innovation’s Covid-19 rapid-response research scheme.
He said: “Traditionally, due to their professional dedication to the watchdog role in monitoring and holding powers to account, journalists focus disproportionately on social problems and pay inadequate attention to the ways to solve problems.
“Over time, it has become a bit too much of ‘doom and gloom’ news, which can lead to many people becoming mentally fatigued, desensitised or feeling helpless or powerless, because they can’t see a way out or don’t know how they could take action.
“Constructive journalism does not shy away from the crucial watchdog function but aims to offer a balance, moving away from focusing on problems to also exploring how problems are tackled and solved.”
Dr Nguyen added that the pandemic offered an opportunity to deploy constructive journalism in a large scale to help the UK’s local and regional communities and investigate the potential of constructive journalism in helping the public to deal with the social issues of our time.
“People will face a lot of problems during the transition out of lockdown and will try to find ways to limit the damages and adapt to the ‘new normal’,” he said.
“There is an increasing recognition among news industry that constructive journalism can be valuable. This project is an opportunity to test this concept in the context of one of the biggest issues the world is facing and see whether journalism can help people.”
Journalists across the UK, including journalism students, will receive training to produce constructive journalism through series of online training webinars. About 50 of them will then be mentored on a one-to-one basis by journalists with experience in constructive journalism to produce solutions-focused news for Newsquest’s local and regional titles.
It is hoped that at least 1,000 pieces of constructive journalism will be produced in relation to Covid-19 recovery during this campaign. A new professional network of UK constructive journalists will also be established and launched at the end of the project.
A research team in BU’s Department of Communication and Journalism will conduct in-depth interviews, surveys and experiments with local news audiences, including community leaders, to investigate how solutions-focused news can affect the mental health and wellbeing of the public, as well as civic engagement.
“We are trying to explore what type of constructive journalism would work, what sort of effects it has on audiences and how it might or might not help them to be more optimistic, motivated, inspired or empowered to take actions,” said Dr Nguyen.
The team will also conduct a detailed analysis of the solutions-focused news output from the campaign as well as interview the mentored journalists and their editors about their experience.
Dr Nguyen said: “We’ll look at the content output and see what sort of reporting techniques are used, what are effective and how they engage people throughout the post-lockdown stage of the pandemic.
“We will feed our research findings back to the participating news outlets so that they are informed of the effect of their campaign and, where necessary, what might be done to improve things.”
The effects of COVID-19 vaccination programmes have led to a glimmer of hope that some of the things we used to enjoy may soon be part of our lives once again. High on many people’s priority lists will be foreign travel.
In the UK, the official declaration of a “roadmap” to normality was quickly followed by a surge in online bookings for flights and holidays. This is a welcome development for one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic. It is good news for countries that depend on tourism, and it is undoubtedly good news for people who are desperate to get away.
Importantly, it is also a step towards an end to the uncertainty and isolation that in 2020 led to warnings of a global mental health crisis.
The pandemic also raised awareness of the importance of “wellness” – a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing – in people’s lives. Even without a pandemic to deal with, attempting to achieve this state is the basis of a global industry said to be worth around US$4.5 trillion a year.
The travel side of this, “wellness tourism”, was worth US$639 billion globally in 2017, a figure expected to increase to US$919 billion by 2022.
And while wellness tourism was growing rapidly before COVID-19 struck, last year saw a reported growth in internet searches about travel to “wellness destinations]”.
Destination-wise, places known for yoga, meditation and pilgrimage routes, such as Chiang Mai in Thailand and Bali in Indonesia, stand to benefit from increased demand.
Our own tourism research leads us to believe that countries which actively improve infrastructure to target wellness tourism will enjoy a particular boost in any post-COVID period.
To make sure of this, governments and tourism authorities need to optimise wellness tourism resources. Here are three things they should consider:
One widespread response to the pandemic was the rediscovery of local natural beauty. New Zealanders for example, prohibited from international travel, flocked to the remote and previously under-visited Chatham Islands. Cambodians capitalised on the absence of some three million annual tourists to visit the Angkor Wat World Heritage site.
The pandemic has been seen as a time to reset longstanding social imbalances that barred local people from enjoying their own spaces. Not only would improved domestic tourism help support local businesses at these destinations, but it would also contribute to the wellbeing of the communities who live close to them.
Wellness can mean different things to different people and cultures. In Indonesia, the Balinese travel to religious or spiritual sites for rituals linked to their ancestors and families. This runs parallel to most western tourists’ experiences in Bali, who often visit centres targeted at their personal requirements, with spa treatments or yoga classes. Although westerners generate more profits than locals, it is important for the wellbeing of the surrounding community to ensure equal access to these sites.
Local Balinese yoga instructors often lack the marketing and financial resources to attract global wellness tourists. During the pandemic, some foreign-owned facilities (such as Yoga Barn, one of the most popular studios for westerners) sustained their business through digital video platform. Meanwhile, local facilities struggled without the technical skills and hardware to compete. And while large resorts are well positioned to benefit from post-pandemic wellness travel, they usually provide only low-paid jobs to locals. Support should be provided for small, locally owned wellness tourism businesses as well.
The lack of social sustainability has often plagued tourism development schemes. Our concern is that as tourism gradually opens up again, businesses and governments will simply focus on the high-end luxury wellness market. They may look to smaller numbers of wealthy tourists to remedy economic damage, limit the possibility of spreading the pandemic, and mitigate the high costs of hospitalising sick visitors.
But they would be misguided to focus solely on this competitive niche. Many high-value tourism businesses are owned by foreign investors without local involvement or economic benefit. Local governments, tourism authorities, large businesses and international organisations must support community-based, small-scale enterprises in remote areas to build a more comprehensive wellness tourism sector.
Read more:
How Bali could build a better kind of tourism after the pandemic
Overall, wellness tourism programmes should be developed in a way that empowers local communities, helps to reduce economic inequality and creates new livelihoods, especially in rural areas where poverty rates are high. It should also be developed beyond the popular destinations of Thailand and India to include poorer destinations, such as Laos, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
For while wellness tourism was gaining attention before the COVID period, the trend
will probably continue as COVID restrictions (hopefully) ease. And with the necessary pause in arrivals right now, the industry has an opportunity to reflect on how to create a more sustainable approach to everyone’s wellbeing, wherever they live.
Jaeyeon Choe, Senior Academic in Sustainable Tourism Development, Bournemouth University and Michael Di Giovine, Associate Professor of Anthropology, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In the final blog post of the week in this series, Dr Ashok Patnaik, shares his insights into overcoming the challenges associated with undertaking social science research during a global pandemic including how he has challenged boundaries in research ethics to ensure research critical for the future of our children can progress. Ashok also openly reflects on the personal challenges the past year has brought and how he drew on the support around him to grow personally and intellectually:
“The lockdown period has been difficult in some respects but also wonderful in some others. It has offered plenty of opportunities for reflection and growth, as a researcher and as a human being. Strange though it may be to say it, it has been very timely and fortuitous in some ways because these extraordinary circumstances have enabled me, and the team I am part of, to achieve things which, during normal times, may have proved much more difficult. Thus, to paraphrase Dickens, it has been the worst of times, and it has been the best of times.
I have the great fortune of being part of a brilliant academic team based in the BUBS which is working on the evaluation of an exciting movement-based mental health intervention for primary school-aged children called ‘Stormbreak‘. As part of the evaluation of Stormbreak, we use a range of data collection methods but the centrepiece of the evaluation is the child well-being survey. We use a pre-post study design for the survey, and had completed the pre-intervention survey in January, 2020.
The immediate impact of school closure in March last year due to the lockdown was the inability to complete the planned second leg of the survey (the post-intervention survey). This was scheduled for the end of the school term (late March). As a result, we had an incomplete dataset and could not calculate the change scores needed to evaluate the impact of the intervention. This meant that we could not add new data to the impact report. This affected our partner organisation’s ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of the intervention and slowed down the expansion of the programme which had begun gathering pace before the lockdown.
While this was, undoubtedly, regrettable, the lockdown proved to be a blessing in disguise in many ways. Doing research with children in schools involves many challenges, but the biggest bottleneck for us was obtaining parental consent. The majority of parents did not respond to schools’ invitations to take part in the study. Our participation rates ranged from 10% to 40% (at best). We were losing a lot of participants. The necessity of contacting parents repeatedly through multiple communication channels was adding extra work for schools and making them re-consider their engagement with the evaluation. The new pressures on schools that arose in the aftermath of the pandemic were fast making the consent process untenable. The viability of the whole project was at risk. We knew that we had to do something.
The principal obstacle was the strong and near universal consensus on active parental consent in research with young school children. The new requirements brought in by the GDPR had reinforced this consensus and made it a kind of orthodoxy. However, there were also several examples of eminent research institutions such as UCL, LSE, and other organisations conducting research on behalf of the UK Government and the Department of Education such as Ipsos-MORI and NatCen bucking the trend and relying on a passive parental consent approach. We knew that we had to move to the latter approach, but given the widespread and strongly entrenched belief in the necessity of active parental consent, we knew that we would have to prepare a compelling case to persuade the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Ethics Panel (SSH REP) to consider our request. It was a daunting task.
Thankfully, the lockdown period gave us the time and the space to work, without distraction, to amend the ethics process. It was a period free from the short-term pressures of data collection. During the peaceful, quiet months of the lockdown, we were able to marshal a wide-ranging body of evidence and a number of strong arguments to support our case for passive parental consent for the child well-being survey. Professor Michael Silk, Dr. Daniel Lock, and I collaborated on this work, which eventually turned into a Master’s Dissertation-length essay, perhaps the longest application considered by the SSH REP.
Our work bore fruit, and our application was reviewed favourably by the SSH REP. We are very grateful to our excellent SSH REP, especially the Chair Professor Jonathan Parker and the Deputy Chair Professor Richard Berger, and Ms. Sarah Bell, for their sympathetic consideration of our application. Their supportive decision removed the biggest constraint on the growth of the study and restored its viability.
With the end of the lockdown in September, we resumed data collection. However, schools’ new risk assessment policies made access to schools difficult. Professor Silk foresaw the need to adapt our ways of conducting the study. He recognised that the previous approach, which involved my visiting schools in person to administer the survey, would not be feasible in view of the restricted access policy of most schools post-pandemic. Further, as the Stormbreak programme scaled up and expanded nationally, personal visits would not be practical. Professor Silk saw the need to fully digitise the conduct of the survey.
Thus began our second major endeavour – to fully digitise the administration of the survey. We worked with the fantastic Red Balloon Media Production Team, headed by the highly creative Stephanie Farmer, and with the brilliant graphics designer and computer programmer Vitor Vilela. With their support, and that of the exceptionally helpful Stormbreak team (especially Dr. Martin Yelling, who kindly and patiently recorded, and re-recorded, and re-re-recorded parts of the script with his children), we have worked through the winter months to create an engaging, child-friendly digital solution, consisting of fun videos and a snazzy questionnaire. This was uncharted territory for us. Thanks to Steph’s and Vitor’s understanding and patient approach, we learnt about this new field and have together produced a digital version of the study that we feel genuinely excited about, and which, we feel, will assist materially in conducting the study remotely. It was also pleasing to note that, in digitising the study processes, we were able to make them more efficient and streamlined.
Personally, the lockdown has been, by and large, a happy period. Relatively free from the administrative work involved in data collection, I have been able to focus on what I love best – quiet periods of reading, thinking, and writing (what the author Cal Newport calls ‘deep work‘). I have been able to live a quiet, productive, monastic life, largely free of disturbance. With the end of the lockdown approaching, that blissful period is ending fast. Over the last two years, balancing the short-term work of data collection (along with the administrative work involved in running a project) with long-term work (skill development, working on journal articles, applying for research funding) has been a constant challenge for me. During the last few months, I have experimented a lot with my routines and have become a little better at organising my work so that I am addressing both short-term and long-term work needs. The flexibility of working at home, and the time and energy saved from not having to go to the office have helped a lot in this regard.
My experience during the lockdown has kept the subject of mental health at the forefront of my mind. Like others, I have struggled at times with isolation and loneliness (especially when I returned from leave and was in quarantine). The lockdown has also clearly reinforced the incredible importance of physical activity in creating positive feelings. Running or playing basketball or Table Tennis brought a smile to my face on days when there were few other things to feel happy about.
There was a period of about ten days during the summer when my mental health was severely affected. It was a very difficult period. What helped me most during this time was conversations with family members and the support of my line manager, Professor Michael Silk. He very kindly and swiftly sourced support for me from the BU Employee Assistance Programme. He was there for me, and his support taught me an important lesson about leadership, loyalty, and caring. The lockdown has also made me recognise the importance of communities – personal and professional. It has helped me gain perspective and see more clearly what truly matters in life and to make space for it in my calendar. The challenge will be to remember those lessons and keep them uppermost in my mind as we move towards normality and the old, all-too-familiar pressures attempt to sway me from the high road. Already, I can see myself slipping back into old, unproductive routines as the urgent crowds out the important. This battle will continue for a long time.
In summary, I would say that I feel incredibly grateful for the unexpected opportunities resulting from the lockdown. There are things I have accomplished with others during this period which would not have been possible but for the unique circumstances created by the lockdown. There have been ups and downs, but many, many more ups than downs. On the whole, I find myself having grown and matured significantly – as a researcher and as a human being – during the last year, and I would not trade this experience for anything.”
Research at Bournemouth University is looking at the effectiveness of comic artistry and storytelling in the sharing of public health messaging.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) the project will catalogue and analyse comic-style public health graphics, specifically those created during the Covid-19 pandemic, and seek to make recommendations on how the comic medium can be effective at delivering public health messaging to help drive behaviour change.
The idea for the research began as Dr Anna Feigenbaum, the lead researcher, and her colleagues Alexandra Alberda and William Proctor shared clever comic-style graphics with one another that had been created and shared on social media about Covid-19. These single, sharable, comic-style graphics blend the artistry and storytelling of comics with the Covid-19 messaging we have seen throughout the pandemic.
Dr Feigenbaum, an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, said, “What we saw from these comic graphics was the way that the artistry and storytelling combined to share messages in a more emotive and interesting way. This built on work we were already doing on how public health messaging could utilise this medium to make their own messaging more engaging and even lead to better behavioural outcomes.”
José Blàzquez, the project’s postdoctoral researcher, has started work in collating over 1200 examples of comic-style Covid-19 messaging with the aim of understanding what makes them so compelling, and how this genre of communication could be further used to create what the project’s research illustrator, Alexandra Alberda, calls an “accessible, approachable and relatable” style of messaging when communicating important public health messages. The team aims to build a database that archives these comics, including information about their artistic and storytelling techniques, audience engagement, circulation, and what implications they may have for the sharing of health messaging in the future.
The final outcomes will be shared as a report and an illustrated set of good practice guidelines. Results will also be shared in the team’s edited collection Comics in the Time of COVID-19 and a special journal issue for Comics Grid. It is hoped these guidelines will inform public health communicators, as well as graphic designers and educators.
The team has even created their own Covid-19 web-comics, published by Nightingale on Medium. https://medium.com/nightingale/covid-19-data-literacy-is-for-everyone-46120b58cec9
Dr Feigenbaum continued, “Data comics are on a real upsurge as people look to make sense of the world through data visualisation, and there are some wonderful examples from amateur artists who have been incredibly clever and creative in taking what are, essentially, public health messages, and turning them into emotive comic-style stories.
“These sharable comic graphics are engaging and informed – there is a lot to learn here about the way we make sense of the world and how this genre could help us to see the communication of important messages in a whole new light. What we’re researching now could be seen as best practice in years to come.”
In addition to the main team of Dr. Feigenbaum, Dr. Blàzquez and Alexandra Alberda, this research will be conducted with Co-investigators Dr. Billy Proctor, Dr. Sam Goodman and Professor Julian McDougall, along with advisory partners Public Health Dorset, the Graphic Medicine Collective, Information Literacy Group and Comics Grid.
More information about the project will soon be available at www.covidcomics.org.
BU have successfully signed up to the BMJ Read and Publish Pilot for 2021. This means that qualifying funded research articles can be published Open Access without paying for an Article Processing Charge (APC).
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
Archives of Disease in Childhood
Archives of Disease in Childhood: Education & Practice edition
Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal & Neonatal edition
BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine
BMJ Quality and Safety
British Journal of Ophthalmology
British Journal of Sports Medicine
Emergency Medicine Journal
Evidence-Based Mental Health
Evidence-Based Nursing
Frontline Gastroenterology
Gut
Heart
Injury Prevention
Journal of Clinical Pathology
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
Journal of Medical Ethics
Journal of Medical Genetics
Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry
Medical Humanities
Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Postgraduate Medical Journal
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry
Medical Humanities
Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Postgraduate Medical Journal
Practical Neurology
Sexually Transmitted Infections
Thorax
Tobacco Control
See publisher webpage for more details.
This morning we meet members from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Ethics Panel (SSH REP).
I joined the Panel at an interesting time – with the Pandemic hitting just a few short months after joining. I only had the pleasure of meeting my fellow Panel members in person once before we switched to virtual working. The current situation has also challenged our way of thinking about research in the current context. A lot of our recent discussions have focussed on researcher and participant safety and formulating suitable ethical protocols for online forms of data collection – particularly the use of Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
One of the things I have most enjoyed about being an SSH REP member is having the opportunity to learn about the exciting, innovative and important research that goes on across BU – outside of my own discipline. Every month I’m blown away by the innovative research projects that I have the pleasure of reading about. Many of these address current challenges such as the Covid Pandemic, well-being and links to the UN Sustainability goals.
Over the last few months we have changed the way we review Ethics documents that come to the Panel. Each research project is now assigned a lead reviewer and a secondary reviewer, which allows us the space and capacity to really delve into each project we are assigned to in-depth.
Working with fellow Panel members has also enhanced the quality of the Ethics documents I produce and enabled me to further support my own students as they embark on the Ethics process. Sometimes Ethics is seen as a tick box exercise, but if anything being a part of this Panel over the last year has reinforced to me the important role that Ethics plays in ensuring our physical and psychological safety, that of our participants and in strengthening the quality of research.
Finally, there is sometimes apprehension experienced over being asked to present research at Ethics Panels, however I can safely say that we are all a very supportive group of people, who strive to provide proportionate, consistent and high quality of research across the University. I have personally thoroughly enjoyed being part of the Panel. So if you are submitting your Ethics documentation – good luck and we hope to see you at a Panel soon!
Dr Osi Okwilagwe, Lecturer in Strategy, BUBS
A few years ago, whilst fresh out of my PhD journey and as a new member of staff, I joined the SSH REP. As an Early Career Researcher, I was indeed new to the world of research ethics and was especially pleased to be offered a place by Dr Sean Beer who was Panel chair at the time. In my four years on the role and currently working with a new Panel chaired by Prof Jonathan Parker, I have come to appreciate how large the industry of research is and how important it is for the members of the SSH REP to have a real interest in supporting Social Sciences & Humanities research at BU and in protecting potential participants’ interests – to give their opinion on whether the research methodology is ethical and fair. For me it has been an eye opener working with senior and more experienced colleagues reviewing each month an array of ethics checklists submitted by staff and postgraduate research students, all who conduct very interesting research.
I suppose when people think about ethical research, they think of rules for distinguishing between what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behaviour – right from wrong! Submitting ethics checklists for an ethics review or attending an interview with the Panel for a submission assessed as above minimal risk is really not daunting contrary to popular opinion. The SSH REP understands the sometimes complex issues involved in reaching ethical decisions; bear in mind that the Panel’s aim is to promote and facilitate research at BU. Staff and postgraduate research students who submit their ethics checklist should also not despair if the feedback from the Panel entails a long list of suggestions or amendments, as the role of the SSH REP is to ensure that all research carried out, is conducted to the highest possible ethical standards for research and to provides support to staff and students planning research projects. The mixed experiences and backgrounds of members that make up the Panel allow for wide perspectives as possible. Panel members take a robust approach to the consideration of risk and benefits of a research project. Each member brings their own valuable perspective, knowledge, and experience, as well as concern of the ethics checklist submitted for a particular research project to the Panel’s deliberations. Hence, the feedback given are usually suggestions for researchers to take on board to amend the ethics checklist or to improve the participant’s information sheet; invariably helping towards increasing the likelihood of participant recruitment and of generating quality and publishable research results.
The invaluable experience I have gained from reviewing submissions and working with the SSH REP, has allowed me to appreciate the diverse nature of research carried out by our colleagues at BU and has also ingrained in me that as researchers, a key duty is to promote ethical research.
Here are 3 top tips I like to share when considering making an ethics checklist submission:
1. If researchers are new to research, do ask for help, perhaps from a more experienced colleague/supervisor or send an email to the Research ethics team with any questions.
2. Complete the ethics checklist carefully and read the guidance on the documents to be submitted along with the checklist.
3. Spend a considerable amount of time on the Participant Information Sheet; the adequacy of consent is important. So do identify any contentious issues there may be in conducting the research.
BU staff can login below:
New Bournemouth University public health paper
New ACORN-funded paper published. When time is short but passion for food is strong, food day-tripping may be the answer!
Third INRC Symposium: Interdisciplinary Computational and Clinical Approaches at the Edge of Brain Research
Last reminder – MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 internal deadline next week MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 – internal deadline approaching
Horizon Europe – EuroHPC and MSCA PF webinars MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024
Research Information Network
Royal Society of Chemistry Outreach Fund: Open for Applications