This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU.
To mark the week, we hosted a Postdoc Appreciation meet-up event on Talbot Campus…
The Postdoc Appreciation Week meet-up
The event offered the opportunity for postdoctoral researchers, their line managers, and research staff from across the university to come together and network, as well as find out more about current postdoctoral research taking place at BU.
The event was opened by Professor Mike Silk, Co-Chair of the Research Concordat Steering Group at BU.
Introducing the event as an opportunity to increase and enhance the visibility of postdoc researchers at BU, he said: “Postdoctoral researchers really are the ones who drive forward the research agenda at any institution.
“They are the lifeblood of my research and career – I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing without the postdoctoral researchers that I have managed.”
As part of the event, postdoctoral researchers Sina Safari and Anastasia Vayona presented short summaries of their current research.
Sina Safari presents his work as part of the ADDISONIC cluster
Sina, a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Structural Dynamics and Advanced Materials, shared his work as part of the ADDISONIC research cluster, which is looking at how ultrasonic fatigue testing can provide valuable data around how long materials will last.
The work has applications for industry in helping them develop more robust modelling around the lifespan of materials, as well as exploring ways of potentially using less material while extending their life.
Anastasia, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Science and Policy, spoke about her research exploring greenwashing, wish cycling and the circular economy.
Anastasia Vayona presenting her research into the circular economy
She shared a brief history of the introduction of plastic packaging and the development of a ‘throwaway culture’, which peaked around the 1990s. She also spoke about some of the challenges around recycling – including the responsibility being largely left with consumers, and unclear messaging which leads to recycling becoming contaminated and ended up in landfill.
The event ended with the chance to chat over coffee and cake, and offered a great opportunity to learn more about postdoctoral research at BU and meet some of our current researchers, as well as say thank you for the contribution they make to research at BU. The hope is to hold similar events in future – watch this space!
If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.
This week is UK Postostdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU.
Today’s post is by Dr Andy Pulman, Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Care, who shares details of his research exploring recruitment and retention in social care…
An effective health service is reliant on an effective social care system, and it is therefore vital that we develop a robust research base for social care, to ensure that local authorities (LAs) and third sector organisations provide the most effective services within a wider integrated system of health and social care.
The National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work (NCPQSW) has been contributing to this area of national research recently by helping to generate deeper insights into the challenges of building capacity to undertake social care research across the sector and the opportunities for building research engagement and capacity across Higher Education Institutions and the social care sector in the Wessex region (Dorset, South Wiltshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight).
In 2022, Professor Lee-Ann Fenge (PI) and Dr Andy Pulman (Post Doc) completed a year-long study examining social care research enablers – which could help to build a positive research environment – and barriers – which might prevent or limit a positive research environment for practitioners. We are currently working on a follow up project – one of four in the Wessex region being funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) – building on this initial scoping work.
Our study explores local recruitment (employing people as adult social care staff) and retention (providing a working environment where they want to stay) issues in adult social care from the perspective of four populations of interest:
Social care practitioners currently working in two local LAs – Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) and Dorset.
Social care staff with responsibility for performing exit interviews with LA staff (prior to their leaving the LA) currently working in the two local LAs.
Students currently enrolled in social care undergraduate and postgraduate programmes (within the Wessex region) who might enter the adult social care workforce locally once qualified.
Service users with lived experience of receiving services in BCP or Dorset/advocates drawn from Wessex Region Local Authority contracted services and the impacts of practitioner retention in relation to use of these services.
This project runs between November 2022 and April 2024 and at time of writing (11/09/23), we are currently collecting and analysing qualitative data from over n=100 participants.
If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.
This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU.
Today’s post is by Dr Rejoice Chipuriro, Post-Doctoral Researcher In Social Care, about her experiences as a postdoctoral researcher…
I trained as a social worker in Zimbabwe before relocating to South Africa where I obtained my MA in Social Development and PhD in Sociology. I joined Bournemouth University in February 2022 as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Social Science and Social Work.
Dr Rejoice Chipuriro with her wider research team
I have worked in community-led interventions and health research programmes in Southern Africa and in the UK. My current research projects are both funded by the National Institute of Health and Social Care and focus on community assets and how these contribute to people’s health and wellbeing (commonhealthassets.uk).
I was initially drawn to social work as a helping profession and later I ventured into research to learn from and understand the societies that I worked in. When I practised social work, I noticed that beyond individual pathologies lay structural and socio-economic issues that either developed or deprived access to life enhancing choices and opportunities. This led me to studying social development and sociology. I found these inter-disciplinary postgraduate courses helpful for my community work.
I was able to co-design participatory and anti-oppressive interventions with the help of people in the communities as experts by experience. I enjoy supporting people going through life transitions as well as groups and communities striving for a more equitable and just society for all.
What I like about being a post-doctoral researcher
I have travelled widely and met researchers, academics, and communities of practice across the globe, which is an enriching experience. I have presented my research in three continents and collaborated on research across the globe. My network is expansive, and I have accessed resources, intellectual support, and mentorship which has helped me grow professionally. I bring with me this international experience into my work, and this benefits the students and communities I support. When work is challenging, I have empathetic colleagues who hold the space for me and offer encouragement when I need it most.
I have been granted opportunities to teach social work and sociology units as well as to co-facilitate CPD units. I am still mastering teaching skills whilst I support colleagues in lesson planning, delivering virtual and in-person teaching and assessments. I enjoy doing things out of my comfort zone and this aspect of my academic training was at first intimidating but now pleasant. I have settled into my teaching duties well and I like infusing the creative as well as pragmatic aspects of my research into the lectures to enhance student learning experience from different fields of practice.
I was allocated a fellow post doc to be my uni buddy, who helped me settle into my role and the practicalities of living in Bournemouth and we became friends, which alleviated some loneliness away from home. I was assigned mentors to help direct my career progression. From the mentorship I managed to submit a successful portfolio of evidence for my associate fellow Advance HE. I also got mentorship in submitting research bids and got my first grant as a Principal Investigator. These achievements are an indicator of the time and effort invested into professional development for post-docs at BU.
