BU Research Blog

Category / Fusion Investment Fund

February 4, 2016

Undergraduate Research Assistantships – Summer Round – Academic Applications now live

Funding opportunities, Fusion Investment Fund Rachel

Academics are now invited to submit applications for the summer round of the Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) programme.

The programme is funded by the Fusion Investment Fund and aims to support undergraduates to undertake paid work under the guidance of an experienced academic in a research position that is directly related to their career path and/or academic discipline.

The summer programme is for students to work full-time (37.5 hours per week) for six weeks over the summer. This programme will have the capacity for approximately 20 placements.

Further information of the URA programme as a whole can be found here.

To apply for a URA over the summer, please complete the following application form. Please note the closing date for applications is midnight Sunday 21st February.

If you have any questions relating to the programme, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) on 01202 961347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk

January 13, 2016

A special call of the Fusion Investment Fund – Hubs of Practice

Fusion Investment Fund stownrow

We hope you have all had a relaxing time over the Christmas break – but fear not – there’s still time to apply for this special call of the Fusion Investment Fund!

We are looking to set up two Hubs of Practice in India and China – and this is a great opportunity for you to be part of shaping and delivering the ambitions within the Global Engagement Plan.

The deadline for applications is 12pm on Monday 18^th January 2016. For all the updated strand policy documents, application form and more information please visit the FIF website, the Global BU pages on the intranet, and see the Global Engagement Plan.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Corrina Lailla Osborne and the Co-ordinators are Sue Townrow and Sarah Olliffe.

If you would like to discuss your ideas please contact globalbu@bournemouth.ac.uk. For enquiries about the application process please contact the Fusion Fund.

January 4, 2016

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — in collaboration with the Financial University, BU is organising “Digital momentum for SMEs” workshop

Fusion Investment Fund, Public engagement ebolat

BU is continuing to strengthen the partnership with Financial University under the Government of Russian Federation (FU) in Moscow, Russia. Faculty of Management academics, Dr Elvira Bolat (Department of Marketing), Dr Sukanay Ayatakshi Endow and Dr Parisa Gilani (both from the Department of Leadership, Strategy and Organisations) are organising one day FBU workshop titled ‘Digital momentum for SMEs’. FU is hosting the event which will take place on 12th March 2016. The FBU interactive workshop is targeting 40 attendees including Russian SMEs, marketing and management academics, and FU students.

Digital technologies have expanded the business opportunities made possible by the invention of the Internet. SMEs are particularly benefiting from the deployment of digital technologies and respective capabilities. Benefits include new jobs, new experiences in the form of services and products, innovative and cost-effective business models, new ways to fund startups as well as numerous options to effectively communicate with various stakeholders. Numerous workshops and conferences across the subjects around SMEs’ finances, SMEs’ marketing and management are all fragmented focusing on particular nuances of various aspects within the SMEs’ decision-making processes. Nevertheless, an interdisciplinary nature of this research field requires collective academic thinking – to result in recommendations which are meaningful and instrumental to increasing the impact of SMEs globally.

BU has teaching, research and professional practice interests across the disciplines contributing to the theme of the workshop, “Digital momentum for SMEs”. The aim of the FBU workshop is to communicate the existing research expertise of BU academics. Hence, the FBU workshop is grounded on previous events hosted and delivered by BU academics, (1) BU Festival of Learning 2013 workshop “Mobile momentum: Creating opportunities and being SMART ” (led by Dr Bolat); (2) “Social Entrepreneurship – What, How and Why?” event, in association with the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) Hampshire (led by Dr Ayatakshi Endow). Hence, in addition to nurturing the BU and FU partnership, the FBU workshop will boost BU’s interdisciplinary research output, and increase contributions to teaching and grant proposals related to the following themes: (1) digital marketing; (2) entrepreneurship.

The FBU international workshop will cover the following list of research areas unique to BU:

Understanding SMEs and their owners;
Leadership in the context of SMEs;
Digital leadership;
Digital marketing for SMEs;
Digital capabilities and their role in SMEs’ innovation practices;
The crowdfunding phenomenon;
Digital crowdfunding: main drivers of success;
Digital momentum for SMEs: Lessons from the UK SMEs.

The overall visit to Moscow will last up to four days which will include meetings with Russian academics regarding collaborative research agendas.

January 4, 2016

Funding for training or teaching in the EC – professional services and academic staff – is Erasmus right for you?

