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Smart 2015/2016 – R&D funding available

Innovate 2011v4A grant scheme which offers funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in R&D projects in the strategically important areas of science, engineering and technology.

The scheme supports SMEs carrying out R&D which offers potentially significant rewards and that could stimulate UK economic growth.

Three types of grant are available:
  • Proof of market
  • Proof of concept
  • Development of prototype.
Any UK SME undertaking research and development may apply; applications are accepted on a rolling basis for assessment by independent experts.
This call is currently open closing on 21 January 2016.

Contact a member of the funding development team if you have any questions .

 

Game Changing Technologies for the Energy Sector – Information Webinar

 

energy managementThe Knowledge Transfer Network is organising a webinar to promote a new Innovate UK competition that will open in 2016.

Innovate UK is allocating up to £1.5m for their “Energy Game Changer” competition. The funding will be allocated to feasibility studies led by SMEs who can provide disruptive solutions to long established challenges which currently cost the energy sector hundreds of millions of pounds per year.

Amongst the high level challenges where radical multi-disciplinary solutions are sought are:

  • improving condition monitoring, inspection, handling, characterisation and repair of energy assets
  • minimising the risk and cost of operating in remote and hazardous environments
  • generating and handling ‘big data’ to optimise performance, efficiency, safety and security
  • getting individuals and communities excited and engaged in energy reducing the consumers energy bills

To encourage radical change and new ideas, the competition is specifically looking for solutions from innovative SMEs whose main business is divorced from the energy sector and can look at the challenges from new perspectives. Such organisations may be engaged in activities such as; ICT, digital, design, electronics, sensors, modelling, virtual reality, gaming, robotics, UAVs, forensics, manufacturing, inspection and advanced materials.

We also welcome technology transfer ideas from other sectors such as; defence, automotive, medical, space and creative industries.

Innovate UK is looking to fund around 20 feasibility studies of between £50-100k in size and 6-12 month duration.

The information webinar will give you the opportunity to:

  • understand the background to the competition
  • hear about the specific challenges and competition scope in more detail
  • hear about the competitions eligibility criteria, application process, funding and timescales
  • ask online questions
  • network online
  • Further physical events are scheduled for 2016.

For more information and to register click here.

Report on the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) Age 17 Survey: Consultative Conference

I recently attended the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS7) Age 17 Survey: Consultative one day conference held at UCL’s Institute of Education in London. Cohort studies are extremely valuable because data is collected over time working with the same sample of people. Longitudinal studies permit to describe the natural history of the same population and can identify risk factors for example, for optimal health, educational attainment chances and/or employment opportunities. Professor Emla Fitzsimons is the Principal Investigator of MCS,m strategically invited leaders of the ‘Activities and Daily Life’, ‘Cognitive Development’, and the ‘Socio-Emotional Development’ to harness conference delegates’ view on what are the important and key issues that society should know when examining 17 year old adolescents’ lives. The leaders provided an overview of their current strategies for capturing participants’ unique style of life. Then through a series of workshops the pros and cons of these were discussed and summarised. I don’t envy their jobs! To study the individual characteristics and the associated environmental factors in such a large sample is a huge undertaking. The attendees were from very varied inter- and multi-disciplinary backgrounds working at a wide range of organisations, including government agencies. The common objective was to create a dataset that can inform many governmental policies on a variety of topics. The process of decision making over every aspects of the 7th sweep of the MCS is extremely complex. The key aspect of longitudinal studies is comparability. Although, each sweep is unique because of the cohort is ageing, there has to be a trend of using the same methodology overtime. Studies like the MCS are facing constant funding crises because they are very expensive to run. There is an ongoing revision of time taken to collect data, finding proxy to gold standard measures and considering cutting expensive data collection methods like, FMRI scans, use of accelerometers to assess physical activity patterns and conducting physical tests. Despite all of these difficulties, data from such studies are invaluable. For example, in the 7th sweep they want to omit interviewing parents about their child’s mental health. I argued to include this data at this sweep, as most adolescents in the study are still living at home and others (like family members) are the ones most likely to identify early signs of mental health problems. Early detection is vital, especially when 1 in 10 adolescents known to develop at least one serious depressive episode in the UK by the time they are 18. Check out the MCS website if you are interested. You can also access all speakers’ slides by following the link (http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/Conference.aspx?itemid=4285&itemTitle=MCS+Consultative+Conference&sitesectionid=28&sitesectiontitle=Events). Data from the previous 6 sweeps are available for researchers to interrogate.