The difficult part of being a post-doc
The writing process for peer reviewed publication can be lonely and arduous. However, BU has put in place support for post-docs to attend writing retreats, meet fellow post-docs, exchange ideas and make friendships. This alleviates loneliness and the retreats are an opportunity to learn from established academics. I have joined research centres such as the Centre for Seldom Heard Voices and the Women’s Academic Network, where I present my work and get feedback, which has also positively impacted my academic publishing.
If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.
This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU.
Today’s post is by Dr Julie Kirkby and Professor Marcin Budka about the work of Postdoctoral Researcher in Machine Learning for the Modelling of Eye Movements Thomas Mercier…
Enabling Insights into Reading Behaviour and related Pathologies through Eye-Tracking Technology and Machine Learning
In the past decades, eye-tracking technology has emerged as an invaluable tool for uncovering the cognitive processes involved in reading by offering unique insights into individuals’ reading patterns. This technique involves measuring an individual’s gaze position on a computer screen over time with high accuracy to reveal critical information about where and how long their eyes are fixating while navigating text. This provides essential clues about mental processes at play during the act of reading.
Eye-Tracking Technology in Reading Research:
The data collected from eye-tracking technology has proven valuable not only for studying general reading behaviour but also specific disorders such as dyslexia. By examining an individual’s eye movements during a reading task, researchers can better understand the cognitive mechanisms engaged in comprehending written material and potentially improve interventions for those who struggle with reading due to neurological differences or other factors. Additionally, this technology has been used to gain insight into accessibility-related issues of visual stimuli such as web pages.
Challenges in Eye-Tracking Data Analysis: Line Assignment and Measurement Noise
While technological advancements have enabled the recording of gaze points during reading with high accuracy, raw eye-tracking data still requires post-processing to identify which gaze positions are part of fixations (periods of relative positional stability) and which are part of saccades (rapid ballistic eye-movements). Furthermore, for most data analysis in reading research these fixations need to be assigned to an area of interest in the reading stimulus, such as a character or word, depending on the experiment design.
This line assignment can become significantly more difficult when dealing with multi-line passages of text, usually requiring laborious manual correction. The assignment process is made non-trivial by noise present in the tracking data due to factors such as loss of calibration during an experiment, subtle head movements or pupil dilation. Such measurement noise may manifest as dynamically changing vertical drift of recorded gaze positions, causing them to appear closer to lines above or below the actual line being read.
Attempts have been made to create algorithms that automate the line assignment process to enable researchers to carry out larger studies involving multi-line reading experiments that more closely resemble reading as it would happen outside the lab. However, these techniques often lack sufficient accuracy and reliability, leading to manual correction remaining the gold standard for addressing noise in eye-tracking fixation data.
Julie Kirkby (Department of Psychology) and Marcin Budka (Department of Computing and Informatics) are working with post-doctoral researcher Thomas Mercier, to tackle this noise correction/lines assignment problem using modern machine learning algorithms. This works by utilising deep neural networks that work directly on sequences of fixations and assign each of them to their most appropriate line of text.
Thanks to the rich and diverse datasets from previous studies carried out at BU, Thomas was able to train such a model to outperform all previously published methods of automatic line assignment. This new model is highly consistent across all datasets, unlike previous models, which makes our model a robust, default choice that will automate this task and enable researchers across psychology and the cognitive sciences to carry out and analyse eye-tracking studies with larger amounts of text without being limited by the bottleneck of manual line assignments or the need to test multiple models.
As a result, Thomas’s work represents an important step forward in advancing our understanding of cognitive processes through improved methodologies for analysing large volumes of text-based eye-tracking data (paper currently under review in the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, a high impact journal).
Thomas will make the current code public and follow up with a publication focusing on usability of the program for non-machine learning researchers. Thomas is currently extending this model, to include diagnosing specific disorders such as dyslexia and schizophrenia.
If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.
This Monday, 11th of September, BU is running a Research and Knowledge Exchange Explorer Event at the Russell-Cotes Gallery and Museum as part of a developing partnership between the two institutions.
The Explorer Event is an opportunity to discuss and develop possibilities for collaborative research and knowledge exchange connected to the Russell-Cotes’ world-class anthropological, archaeological and art collections from across the globe, as well as:
– exploring possibilities for cultural heritage management;
– local seaside tourism;
– Digital and virtual heritage;
– diving into the archives (inc. theatre, local history and beachfront tourism history of Bournemouth);
– wellbeing connections to arts and heritage,
– investigating heritage tourism potential.
With the guidance of Russell-Cotes staff you will have the opportunity to see some of the collections on display, including a number of collections from across Asia, as well as hidden in the stores, in more detail and discuss with Russell-Cotes experts. It’s also an opportunity to make connections with other BU academics to develop potential cross-disciplinary projects over coffee and cakes.
The History of the Russell-Cotes Collection
I caught up recently with Sarah Newman, the Manager, to find out a little more about this hidden gem on the cliffs of Bournemouth Beach:
Coastal view from the balcony at the Russell-Cotes
‘It’s an is a very special place because it’s a very personal collection, so you get from the sublime to the ridiculous’ said Sarah. ‘It captures a moment in time, with the collection exhibited in the context for which it was bought and collected for, which is very unlike other museums. There are some small houses where historic collections survive, but here it is a much larger collection, drawn from around the world. Where else do you walk out of a Heavily Victorian grand house out on to the spectacular beach-cliffs with a view out to sea! Until you experience it you can’t understand it, the atmosphere here is so special, the house itself is also a precious ‘object’, and the eclectic nature of our collections really makes it sparkle’.
The collection was created, and then gifted to Bournemouth, by a couple who travelled the world as tourists and this makes it entirely unique. Sarah told me more about how the collection came together: ‘Merton Russell Cotes was a self-made man, yes he was rich, but he was just an average person who became an entrepreneur, someone from relatively humble origins in Victorian society; but the society allowed people to develop socially through love and interest, which is what he and his wife Annie did.’
The Drawing-Room Collection
But there is another very interesting aspect to the Russell-Cotes that is different from other collections, as Sarah explained: ‘In many collections nowadays people are addressing empire in relation to Victorian world travels, as a museum we are very transparent about how things were paid for, and how they were collected by Merton and his wife as tourists. There are few contested pieces here, and there is certainly some ‘cultural bling’ items created for the ‘tourist market’, as well as some truly special pieces, including objects in our Japanese collection. At the time the couple were visiting Japan it was the end of the ‘isolation’ period and people wanted to get rid of the old and were happy to give things away. There are also pieces that the Russell-Cotes’ were given on their travels – there are so many different stories and some real hidden treasures. You can’t pigeon-hole the collection…there are no grand colonial narratives here.’
Monks – One of the photographs from the extensive photographic archive
‘But what you do have is the story of Merton and Annie as a couple, and how they created their dream home. How inspiring is that – what would you do? It’s family story and of how they expressed their philanthropy and love of global cultures. But it’s also a story about how Bournemouth was developed as a tourist resort, with the narratives of the people who live here and the people who visited here. You can see that Merton was right on that and made a virtue out of necessity with the art that he was buying and selling he was definitely wheeling and dealing. He thought about things in terms of ‘Yes this is a wonderful piece of art I can let you buy, and of by the way it comes from Bournemouth and I happen to have a hotel there did you know?
‘Venus Verticordia’, the iconic Pre-Raphaelite work by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 -1882)
He was opening Bournemouth up to the world at a time when people wouldn’t necessarily have had access to information about it. But is was a kind of enlightened view, yes he was doing things for himself as a businessman, but there was also the philanthropy aspect, where he wanted to share what his family loved and had. So we also have wonderful little collections like theatre history, costumes, musical instruments, which are completely untapped. There is so much that would benefit from further examination.’
Contact:
With the BU Partnership we are are just at the start, and the Explorer Event is a great way to open up opportunities and inspire academics. It’s all about the conversations now, so join us at the Event on Monday – go to the Eventbrite link at the top of the blog to book your place!
Any queries, please contact Wendelin Morrison, Knowledge Exchange Manager: wsmorrison@bournemouth.ac.uk
Rosie Harper and Malika Felton write for The Conversation about the physical changes that take place during pregnancy and childbirth and share advice on recovery.
After all the physical changes during pregnancy and following childbirth, many women are left wondering how to get active again and where to begin. Of course, activity after childbirth is an individual journey with multiple things to consider – and one of the first considerations may not be what you expect: your pelvic floor.
Your pelvic floor muscles sit at the base of the pelvis. The muscles form a hammock-like structure that supports the bladder, womb and bottom. As many as one in three women experience unwanted bladder leaks or vaginal prolapse in their lifetime and many of these symptoms can start during pregnancy or following childbirth. This is because this small muscle group takes the weight of the baby for nine months and may be stretched during vaginal delivery.
Your pelvic floor supports the bladder and vaginal tissues, helping bladder and bowel control and vaginal position. Recovery of these muscles prevents unwanted leaks, improves internal comfort and allows women to confidently increase activity.
This article is part of Women’s Health Matters, a series about the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world. From menopause to miscarriage, pleasure to pain the articles in this series will delve into the full spectrum of women’s health issues to provide valuable information, insights and resources for women of all ages.
So focusing on your pelvic floor around pregnancy and postnatally can help you to recover more easily after childbirth and will allow you to get ready to be more active when you feel up to it.
If you’ve just given birth (or are about to) and you’re wondering where to start, here’s what you need to know:
1. Keep your poo soft
Straining on the toilet can overstretch the pelvic floor muscles which makes it harder for them to work properly. To avoid this you can keep your poo soft by drinking lots of water and increasing the fibre in your diet, such as high-fibre cereals, brown pasta and nuts.
Also, consider your position on the toilet. The use of a stool underneath your feet can make it easier to poo without straining as it helps to straighten the end of the bowel.
2. Get your pelvic floor moving
Squeezing and relaxing the pelvic floor muscles daily can improve blood flow to the area and speed up recovery following childbirth. This is because pelvic floor activity can improve the strength and function of the muscles to help bladder control and vaginal support.
The evidence shows that it usually takes a good three months of regular pelvic floor use to change symptoms – and every squeeze can make a difference. After a vaginal delivery and even after a c-section, the recovery time for the pelvic floor continues for up to one year.
One of the biggest problems with pelvic floor training is that women aren’t sure they are doing the exercises correctly and regularly forget to do the exercises.
To engage your pelvic floor muscles imagine you are holding in wind and trying to close the vaginal opening at the same time. You may feel a lifting and tightening inside of you. Try to breathe normally and relax other muscles like your tummy and buttocks.
To check you are doing it correctly, you can use a mirror to look at the area between your front and back passage. This area (the perineum) will move slightly up and inwards with a correct contraction. After each contraction, let your pelvic floor muscles fully relax. Pelvic health physiotherapists recommend squeezing your pelvic floor for ten seconds before relaxing for ten repetitions, followed by ten short squeezes. And to do this three times a day.
3. Let things settle and go gently
The pelvis and abdominal muscles also need time to recover from carrying a baby. Many women have a normal stretch and separation of their tummy muscles, which in a lot of cases improves around eight weeks after delivery, for others it can take six months. The tummy helps to support the pelvis so rushing back to activity too quickly can put unnecessary strain on these areas.
Opt instead for a gentle increase in activity to help the muscles and joints settle such as walking, yoga or pilates rather than starting higher impact activity, like running, too early.