Fusion Investment Fund stownrow

Did you know that our Erasmus funding is available for those who want to take training abroad as well as those who want to teach?

Every year our academic staff visit European institutions to teach, exchange ideas and build their networks.

What’s less well known is that both academic and professional services staff can apply for funding to go to a European Higher Education institution, or enterprise, to train, learn new techniques, share best practice and widen your horizons. Would you like to find out how your job or department works in other European institutions? Explore new ways of working? Come back with ideas to enhance your role?

Erasmus provides up to €1,000 towards your travel and subsistence costs when travelling to another EU member country.

Priority will be given to staff who have not previously received funding from this strand so, if you’ve never considered it before, now might be your chance!

Want to find out more?

Well, hurry! Funds are limited so do get your application in as soon as possible. Visit the FIF website for further details and for information about how to apply. You can also contact us by email with any queries.

Erasmus staff mobility – maybe it’s for you after all?!

December 18, 2015

Funding for training or teaching in the EC – professional services and academic staff – is Erasmus right for you?

Fusion Investment Fund Sarah Olliffe

Did you know that our Erasmus funding is available for those who want to take training abroad as well as those who want to teach?

Every year our academic staff visit European institutions to teach, exchange ideas and build their networks.

Erasmus provides up to €1,000 towards your travel and subsistence costs when travelling to another EU member country.

Priority will be given to staff who have not previously received funding from this strand so, if you’ve never considered it before, now might be your chance!

Want to find out more?

Erasmus staff mobility – maybe it’s for you after all?!

November 19, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund- Santander and Erasmus funding still available

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund stownrow

We are excited to let you know that we still have Santander and Erasmus grants up for grabs open to all staff including Professional Services. The next committee review date is 23^rd November 2015.

Santander Funding

The purpose of Santander funding is to support individual staff mobility and networking with other Santander Universities in the development of research, education and/or professional practice projects. There are limited funds available. Please find a link to the list of the institutions that are part of the Santander University network and also the applicable criteria below:

Priority will be given to overseas travel rather than travel to another UK institution
Ideally awards of £5k will be made but at least priority should be given to applications close to (but not more than) that amount
Priority will be given to staff who intend to study or carry out research.
Funds should be used before the end of the academic year
Travel for student recruitment purposes would not normally be funded

Erasmus staff mobility

Erasmus funding supports staff who would like to train or teach in another European higher education institution. These mobility grants are provided to contribute towards subsistence and travel and the maximum grant available is €1000.

Applications

To meet our next committee review date please submit your applications for Santander or Erasmus by 23rd November at 5pm. For all the policy documents, Fund FAQs and information about applying, please visit the FIF website

Please direct all initial enquiries to the Fusion Investment Fund Co-ordinators Sue Townrow and Sarah Olliffe at Fusion Fund.

November 18, 2015

CIPPM Project Copyrightuser.org wins AHRC Research in Film Award

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion Investment Fund, PG research, Post-award, Public engagement, REF Subjects, Research themes cippm

An animated film on Copyrightuser.org titled The Adventure of the Girl with the Light Blue Hair won an AHRC Research in Film Award on 12 November 2015 at an Awards Ceremony hosted at the British Film Institute, Southbank London.

Copyrightuser.org is an online resource, which makes copyright law accessible to creators, teachers, students and members of the public. The project began with Bournemouth University’s Fusion Investment Fund in 2012 after which, the project has been successfully funded by RCUK/AHRC since 2013.

It is a collaborative project carried out by the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) Bournemouth University and CREATe, University of Glasgow.

The animated film was short-listed for the AHRC 10^th Anniversary Research in Film Award within the category Award for Innovation in Film – Best Film in the Year and beat another four contenders to win the award.

The panel of judges – consisting of industry and academic experts such as film director Beeban Kidron, Financial Times Arts Editor Jan Dalley, and actor and producer Diana Quick – described the film as “a well-constructed, quality animation addressing issues of creativity, IP and copyright for schools and undergraduates: lively, engaging, witty (à la Sherlock Holmes mode), informative and educating at the same time.”

The Adventure of the Girl with the Light Blue Hair is the first episode of The Game is On!, web series and is produced by Mr. Bartolomeo Meletti (CREATe, University of Glasgow) and Professor Ronan Deazley (Queens University Belfast). The film draws inspiration from Sherlock Holmes and other well-known copyright and public domain works and provides a springboard for exploring various copyright concepts.