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

AHRC

Arts and Humanities Research Council and BBC Radio 3 invite applications for the New Generation Thinkers of 2016 scheme. The scheme aims to support early career researchers to communicate their research findings to those outside the academic community through BBC broadcasting. The scheme allows reseracers an opportunity to develop their own programme for BBC Radio 3 and a chance to regularly appear on air. Applications are welcomed in all areas of arts and humanities and those in social sciences and medical science whose work intersects with arts and humanities.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 07/01/16.

British Academy

British Academy invites applications for its International Partnership and Mobility Scheme, which aims to support the development of partnerships between the UK and other areas of the world where research excellence could be strengthened by new, innovative initiatives and links. Any branch of the humanities or social sciences is eligible and the intended focus is on collaborative research of a mutual interest, rather than purely establishing networks.

Maximum award: £30,000. Closing date: 10/02/16.

Economic and Social Research Council

Economic and Social Research Council invites proposals for its Secondary Data Alaysis Initiative (SDAI), which aims to deliver high quality, high impact research through the deeper exploitation of major data resources created by ESRC and other agencies. Funding is available for up to 18 months. Proposals should address the following core principles: maximising the use of key ESRC-funded data resources; developing the capacity of early career researchers to undertake research using complex data resource; working collaboratively with non-academic stakeholders and ensuring that the accumulated learning and ongoing research impacts from previous phases and projects is captured.

Maximum award: £200,000. Closing date: No deadline.

Medical Research Council

Medical Research Council in partnership with the Department of Health’s National Institute for Health Research invites proposals for the Methodology Research programme. Proposals may address: Research methods  in disciplines underpinning health research including biomedical, behavioural and social science, experimental and stratified medicine, rendomised trials, cohorts and other research designs investigating health, healthcare, health services and health policy; Methods for effective regulation (including indices for decision making), approval, adaptation and reporting of new interventions (including behavioural); Research methods for valid measures of health, e.g. health outcomes, exposure and risk (including behaviour, cognition and emotion) and wellbeing.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 21/06/16.

Natural Environment Research Council

Natural Environment Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council invite applications for their Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in the area of aquaculture.  The award will invest in a suitably qualified academic to broker links between academics and business within the UK aquaculture community and provide expert input and advice to the UK aquaculture network.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 17/03/16.

Natural Environment Research Council’s British Antarctic Survey Institute invites applications for its Polar Ship Research Opportunities, which support scientists who have secured funding and require access to work onboard polar research ships. The marine facilities planning service allows scientists to apply for access to marine equipment and ship-time and there are two types of applications: ship-time and equipment; marine equipment only.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: No deadline.

Royal Society

Royal Society invites nominations for its Medals and Awards. Nominations can be made for excellent candidates from accross various disciplines and nominations for women, under-represented minorities and those undertaking research in industry are particularly encouraged, to increase diversity in awards. Please visit the award page for details of each award.

Maximum award: £10,000. Closing date: 01/02/16.

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact RKEO with adequate notice before the deadline.

Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Cyber Security Innovation Vouchers – Round 14

cyber eye

Up to £5k funding for start-up, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to work with an external expert to gain the knowledge to innovate and grow. This voucher is only for cyber security advice including advice leading to certification under the Cyber Essentials Scheme.

For more information click here.

Closing 5 January 2016 – 12pm Noon.

Contact a member of the funding development team if you have any questions .

 

Research Professional – all you need to know

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fuorth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

26th January 2016

23rd February 2016

22nd March 2016

26th April 2016

24th May 2016

28th June 2016

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

Latest Funding Opportunities

Money Bear Funding

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

AHRC

Connected Communities Festival

The 2016 Festival will support high quality participatory arts research and research co-production activities across the UK on the theme of community futures and utopias and will provide an opportunity to explore creative ways to build upon, and widen and deepen community engagement with, research being undertaken by the Connected Communities Programme and with wider AHRC/RCUK–funded research.

Expressions of Interest (EOIs) are now invited to contribute to the Festival which will run from February 2016 through to June 2016, culminating in a major weekend-long Utopia Fair at Somerset House on 24th-26th June.

Max Award: Standard – £5,000, Augmented – £15,000
Deadline: 16 December 2015

Follow-on Funding for Impact & Engagement

Funds will be awarded for knowledge exchange, public engagement, active dissemination and commercialisation activities that arise unforeseeably during the lifespan of or following an AHRC-funded project.

Max Award: £100,000
Deadline: No deadline

Research Grants – Early Careers

The Research Grants Schemes are intended to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research.

Max Award: £50,000 – £250,000 over max of 5 years
Deadline: No deadline

Research Grants – Standard Route

The Research Grants Schemes are intended to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research. This scheme is not intended to support individual scholarship.

Max Award: £50,000 – £1,000,000 over max of 60 months
Deadline: No deadline

Research Networking

The Research Networking Scheme is intended to support forums for the discussion and exchange of ideas on a specified thematic area, issue or problem. The intention is to facilitate interactions between researchers and stakeholders through, for example, a short-term series of workshops, seminars, networking activities or other events.

Max Award: £30,000 over max 2 years
Deadline: No deadline

Science & Technology Facilities Council

UK-China Newton agri-tech joint call

The UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) along with the National Natural Science Foundation of China is launching a call for proposals that will advance scientific research in space applications such as remote sensing, information acquisition, data processing, modelling and simulation, to target challenges faced by the Chinese agricultural sector.

Max Award: £1,000,000 for 3 years
Deadline: 17 December 2015

Medical Research Council

UK-Korea Partnering Awards

The overarching aim of the UK-Korea Partnering Awards scheme is to provide resources to biomedical and health researchers in the UK and Korea that will allow them to forge long-term collaborations. It is hoped that the partnerships established through these awards will lead to the development of long-term collaborative research programmes that will be competitive for national funding.

Max Award: £20,000
Deadline: 15 January 2016

University of Oxford International Growth Centre

Call for Proposals

The ICG is pleased to open the six-monthly IGC call for proposals, across its four research themes: State Effectiveness; Firm Capabilities; Energy; and Cities. The IGC commissions research through the Research Programme and the Country Programme. The Research Programme focuses on cutting-edge, policy-relevant academic research shaping effective economic growth policies in the global south. The Country Programme focuses on high-quality economic growth research addressing the policy needs of IGC’s partner countries.

Max Award: Unspecified with total budget of £3,300,000
Deadline: 17 January 2016

Wellcome Trust

Collaborative Awards in Humanities & Social Science

Collaborative Awards provide flexible support to excellent research groups with outstanding track records. Proposals must address important, complex health-related questions in the humanities and social sciences that need a collaborative team effort. Funding can be used to coordinate and integrate activities, build networks, and carry out large-scale potentially interdisciplinary research.

Max Award: £2,000,000
Deadline: 22 January 2016 for preliminary application, 30 March 2016 for full submission

Natural Environment Research Council

Bilateral Research Workshops

As well as acting to further UK researchers’ involvement in EU research programmes, NERC works proactively with partners in China, India, Japan and the US in targeted joint funding initiatives. In line with RCUK strategy to promote collaboration between the best UK and overseas researchers, these four countries are prioritised either because they are historically strong in engineering and the physical and mathematical sciences, or else they are rapidly growing their capabilities in our research areas.

Max Award: Costs of hosting conferences, travelling to conferences/meetings, networking/collaboration
Deadline: No deadline

European Commission

CEF Telecom calls for proposals 2015

The 2015 CEF Telecom calls will award up to €45.6 million in the form of grants managed by INEA. A specific call for Europeana of €10 million in 2015 is managed by the European Commission. The grants under CEF Telecom will help European public administrations and businesses to hook up to the core platforms of the digital services that are the object of the calls.

Max Award: Various
Deadline: Various dates in early 2016

Solar Facilities for the European Research Area

Access to Facilities

The ‘SFERA’ Partners: CIEMAT, CNRS, PSI, UAL-CIESOL and ENEA will provide access to their state-of-the-art high-flux solar research facilities, unique in Europe and in the world. Access to these facilities will contribute to creation of the European Research Area by:

  • Opening installations to European and ICPC scientists, improving co operation.
  • Improving scientific critical mass in domains where knowledge is now widely dispersed.
  • Generating strong Europe-wide R&D project consortia, increasing the competitiveness of each member alone.

Max Award: Access to laboratories, facilities, equipment
Deadline: 31 January 2016

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

CEL funding for final year co-creation projects

The Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) is offering funding for ten student-led projects, co-created with academics.

Taking part in a co-created project gives you the opportunity to develop news skills and confidence, learn how to apply knowledge, inform career decisions and increase your employability.

This is open to final year undergraduates and if you are interested you will need to identify a topic of relevance and an academic you would like to work with on a project that will be delivered in semester two of 2015/16. You will also need to write a brief project plan with intended outcomes (eg: publication, presentation, product). There will be £500 available per successful project.

Criteria

  • The project brings together a student and academic to work collaboratively
  • The project is delivered within 4 months
  • The project will lead to specific outputs e.g. publication, presentation, product
  • A short report on the outputs will be submitted to the programme leader on completion of the project.

Timescales

  • 23 November 2015 – Co-creation call for student led projects
  • 26 November 2015 – Co-creation workshop for students; PG30a 15.00-16.00
  • 2 December 2015 – Co-creation workshop for students; Lansdowne 12.00-13.00 R301
  • 31 December 2015 – Co-creation project bids due in
  • 6 January 2016 – Co-creation panel to meet; feedback to students within one week
  • 31 July 2016 – Brief reports from each project to be submitted

For more information and to apply please read the bidding form.

EURAXESS – November Newsletter

As notified in the November EURAXESS Newsletter, there are a number of research workshops open for registration under Researcher Links and the Newton Fund. The workshops give researchers the opportunity to form new international connections and Early Career Researchers may apply for grants in order to participate.
Some of the opportunities are:

Further opportunities are listed on the British Council website.

Why not sign up for the EURAXESS Newsletter so that these and further opportunities are delivered direct to your own inbox?Euraxess

Euraxess UK is a British Council hub, which aids researchers in their career development, supporting mobility and acting as a support mechanism for researchers moving abroad or moving to the UK. Their services include:

 

Fair Access Project Fund

BU’s Fair Access Agreement includes a project fund to support Fair Access (FA) and Widening Participation (WP) projects, research and innovation. Faculties and Professional Services are invited to bid for funding to support specific and targeted projects that will have FA or WP impact. The projects will contribute to and inform the growing evidence base on FA and WP work. We would also welcome applications for projects involving organisations external to BU where there is a clear link to WP and there is a BU staff member sponsor who holds a steering role in the project.

In addition, we invite colleagues to bid for research or activity based projects on the following priority themes:

A proportion of the available funding will be reserved to support projects specifically addressing the themes. Projects tackling WP or FA matters outside of these themes are also welcome.

Please note that projects must commence in 2015-16, however, they can extend into later years as the nature of a project dictates. Funds for 2016-17 are limited and we strongly encourage the majority of expenditure and activity to be completed by 31 July 2016.

How to submit a proposal
To submit a proposal for funding, please complete the application form by Friday 15 January 2016 and email it to Lukasz Naglik.

Please also contact Lukasz if you would like to discuss this opportunity further or if you would like to find out about current Fair Access and Widening Participation projects.

NIHR Research Design Service Research Grant Writing Retreat

Do you have a great idea for research in health or social care?

Would your team benefit from protected time and expert support to develop your idea into a competitive funding application?

The NIHR Research Design Serice (RDS) are offering a unique opportunity for health and social care professionals across England to attend a week-long residential Grant Writing Retreat at Bailbrook House, Bath in June 2016. The purpose of the Retreat is to give busy professionals dedicated time to rapidly progress their research idea into fundable proposals. The Retreat will provide a supportive environment for teams of two or three people to develop high quality research proposals prior to application to national peer-reviewed funding streams. Find out more.

To apply for a place please contact your local branch of the NIHR Research Design Service based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

 

COST Actions – supporting high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes

COST Actions are a flexible, fast, effective and efficient networking instrument for researchers, engineers and scholars to cooperate and coordinate nationally funded research activities. COST Actions allow European researchers to jointly develop their own ideas in any science and technology field. COST Actions are bottom-up  science and technology networks, open to researchers and stakeholders  with a duration of four years. They are active through a range of  networking tools , such as workshops, conferences, training schools, short-term scientific missions (STSMs), and dissemination activities.  COST does not fund research itself.

COST prides in its support for high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes. Importantly, COST does not set any research priorities. cost

Currently on the COST website is a report on Collecting research data to counter femicide worldwide

Femicide across Europe is the first pan-European research network investigating the causes and risk factors of a phenomenon killing thousands of women every year, worldwide.

Femicide refers to the killing of women and girls because of their gender. European researchers studying the  cultural, societal and psychological   causes  and  risks factors  behind femicide set up the network to fight the phenomenon through advocacy and research. One idea is to create a  European Femicide Observatory  gathering and comparing data from each of the 30 countries involved, of which half are Inclusiveness Target Countries . The goal is to come up with  new guidelines  and shape new EU public policies countering killings.

Specialists have been studying quantitative and qualitative data and ways to reduce discrepancies in country records. Such discrepancies are often due to the different definitions of femicide, which is sometimes seen as gender-based violence.

When our COST Action was first proposed, the term femicide was not widely used. Everyone knew of homicide, but few had given thought to the fact that some women, particularly those involved in intimate relationships, were murdered simply because they were women. Today, two years within the COST Action, ‘femicide’ has become a buzzword, Action Chair Dr Shalva Weil explains.

Network members have also been advocating for a more straightforward approach to lowering femicide rates in Europe. They have already addressed the Portuguese Parliament and the Parliament of Aragon in Spain. The network also took part in two United Nations sessions in Bangkok (November 2014) and New York (October 2015).

By participating in the network’s training schools and scientific exchanges, young researchers are also given the chance to better understand the phenomenon EU-wide. One outstanding result of the Action’s work is a  comparison of national statistics from 10 European countries .

The Action’s next annual meeting will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2016.

Why not take a look at the COST Action database to see if there is a current Action relating to your research? You can then consider joining an existing Action or submitting your own proposal.

Click on the tag COST Action (below) to see other BU posts on this topic, including  Edwin van Teijlingen’s report on his recent publication and his experience of attending a COST Action Training School.

If you are interested in applying for COST, please contact Emily Cieciura, Research Facilitator: EU & International of you Faculty’s Funding Development Officer.

Semester-based Undergraduate Research Assistantship Projects 2016

Following on from the academic applications of the Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA), the panel have selected the following projects to recruit a student to.

The links all lead to the individual job adverts on MyCareerHub, all BU staff and students have access to this system.  These vacancies are currently in the recruitment stage to recruit a student.

Alessandro Inversini – eTourism 4 Development

Alison McConnell – App Development Research Assistant: Development and evaluation of a mobile device App to lower blood pressure

Amanda Korstjens – Co-creation of scientific publications and conference outputs on primate biogeography and conservation

Andrew Adams – The 2014 Brazil World Cup: evidencing the impacts on human rights and assessing the implications for future mega sport events

Anita Diaz – Producing a website–based research tool for evidencing and enhancing the impact of student-staff co-created research in wildlife

Anna Feigenbaum – Mapping the Media – Research Assistant

Barry Richard – Researcher on ‘Freedom of speech and the emotional public sphere’ project

Caroline Jackson – Creative Events Researcher

Dan Jackson – Tweet for victory! Political use of Twitter in the 2015 UK General Election

Einar Thorsen – Sourcing practices in online news and live blogs: exploring opportunities for a civic turn in journalism

Elvira Bolat – Student adoption, use and relationship with wearable technology and telematics

Erika Borkoles – Research Assistant

Huseyin Dogan – Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Exemplar Short Films

Iain Hewitt – Research Assistant: desk-based assessment, digitisation and publication

Jane Murphy – Measuring the impact of training and education on nutrition and dementia care

Jonny Branney – URA in Innovative Pedagogy

Lois Farquharson – Research Assistant (You’re Brilliant Awards Project)

Luciana Esteves – X Band Radar Applications and Coastal Management

Maggie Hutchings – Student Researcher: Negotiating ubiquitous connectivity for digital inclusion

Milena Bobeva – Student Researcher on Reverse Mentoring as a form of Pervasive Learning

Peter Hills – Development of the face span

Philippa Gillingham – Public perception of urban pollinators research team

Raian Ali – Conceptualizing Voluntary Transparency in Socio-Technical Systems

Roman Gerodimos – Digital Literacy and Global Citizenship

Sebastien Miellet – Individual strategies in face recognition

Shamal Faily – Undergraduate Research Assistant: CAIRIS

Sue Eccles – Globelongers: Understanding and Learning from International Students

Vanessa Heaslip – Understanding Disability amongst HE Students

Viachaslau Filimonau – Research Assistant

Xun He – The social life of cognition: performance in dyads

 

Please do share any relevant URA positions to your students where applicable.

The next round of URA funding applications is due to open in February 2016 for summer research assistants to work full-time for six weeks over the summer holidays.

Further information on the URA scheme can be found here.  If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) on 01202 961347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk or urap@bournemouth.ac.uk