4. Check your mental health
The pressures on women postnatally can feel overwhelming and combined with sleep deprivation things can take a toll mentally. The National Perinatal Mental Health Project Report focuses on improving mental health support for women after they have given birth by providing more support services. These services can be accessed by speaking to your GP, midwife, health visitor or pelvic health physiotherapist.
Although a good level of activity can improve mental health, over-training can have a negative effect on the body, so take it steady and keep checking in with yourself to make sure you’re functioning at a pace that feels comfortable and that you’re not overdoing it. Listen to your body and avoid comparison as everybody and every pregnancy is different.
Above all else, remember to be kind to yourself, your body has just gone through a massive change. Looking after your mental health and concentrating on your pelvic floor are good starting points. Getting more active with the muscles around your pelvis, including your tummy, can all help during the natural recovery time frame. But listen to your body and take things at your own pace.
We want to draw your attention to a seminar organized by the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research Centre on this Friday, the 8th of September, from 14:00 h to 15:00 h at the Share Lecture Theatre (Fusion Building). There will be a networking event after the talk with coffee and biscuits.
Our guest speaker isDr. Jie Sui (University of Aberdeen), invited by Dr. Ellen Seiss. Prof Dr Sui is renowned for her studies investigating the unique self, self-representation, and social interactions in VR. Her research combines multiple neural recording modalities, such as EEG and fMRI, with computational modelling.
The title of this exciting talk is: “Understanding the Self: Prospects for Translation”. Please find the abstract below.
We warmly invite you to attend this seminar.
Kind regards,
Ellen and Emili, on behalf of all of us.
Abstract:
“An understanding of the self helps explain not only human thoughts, feelings, and attitudes but also many aspects of everyday behaviours. This talk focuses on a particular perspective on self-processes. This perspective highlights the dynamics of the self that best connects with the development of the self over time and its realist orientation. We are using psychological experiments and data mining to comprehend the stability and flexibility of the self in different populations.
In this talk, I integrate experimental psychology, associative learning theory, computational neuroscience, and machine learning approaches to demonstrate why and how self-association affects cognition and how it is modulated by various social experiences and situational factors.”
We want to draw your attention to a seminar organized by the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research Centre on Friday, the 8th of September, from 14:00 h to 15:00 h at the Share Lecture Theatre (Fusion Building). There will be a networking event after the talk with coffee and biscuits.
Our guest speaker isDr. Jie Sui (University of Aberdeen), invited by Dr. Ellen Seiss. Prof Dr Sui is renowned for her studies investigating the unique self, self-representation, and social interactions in VR. Her research combines multiple neural recording modalities, such as EEG and fMRI, with computational modelling.
The title of this exciting talk is: “Understanding the Self: Prospects for Translation”. Please find the abstract below.
We warmly invite you to attend this seminar.
Kind regards,
Ellen and Emili, on behalf of all of us.
Abstract:
“An understanding of the self helps explain not only human thoughts, feelings, and attitudes but also many aspects of everyday behaviours. This talk focuses on a particular perspective on self-processes. This perspective highlights the dynamics of the self that best connects with the development of the self over time and its realist orientation. We are using psychological experiments and data mining to comprehend the stability and flexibility of the self in different populations.
In this talk, I integrate experimental psychology, associative learning theory, computational neuroscience, and machine learning approaches to demonstrate why and how self-association affects cognition and how it is modulated by various social experiences and situational factors.”
England goalkeeper Mary Earps was named player of the match in England’s victory over Nigeria in the Fifa Women’s World Cup. She has played a key role in England’s recent successes, not just at the World Cup but in previous tournaments. Her performances have made her a hero to her fans.
But Earps’ fans are unable to emulate her by wearing a replica of her goalkeeper shirt: it is not being put up for sale by team kit manufacturer Nike. Earps has said that her goalkeeping shirt not being available to buy is “hurtful”, and a petition by fans calling for the shirt to be produced has reached over 35,000 signatures.
We are currently researching the availability of kits for women’s football fans, together with colleague Jess Richards. The merchandise and clothing available to female fans and male fans of women’s teams is often limited, undesirable or just not available.
Or women may feel obliged to buy a shirt that doesn’t fit them if women’s cuts (shirts made to fit the shape of a female torso) of men’s team shirts are unavailable.
Here, we’ve looked at the kits women can buy on the official online stores for six teams to explore some of these issues.
World Cup clothing
The official online store for England football kits currently highlights the women’s home kit on their home page. Fans can buy a men’s cut – a shirt fitted to the shape of a male torso – of the Lionesses’ shirt, including personalised versions with player names on.
But female fans have fewer items available specifically for them in the store. There are no women’s fit versions of the men’s national team jersey.
The same is true for France – men can buy a men’s fit of the women’s team kit, but there is no women’s fit of the men’s team jersey currently available.
In their official online shop the Republic of Ireland offer women the women’s national team jersey in two different fits. They do also have the women’s national team goalkeeper kit for sale. However, the men’s team shirts are available in both long and short sleeved versions, but the women’s team shirts only come with short sleeves.
The online store for Canada Soccer also features the women’s kit prominently, but the high-end “authentic jersey” is only available for the men’s team, and only in men’s sizes. A women’s fit of the men’s jersey is not available at all.
US soccer fans hoping to emulate women’s team goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher are currently only able to buy outfield shirts with her name on it on the official kit website. The only goalkeeper jersey on offer is for the men’s national team and it is only available in a men’s fit. The store has many more items for men than for women, even for products replicating the women’s national team kit.
In 2020 in Australia the away version of the Matildas’ kit, produced by Nike, was not initially available in a women’s cut. Football Australia now has equal availability in terms of the replica jerseys and there are more items for women than for men. But the replica shirts that are currently available for the men’s team are only offered in men’s sizes.
Buying merchandise and especially replica shirts is important to fans. It is a way to show loyalty to a team and helps to develop a sense of identity.
The fan clothing worn by women can affect whether they feel they are considered as “authentic” fans. Sporting culture continues to be dominated by men.