It forms part of a suite of online learning materials for students and teachers in the UK while educating the wider public about what can and cannot be done with copyright works. To achieve this aim, researchers working on Copyrightuser.org produced both video and textual material.

The animated film is enhanced by 12 ‘Case Files’ authored by Ms. Hayleigh Bosher and Dr. Dinusha Mendis (CIPPM, Bournemouth University), which draws on the various elements of the film to explore key principles and ideas underpinning copyright law, creativity, and the limits of lawful appropriation and reuse.

The educational materials also include Copyright for A Level Media Studies authored by Ms. Hayleigh Bosher and Dr. Dinusha Mendis (CIPPM, Bournemouth University) – an educational web resource which addresses the AS/A Level Unit Critical Perspectives in Media, Section B: Contemporary Media Issues.

The AHRC Research in Film Awards is designed to recognise the creative and innovative work being undertaken at the interface between research and film. All the winners and full versions of the films can be seen here.

October 13, 2015

Symposium on Interagency in Technologically-Mediated Performance

Fusion Investment Fund tdavis

29-30 January 2016

Thanks to Fusion Investment funding I will be co-running with Dr Paul Stapleton (QUB) a symposium exploring Interagency in Technologically-Mediated Performance. Despite a growing community of people creating digital musical instruments and a growing associated academic field, there has been little recognition within these communities of the associated approaches to a Philosophy of Technology that examines human-technology interactions from a variety of social, political and philosophical perspectives.

This event will bring together researchers and industry representatives from the fields of Philosophy of Technology and Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) design to establish an overview of best practice of new musical instrument creation and set out a road map for future research in this area. The symposium will feature talks by five keynote speakers that are all internationally recognised experts in their fields. Workshop and discussion will form a large part of the symposium in order to have time to fully establish an overview of best practice and to define the future research agenda.

The symposium will run 29th and 30th of January 2016. There will soon be a call for attendance, places will be limited so sign up quick if you are interested. There will also be a short concert on Friday 29th Jan from 17:30- 18:30 attendance for this is open to everybody.

Tom Davis

September 28, 2015

Teaching Staff Exchange with Universitad Ramon Llull

Fusion Investment Fund gviglia

Thanks to a new partnership between Bournemouth University and Universidad Ramon Llull, Prof. Jordi Pujadas came to BU in July to give some talks in the International PG program of Tourism and Hospitality. Now it is the turn of me visiting their institution for two weeks to teach to their master students and explore students’ collaborations.

September 17, 2015

Shedding new light on the New Forest’s past

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Public engagement, student research djohn

A new heritage mapping exhibition opens on Saturday at the New Forest Centre, Lyndhurst which features work by BU Games Technology students. The exhibition highlights new archaeological sites that have been discovered as part of the New Forest Higher Level Stewardship scheme. Remote sensing with Lidar was used to look beneath the tree canopy and discover new sites and monuments previously not visible through traditional survey techniques.

BU staff and students, including Aaron Stone, Christopher Beckett, Jamie Sheridan and Daniel Dean, contributed by creating interactive visualisations of historic environments (a pre-historic burial ground, an Iron Age hill fort, a Roman villa, a Tudor castle and a Second World War airfield) that can be explored by visitors to the exhibition using iPads.

The exhibition is free to enter and is open 10am – 4.30pm daily from Saturday 19 September 2015 to Sunday 24 January 2016.

New Forest Centre
High Street
Lyndhurst
Hampshire SO43 7NY

http://www.newforestcentre.org.uk/september-2015/

September 16, 2015

Where Numbers met Narratives: A Final Review of the BU Datalabs Fusion Project

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, Post-award afeigenbaum

Carried out between January 2015 and July 2015, our Fusion CCCP and RKEO Small Grant funded BU Datalabs project explored the possibilities and challenges associated with the communicative power of visualizations, maps and related interactive digital media for telling data stories on sensitive subjects of societal importance.

We use the term Data Storytelling to refer to the process of creating data-driven stories, from data collection all the way through to crafting the visual and contextual narratives that give data meaning(Greshon and Ward 2001).

Through a series innovative Datalabs events and workshops, we used a hands-on, participatory approach to teaching that combined principles of scaffolded technology learning and hacklabs (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Activities included:

Data Scraping & