Category / Featured academics

New sociology paper Freedom from Academentia

Congratulations to Laura Favaro, Lecturer in Social Science in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, who published the paper ‘Let us be free from “ACADEMENTIA”’ this last weekend of June [1].   “Survivor of academentia” is how one former lecturer in sociology described herself when to Laura interviewed her for her ethnography of academia. In particular, the research explored the “gender wars”, namely the disputes around sex and gender that have escalated dramatically since the mid 2010s in Britain and increasingly also in many other countries. This article builds on feminist and other critical uses of the term academentia with original insights from interview and document data about the detrimental impact of queer theory and politics. The hope is to stimulate further inquiry into the push towards queering at universities, and beyond, as well as into the connections between the
transgender and mad movements.

The content of this paper has been covered by writer Victoria Smith in  The Critic  and Laura will be presenting about this exciting topic at a conference this summer.

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

Reference:

Favaro, L. (2024) Let us be free from “Academentia”, Cuestiones de género: de la igualdad y la diferencia. Nº. 19: 659-92.

 

The Month in Research: June 2024

A cartoon image of black and white hands clapping on a yellow background

The Month in Research

The Month in Research is our monthly round-up sharing research and knowledge exchange successes from across the previous month, showcasing the amazing work taking place across BU.

Your achievements

Thank you to everyone who has used the online form to put forward their achievements, or those of colleagues, this month.

  • Professor John Oliver (Faculty of Media and Communication) delivered a keynote address to the Department for Levelling-up in UK Parliament. The topic focussed on ‘how to manage strategic uncertainty’ during times of organisational uncertainty. The talk was attended by 100+ senior managers and directors responsible for the department’s project portfolio.
  • Dr Sarah Elliott, Jon Milward and Dr Miles Russell (Faculty of Science and Technology) – archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology and the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences shared their latest research at a day conference with the Dorchester Association. (Nominated by Harry Manley)
  • Dr Leslie Gelling, Dr Sue Baron and Cathy Beresford (Faculty of Health and Social Sciences) have had their paper published in Health Expectations, entitled Embedding Public Involvement in a PhD Research Project With People Affected by Advanced Liver Disease. It was co-authored by members of our public involvement group. (Nominated by Cathy Beresford)
  • Professor Zoheir Sabeur (Faculty of Science and Technology) was featured in a Q&A article in the June 2024 edition of the Journal of Ocean Technology (pages 110 -111), answering questions about his career, inspirations and thoughts on Artificial Intelligence.
  • Professor John Oliver (Faculty of Media and Communication) was presented with the European Media Management Association’s highest award for “excellence in media management scholarship and practice” at the annual conference in The Netherlands. The award also recognises Prof. Oliver’s contribution to the development of the association, where he served on the Executive Board for many years and as the President between 2021-23. Prof. Oliver commented that: “Whilst it is an honour to be presented with an individual award, it is also in recognition of the many people that have helped me develop my research and the contribution that many of the association’s members have made over the years.”

Funding

 Congratulations to all those who have had funding for research and knowledge exchange projects and activities awarded in June. Highlights include:

  • Dr Simant Prakoonwit (Faculty of Science and Technology) has been awarded c.£220,000 by Innovate UK for their project Intelligent moderation and assistance for commercial image sharing website
  • Dr Chris Brown (Faculty of Science and Technology) has been awarded c.£42,000 by Leverhulme for their project Probing the distortion of a visual search template

Publications

Congratulations to all those who have had work published across the last month. Below is a selection of publications from throughout June:

Content for The Month in Research has been collected using the research and knowledge exchange database (RED), the Bournemouth University Research Online (BURO) repository and submissions via The Month in Research online form. It is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list. All information is correct as of 28.6.24.

Please use The Month in Research online form to share your highlights and achievements, or those of colleagues, for the next edition. We will take a break over the summer and be back in September with a bumper round-up.

Positionality in qualitative research

At the online editorial board meeting today [Saturday 29th June] of the Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology I had the pleasure of seeing Bournemouth University’s latest paper ‘The Importance of Positionality for Qualitative Researchers’ ahead of publication [1].  The lead author of this paper is Hannah Gurr and this methodology paper is part of her M.Res. research project in Social Work.  Hannah is supervised by Dr. Louise Oliver, Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS).

Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology is a Gold Open Access journal so when it appears online it will be free to read for anybody across the globe.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Reference:

  1. Gurr, H., Oliver, L., Harvey, O., van Teijlingen, E. (2024) The Importance of Positionality for Qualitative Researchers, Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 18 (forthcoming)

FHSS academics’ paper cited 1,000 times

This morning ResearchGate alerted us that our paper published two decades ago ‘The Importance of Pilot Studies’ has now been cited one thousand times [1].  This methods paper in the Nursing Standard is very often used by authors quoting a  paper in their research methods section when they have done pilot or feasibility study for a larger-scale study. This paper is also our second top cited paper with 1,982 citations on Google Scholar and, interestingly enough, on SCOPUS it is not listed at all.

Pilot studies are a crucial element of a good study design. Conducting a pilot study does not guarantee success in the main study, but it does increase the likelihood of success. Pilot studies fulfill a range of important functions and can provide valuable insights for other researchers. There is a need for more discussion among researchers of both the process and outcomes of pilot studies. 

This paper is one of several methods paper focusing on pilot studies we have published over the past 22 years [2-8].

 

Professors Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

 

References:

  1. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2002) ‘The importance of pilot studies’ Nursing Standard 16(40): 33-36. Web: nursing-standard.co.uk/archives/vol16-40/pdfs/vol16w40p3336.pdf
  2. van Teijlingen E, Rennie, AM., Hundley, V, Graham, W. (2001) The importance of conducting & reporting pilot studies: example of Scottish Births Survey, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34: 289-95.
  3. Simkhada, P, Bhatta, P., van Teijlingen E (2006) Importance of piloting questionnaire on sexual health research (Letter), Wilderness & Environmental Medical Journal, 17(4): 295-96. wemjournal.org/wmsonline/?request=get-document&issn=1080-6032&volume=017&issue=04&page=0295#Ref
  4. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2001) The importance of pilot studies, Social Research Update Issue 35, (Editor N. Gilbert), Guildford: University of Surrey.  Web:  http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU35.html
  5. Hundley, V., van Teijlingen E.
  6. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2005) Pilot studies in family planning & reproductive health care, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 31(3): 219-21.
  7. (2002) The role of pilot studies in midwifery research RCM Midwives Journal 5(11): 372-74.
  8. van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2003) Pilot study, In: Encyclopaedia of Social Science Research Methods, Vol. 2, Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. & Liao, T. (eds.), Orego, Sage: 823-24.

 

Dr. Catalin Brylla raises awareness of Research and Social Justice at the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image

Dr. Catalin Brylla, Principal Lecturer in Film and TV and Deputy Head of CESJ, has chaired the DEI Committee for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image since 2022, launching several initiatives.  At this year’s conference in Budapest, the DEI focus was on “Research and Social Justice”, featuring a roundtable discussion with Prof. Srivi Ramasubramanian (Newhouse School at Syracuse University), Prof. Beth Haller (Towson University) and Dr. Wyatt Moss-Wellington (University of New England). The roundtable, moderated by Dr. Ari Purnama, addressed the following questions:

  • How should media research relate to social justice issues in practice?
  • How do media representations of marginalised identities affect production, criticism, and perception of media?
  • How can media research be decolonised through marginalised perspectives, such as the Global South?
  • How can media research symbiotically involve the communities it studies, such as applying participatory research methods and knowledge exchange?

 

Another initiative has been a mentor-mentee programme that has provided support for early-career research on teaching, bidding and wellbeing, organised by committee member Dr. Kata Szita.

Brylla is currently developing with Prof. Jens Eder (Babelsberg University) a model to implement and study the social impact of documentaries, which they presented at the conference in Budapest:

The model is partly based on Brylla’s latest monograph ‘Documentary and Stereotypes: Reducing Stigma through Factual Media‘ (Palgrave 2023) and will be further developed in a research project that compares impact strategies in the UK and Germany.