Subtle differences in how women’s sport is treated, such as those we have found here, show that women are still disadvantaged. It is important that fans continue to push for equal opportunities on and off the pitch.
The number of people using food banks in the UK has increased from 26,000 in 2008-09 to more than 100 times that in 2023. Nearly one in five British households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in September 2022.
In the financial year to April 2023, Trussell Trust, the largest (but not the only) network of food banks in the UK, distributed emergency food parcels to nearly three million people.
Food banks provide free, pre-prepared parcels of food to those most in need. They have provided a great deal of support for low-income families, especially during the cost of living crisis.
However, they are not perfect. Food banks offer people little choice, are dependent on unreliable supply chains. Research has also shown that people who use food banks often experience shame and stigma when doing so.
My research, with colleague Heather Hartwell at Bournemouth University, has found a viable alternative. Community markets selling food and household items at subsidised rates to all could be a sustainable solution to the problems with existing food support programmes.
Food banks rely heavily on donations. But rising food prices means even would-be donors are struggling to buy that extra can of beans and other items. Beneficiaries of food banks also told us that parcels were mostly made up of dried, tinned and processed foods.
While it is important that parcels have a long shelf life, people experiencing food poverty want a choice of fresh and frozen food items, including meat. The constraints in the range and quality of food available are also associated with health problems such as diabetes, asthma and obesity.
Food banks also do not empower people who use them to become self-sufficient. Rather, they often result in long-term reliance on food aid. Hence, food banks offer temporary relief from hunger without addressing the bigger issues that lead to food insecurity.
Community markets
Community markets operate differently to food banks. They are open to everyone in the local community, regardless of income level, and provide a range of food choices along with other items such as school uniforms and toiletries.
We interviewed 38 people who regularly used or were involved in the operation of these programmes in the UK. Through these discussions, we assessed how well community markets address the challenges of food security, and found that they are a possible solution to the limitations of food banks and parcel distribution.
Community markets do not solely rely on donations from the public or businesses. They pay a subscription to charity networks such as FareShare, which provide the market with items in bulk, which are sold to the community at a subsidised rate. All revenue from sales is reinvested to pay for future bulk purchases.
People with low incomes who shop at community markets told us they enjoyed having food at affordable food prices and felt a stronger sense of autonomy, and being part of the community. They did not feel their reliance on food support was a barrier to being part of society. As one person said:
I very much prefer being able to choose my food instead of being given parcels. … It just feels dignified to be able to pay for goods, even if it is at subsidised rates, and then being able to choose what I want based on what I would like to eat.
These markets can be used by people from across the community, including those on a higher income. People who were more well-off told us they wanted to shop at the markets because they felt they were giving back, spending their money to be reinvested in the programme:
I thought that people who would come to the market … would be very needy, not only financially but mentally as well but it isn’t like that … I like shopping here because the money I pay is invested back into the community.
Additionally, community markets serve as a hub, offering organised group activities and services for people, such as cooking and gardening classes, yoga and sewing. Through these activities, the community markets are tackling loneliness and other health issues – not just hunger.
Community markets are economically self-sufficient. They use revenue generated from selling products at subsidised rates to subscribe to charitable food surplus redistribution organisations. This financial independence sets them apart from food banks, which often rely on grants. They can also be environmentally sustainable, actively reducing food waste and their carbon footprint by redistributing surplus food to local emergency services and farms.
As more people rely on food aid, it’s important that local councils and national governments support alternatives to food banks. For the family struggling to fill the fridge or the student coping with higher rent, our findings show community markets could be of significant help, while allowing people to maintain their dignity and be part of their community.
Against the backdrop of the Women’s World Cup, the Sport & Physical Activity Centre (SPARC) hosted the Women’s World Cup (WWC) Forum on July 17th.
Featuring presentations from Dr Beth Fielding-Lloyd (Sheffield Hallam University), Anika Leslie-Walker (Nottingham Trent University) and Dr Rafaelle Nicholson (Faculty of Media & Communication, BU), the forum set out to explore the contemporary nature of women’s football and how academic work aligns to the apparent pace of growth. Attendees were invited back the following day and spent a productive day unpacking issues raised at the Forum and explored potential areas for further academic exploration.
One week prior to the event, former England International Karen Carney, authored an Independent Report for DCMS, titled Raising the Bar: Re-Framing the Opportunity in Women’s Football. The report offers a comprehensive review of the growth opportunities for the game at professional and grassroots level, but also highlights the significant challenges facing the game. The report, and indeed the SPARC Forum, invited us to look behind the mask of the landmark event and how narratives of ‘progress’ at such landmark events (attendances, media interest, coverage, taglines: the WWC for example is branded ‘Beyond Greatness’) can present a false picture of progress, highlight myths of women’s empowerment and indeed mask new/existing expressions of power.
In particular, discussion at the Forum focussed on developing a sustainable and inclusive fan base for the game (beyond landmark fixtures, average Women’s Super League (WSL) attendance stands at 2,800), funding and diversity issues within the talent pathway, safe fan experience/spaces (marked by religion, gender and race), gender pay disparities, the lessons of prior mergers and governance structures, and broadcasting rights (the UK’s domestic broadcasters offered just 8% of that which they paid for the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar) and media representations (that oft tended to reinforce, as opposed to challenge, dominant gender power relations). Indeed, and even as the Forum was in full-swing, the Australian team (The Matildas) broadcast a video highlighting pay disparities, the England team expressed their disappointment over a lack of agreement over their bonuses, figures from the Carney report suggested that 71% of attendees at WSL games reported their experience was ‘short of expectation’, and highlighted that there exists a significant lack of understanding of minority ethnic fans.
As the women’s game grows and transitions from a Football Association-owned entity to a new independently owned management structure (currently named New Co.) this is indeed an exciting time for women’s football. However, the Forum & workshop reinforced the need to peek behind the shiny spectacle of the World Cup and address some of the challenges that continue to be faced in the development of a sustainable, equitable and inclusive ‘product’. After two long, yet productive, days participants left with a compelling commitment to engage with key stakeholders and undertake a programme of work that aims to address inequalities in the game and influence policy, practice and strategy.
ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform launched by research company Open AI, can write an essay in response to a short prompt. It can perform mathematical equations – and show its working.
ChatGPT is a generative AI system: an algorithm that can generate new content from existing bodies of documents, images or audio when prompted with a description or question. It’s unsurprising concerns have emerged that young people are using ChatGPT and similar technology as a shortcut when doing their homework.
But banning students from using ChatGPT, or expecting teachers to scour homework for its use, would be shortsighted. Education has adapted to – and embraced – online technology for decades. The approach to generative AI should be no different.
The UK government has launched a consultation on the use of generative AI in education, following the publication of initial guidance on how schools might make best use of this technology.
In general, the advice is progressive and acknowledged the potential benefits of using these tools. It suggests that AI tools may have value in reducing teacher workload when producing teaching resources, marking, and in administrative tasks. But the guidance also states:
Schools and colleges may wish to review homework policies, to consider the approach to homework and other forms of unsupervised study as necessary to account for the availability of generative AI.
While little practical advice is offered on how to do this, the suggestion is that schools and colleges should consider the potential for cheating when students are using these tools.
Nothing new
Past research on student cheating suggested that students’ techniques were sophisticated and that they felt remorseful only if caught. They cheated because it was easy, especially with new online technologies.
But this research wasn’t investigating students’ use of Chat GPT or any kind of generative AI. It was conducted over 20 years ago, part of a body of literature that emerged at the turn of the century around the potential harm newly emerging internet search engines could do to student writing, homework and assessment.
We can look at past research to track the entry of new technologies into the classroom – and to infer the varying concerns about their use. In the 1990s, research explored the impact word processors might have on child literacy. It found that students writing on computers were more collaborative and focused on the task. In the 1970s, there were questions on the effect electronic calculators might have on children’s maths abilities.
In 2023, it would seem ludicrous to state that a child could not use a calculator, word processor or search engine in a homework task or piece of coursework. But the suspicion of new technology remains. It clouds the reality that emerging digital tools can be effective in supporting learning and developing crucial critical thinking and life skills.
Get on board
Punitive approaches and threats of detection make the use of such tools covert. A far more progressive position would be for teachers to embrace these technologies, learn how they work, and make this part of teaching on digital literacy, misinformation and critical thinking. This, in my experience, is what young people want from education on digital technology.
Children should learn the difference between acknowledging the use of these tools and claiming the work as their own. They should also learn whether – or not – to trust the information provided to them on the internet.
The educational charity SWGfL, of which I am a trustee, has recently launched an AI hub which provides further guidance on how to use these new tools in school settings. The charity also runs Project Evolve, a toolkit containing a large number of teaching resources around managing online information, which will help in these classroom discussions.
I expect to see generative AI tools being merged, eventually, into mainstream learning. Saying “do not use search engines” for an assignment is now ridiculous. The same might be said in the future about prohibitions on using generative AI.
Perhaps the homework that teachers set will be different. But as with search engines, word processors and calculators, schools are not going to be able to ignore their rapid advance. It is far better to embrace and adapt to change, rather than resisting (and failing to stop) it.
The Knowledge Exchange Concordat (KEC) Advisory and Operational group has produced a repository of resources to support higher education providers improve their knowledge exchange (KE) practices.
The repository has been created in partnership with the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) and features good and innovative practice in knowledge exchange across eight different KE principles, including a set of toolkits and guides available for use by HE institutions.
BU’s IP Policy, Research Intellectual Property Strategy and Evaluation Committee (RIPSEC), and the IP commercialisation management framework are among the case studies being shared. Our approach was chosen specifically as an example of good practice and innovation in the sector.
The repository, which includes a set of knowledge exchange toolkits and guides available for use by higher education institutions, will be launched at the KEC Repository of Good Practice Launch event tomorrow (20th July 2023).
The event will be hosted on Zoom between 10am-11:15am. Lesley Hutchins, Research Commercialisation Manager at BU, will be a guest speaker at the event. You can register for the event on the Knowledge Exchange Concordat website.
When Indonesian designer Vivi Zubedi made her debut on the international stage during the New York Fashion Week in 2018, critics gushed at the elevated abayas her models sported. Her high fashion takes on the traditional Muslim full-length garment married velvet and pearls with leather jackets, baseball caps and batik prints.
Modest fashion encompasses clothing that covers the body in a conservative manner, often in adherence to religious and cultural beliefs and identities. Though most often referred to in a Muslim context, it is not actually limited to one particular region or religion. Instead it is a concept that has been embraced by people of all kinds of backgrounds across the world.
The research my colleagues and I have conducted looks at female Muslim identities and how they are considered – or not – within the UK fashion industry. Despite the fact that the worldwide Muslim fashion market is projected to be worth $311 billion (£251 billion) by 2024, we have found that many women in the UK still have very little choice within their price bracket.
Not enough choice
Between 2017 and 2021, we conducted interviews with 23 Muslim women in the UK, from seven different ethnicities or cultural heritages: Bangladeshi, British, Indian, Iranian, Nigerian, Turkish and Tunisian. We wanted to understand how, as Muslims living in a non-Muslim majority country, their religious identity influenced their fashion consumption.
To our minds, the UK represented an ideal setting for this kind of study, because it has a strong retail sector and liberal values which encourage individual choice. It is also widely considered to be diverse and multicultural.
And yet, the women we spoke to still struggle to find clothing options they can afford, that they feel are appropriate and support them in adhering to their beliefs. As one interviewee, Izma, put it:
I want to wear something within my modest limits but it is so hard to find such clothes. I wish they start making fashionable clothes which are fully covered. Sometimes I see these modest lines, but these are out of my reach.
For these women, being fashionable is important and so is their Muslim identity. But they are still stuck with having to choose between the two.
You see, I don’t want to wear anything revealing because I am Muslim, but also because I come from a conservative family and certain background and ‘modern’ clothes don’t go well with my family image.
Expressing identity
Many non-Muslim women embrace some degree of modesty in their clothing, in a bid to express personal style while maintaining a more conservative appearance. As the writer Sarah Al-Zaher has said:
Modest fashion is for people who just choose to show less. It is also for people who just prefer the ‘relaxed’ or the ‘oversized look’.
In the Muslim world, modest fashion plays a central role in projecting your religious identity. Al-Zaher puts it plainly:
It is not just a short-lived fad; it is a need because it is something that is embedded in our mindset and beliefs that will remain with us for life.
Back in 2018, when London followed New York in showcasing modest runway options, pundits assumed the buzz would push modest fashion into the mainstream and boost the market beyond high-end fashion. However, it still only receives temporary attention from designers and retailers alike.
By 2030, the Muslim population will represent over 25% of the global population. It is growing at twice the rate of the non-Muslim population.
This means that fashion brands have a great opportunity to bridge the gap between fashion and modesty, and properly cater to what is clearly a growing market demographic. However, the gap persists. In 2021, journalist Yasmin Khatun Dewan highlighted the example of Halima Aden, the “trailblazing hijab-wearing Muslim model” who had been hailed in 2017 as an “an icon of inclusivity” only to quit the fashion industry altogether four years later because, as she put it, she had compromised who she was in order to fit in.
Muslim women – and those for whom modesty is a guiding principle in how they choose to dress themselves – shouldn’t have to compromise. They deserve as broad a range of fashion choices as any other. As Ana, another woman I interviewed in 2021, said:
Just because you are Muslim doesn’t mean you can’t have fun wearing what you want to wear. You can still wear really pretty dresses if it’s long, or long tunics or whatever, it can still be fun. It doesn’t have to be just black and drape.
Congratulations to Dr Heidi Singleton, who has received Sigma Europe’s Emerging Nurse Researcher 2023 Award.
Dr Heidi Singleton
The Sigma Emerging Nurse Researcher Award recognises early career nurse researchers whose work has significantly influenced the nursing profession. Dr Singleton won this award for her work combining evidence-based practice with innovative ideas to adapt to the changing nursing landscape.
During her PhD at BU, she researched how technology can improve student nurses’ understanding of complex concepts, such as diabetes. Her work focused on blending real-world practice methods with emerging technologies to develop nursing education in line with how the world is developing and changing.
Other research areas Dr Singleton has explored include how technology can be used therapeutically, for service improvement, mental health and anxiety – especially in children and young people. This includes the psychological impacts of eczema, innovation in nurse-led skin cancer clinics, improving early intervention services, and vaccination and hospital appointment anxiety.
Dr Singleton said: “I feel very honoured to win the Emerging Nurse Researcher Award for the Europe Region. As a new academic, I have looked up to seniors who have demonstrated excellence in their research and publications. It’s a privilege to share my research and that of my brilliant team with the world. Hopefully, this can be a good building block for my future research plans.”
What to make of Adam Smith? You might have thought we would have straightened this out, given that he only ever wrote two books and it’s been 300 years since he was born. But no. Everyone wants to claim the Scottish philosopher and economist as one of their own. With the exception of Jesus, it’s hard to think of anyone who attracts such radically different interpretations.
Part of the problem is that we actually know very little about the man. Smith oversaw the burning of all his unpublished writings as he lay on his death bed – a common practice at the time, but not much help in settling endless arguments.
What we know is that he was born in the town of Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland. His father was a judge who died just before he was born. Smith seems to have been a very scholarly child, rarely seen without a book about his person.
One early experience that seems to have affected him concerned the town market. Certain landowners were exempt from Kirkcaldy’s bridge tolls and market stall charges due to the town’s status as a royal burgh. This gave them a competitive advantage over their competitors, which did not sit well with the young Smith.
He left his mother at the age of 14 to study moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, before completing his postgraduate studies in metaphysics at Balliol College Oxford. Thereafter he went on to spend his life studying, teaching and writing in the fields of philosophy, theology, astronomy, ethics, jurisprudence and political economy. Most of his career was spent as an academic in Edinburgh and Glasgow, though there were also stints as a private tutor in France and London.
The Wealth of Nations
The two books that Smith published in his lifetime are The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and his more widely known, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, a rambling 700-page text published over two volumes, was 17 years in the making.
What it’s all about.
The dominant economic ideology of the time was known as mercantilism. It viewed economic value simply in terms of the amount of gold that a country had to buy the goods it needs. It gave little consideration to how goods were produced – either the physical inputs or the human motivation.
But for Smith, motivation was at the heart of economic behaviour. He saw it as an all-purpose lubricant that delivers mutual benefit for all:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Smith’s observations about how the division of labour can be organised to increase productivity remains one of his most enduring contributions to economics. Improving productivity is still seen as the holy grail for countries getting richer. Larry Fink, head of investment giant BlackRock, has only just been arguing that artificial intelligence could improve productivity, for instance.
The battleground
The Wealth of Nations is an eclectic text – even an “impenetrable” one, according to the director of the Adam Smith Institute. Smith argues that slavery and feudalism are bad and that economic growth and getting people out of poverty are good.
He thinks high wages and low profits are good. He also warns against things like cronyism, corporate corruption of politics, imperialism, inequality and the exploitation of workers. In observations about the British East India Company, which was the Amazon of its day and then some, Smith even warned about companies becoming too big to fail.
Those on the right of the debate often cite Smith’s “invisible hand” phrase from the Wealth of Nations in support of their worldview. Borrowed from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the phrase actually appears only once in the whole text. It is a metaphor for how a “free” market magically brings buyers and sellers together without any need for government involvement.
In more recent times, “invisible hand” has come to mean something slightly different. Chicago School free market advocates like Milton Friedman and George Stigler viewed it as a metaphor for prices, which they saw as signalling what producers wanted to produce and buyers wanted to buy. Any interference from government in terms of price controls or regulations would distort this mechanism and should therefore be avoided.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were disciples of this way of thinking. In a 1988 speech encouraging his people to be thankful for the prosperity that comes from free trade, President Reagan argued that the Wealth of Nations “exposed for all time the folly of protectionism”.
Yet those on the left also find plenty in Smith that resonates with them. They often cite his concern for the poor in the Theory of Moral Sentiments:
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
In 2013, President Barack Obama cited Smith in a speech to support raising the US minimum wage:
They who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.
States and abuses
So how to square this circle? The truth is that Smith’s writing has enough ideas and inconsistencies to allow for all sides to cherry pick references as required. But one argument I find compelling, which has been put forward by the economist Mariana Mazzucato, is that many of those who champion laissez-faire policies misinterpret Smith’s notion of a free market.
This is linked to the fact that Smith was writing at a time when the British East India Company was responsible for a staggering 50% of world trade. It operated under a royal charter conferring a monopoly of English trade in the whole of Asia and the Pacific. It even had its own private army.
Mughal Emperor Shah Alam conveying tax-collecting rights for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the British East India Company, Benjamin West 1765. Wikimeda, CC BY
Smith was presenting an alternative vision for the UK economy in which such state-licensed monopolies were replaced by firms competing against one another in a “free” market. Innovation and competition would provide employment, keep prices down and help reduce the appalling levels of urban poverty of the time. This was capitalism. And ultimately Smith was proved correct.
But Mazzucato argues that when Smith talked about the free market, he didn’t mean free from the state, so much as free from rent and free from extraction of value from the system. In today’s world, the equivalent example of such feudal extraction is arguably global tech firms like Amazon, Apple and Meta playing nations off against one another to minimise their regulations and tax liabilities.
This doesn’t sound like the sort of “free” market that Smith envisaged. He would probably be cheering on the EU’s anti-trust case against Google, for instance. Those who believe that Smith saw no role for the state in managing the economy ought to reflect on how spent his final years – working as a tax collector.
The UK’s higher education funding bodies have published details of proposed changes to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) for 2028.
They state that they are seeking to change the emphasis of the national assessment from the performance of individuals to the contributions of institutions and disciplines to a healthy and inclusive research environment.
Some of the proposed changes include:
Research outputs will contribute to 50 per cent of a Unit of Assessment (UoA), down from 60 per cent in REF 2021. This element has been renamed to ‘contribution to knowledge and understanding’ and, while assessment will continue to largely be based on assessment of submitted outputs, at least 10% of the score will be based on evidence of broader contributions to the advancement of the discipline.
‘People and Culture’ will replace the environment element of REF 2021 and will be assessed at both a disciplinary and institutional level. This element will make up 25 per cent of the overall score, up from 15 per cent in REF 2021, and will be expanded to include an assessment of research culture.
An ‘engagement and impact’ element, weighted at 25 per cent, will replace the impact element of REF 2021. Submissions will consist of both impact case studies and an accompanying statement to evidence engagement and activity beyond case studies.
The work of all researchers and research-enabling staff will be eligible for submission to REF 2028. Research volume will be determined from average staff volumes over multiple years and there will not be any minimum or maximum contributions of any individuals.
Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair at Research England, said:
“This is a once-in-a-generation moment for change as we shift national research assessment away from a focus on individuals to how institutions and disciplines contribute to healthy, dynamic and inclusive research environments, and as we shift from a focus on published research outputs towards a broader view of what constitutes research excellence and how it can be demonstrated.”
The sector will now have the opportunity to input into further development of REF 2028, with consultation running until October 2023.
The 2023 Research Conference took place on one of the hottest days of the year so far.
Dr Jan Peters MBE gives the keynote speech at the BU Research Conference 2023
The theme of this year’s conference was also a hot topic: failure, and how to deal with obstacles and setbacks throughout the research journey.
Opening the conference, Professor Einar Thorsen, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Media and Communication, set the tone for the event – speaking openly and honestly about times when his research hasn’t gone to plan.
Keynote speaker Dr Jan Peters MBE shared stories from her time working in both academia and industry and the lessons she’d learnt – from embracing your strengths to avoiding comparing yourself to others.
Professor Ann Hemingway and Professor Sam Goodman share their insights for overcoming academic rejection
In a joint keynote, Professor Ann Hemingway and Professor Sam Goodman, shared their advice and insights into experiencing and overcoming academic rejection. As well as presenting some choice comments they’d received from reviewers in the past, they also shared their tips for ‘failing better’, including the 3 Rs – resubmit, repurpose or restart.
Over lunch, attendees had the chance to decorate ‘failure cakes’ with the team from the Centre for Health, Science and Communication Research, icing cupcakes with positive messages for those who might have experienced failure.
Failure cake decorating as part of the BU Research Conference 2023
In the afternoon, workshops offered the opportunity to learn practical tips and strategies for dealing with difficulties. Topics covered included building resilience, articulating your strengths, repurposing grant applications and improving writing approaches.
The conference was closed by Robert Seaborne from Inside Academia, who spoke about the dichotomy between the core values of research (learning through failure to discover something new or unknown) and the success metrics which pervade academic culture.
Robert Seaborne closing the BU Research Conference
Discussing his own experience of burnout during his PhD and the scale of mental health issues seen within academia, Robert also shared the advice he’d give to his younger self – which include the need to rest and recover and maintain the activities outside of academia that help you stay happy and healthy.
The Research Conference is an annual event organised by the Research Excellence Team in RDS to bring BU’s academic and research community together to learn, share, network and discuss key topics from the world of research.
A big thank you to everyone who supported or attended this year’s conference. If you have any feedback or suggestions of topics for future years, please get in touch at research@bournemouth.ac.uk
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