Interdisciplinary Computational and Clinical Approaches at the Edge of Brain Research

We cordially invite you to the 3rd Symposium of the BU Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research Centre on Wednesday, the 12th of June 2024, from 9:30-13:00 at the Inspire Lecture Theatre, Fusion Building (1st floor).

The symposium is entitled: “Interdisciplinary Computational and Clinical Approaches at the Edge of Brain Research”.

This third symposium revolves around contrasting computational and translational methodologies from a cross-disciplinary standpoint, leveraging synergies between BU and our collaborators in other universities and at the NHS. It is an opportunity for informal discussions on grant proposals and to explore shared interests with our external guests. 

The schedule is as follows:

9:00-9:15. Welcome and Coffee. 

9:30. Keynote talk: Prof. Dr Miguel Maravall (School of Life Sciences, Sussex Neuroscience Centre of Excellence, Sussex University): “What is the function of sensory cortex in a world full of actions? From sensory maps to task-directed responses”. The speaker will be on the screen. 

10.20-10:40. Coffee and Discussions.

10:40-11:40. Session I. Integrating Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience.

  • Michal Gnacek (Emteq Labs, Brighton and Centre for Digital Entertainment, BU): “Affect Recognition in Virtual Reality using Physiological Signals and Machine Learning”. The speaker will be on the screen.
  • Dr Matteo Toscani (Department of Psychology, BU): “Unsupervised learning of haptic material properties”.
  • Dr Géza Gergely Ambrus (Department of Psychology, BU): “Investigating Face Perception Using Cross-Experiment Multivariate Pattern Analysis of Neural Time-Series Data”.

11.40 -12.00. Coffee and Discussions.

12.00-13:00. Session II. Interdisciplinary Clinical Approaches and Closing Remarks.

  • Prof. Dr Jonathan Cole (University Hospital Dorset, NHS): “Perception and action; Observations from congenital and acquired deafferentation”.
  • Prof. Dr Caroline Edmonds (Department of Psychological Sciences, University of East London): ”Real-life implications arise from co-occurring memory impairments in children with neonatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy”.
  • Prof Dr Birgit Gurr (Community Brain Injury and Adult Neuropsychology Services Dorset at Dorset HealthCare University, NHS) and Dr Ellen Seiss (Department of Psychology, BU). “An initial evaluation of the Dynamic Information Processing Programme”.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact Ellen Seiss, eseiss@bournemouth.ac.uk or Emili Balaguer-Ballester, eb-ballester@bournemouth.ac.uk. Feel free to forward this information to any colleague or student who may be interested. 

Thank you very much, and we are looking forward to seeing you there.

Kind regards,

Ellen and Emili, on behalf of all of us.

 

BU academic listed on Research.com

Research.com, a leading academic platform for researchers, has just released its 2024 Edition of the Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities.  BU is listed as 509th globally.Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH), is the BU social scientist listed in this year’s ranking.  The full UK ranking is available here: research.com/scientists-rankings/social-sciences-and-humanities/gb and the full world ranking is available here: research.com/scientists-rankings/social-sciences-and-humanities

 

Congratulations to Social Workers Drs. Oliver & Harvey

Congratulations to Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Dr. Louise Oliver on the publication of their latest article ‘The use of poetry in form of haikus as a tool for critical reflection’ [1].  This latest academic publication has been published in Social Work Education The International Journal.  This interesting article focuses on critical reflection is an integral part of social work education and practice, yet it is widely understood to be hard to learn, teach, and assess. The authors introduced the use of poetry in the form of haikus to three different qualifying social work student groups to trial a creative way of getting students to engage in critical reflection. Ninety-six students took part in the reflection activity and 23 of the students agreed to take part in the research element, which used a mixed-methods approach to explore the value of haikus in critical reflection. Following the thematic network analysis process, we identified one global theme: that haikus were a useful tool for developing critical reflection. There were three organizing themes identified: the need to create a safe learning environment to support engagement; that taking part provoked reactions; and the activity held important elements that aided the development of critical reflection.

 

Well done !

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences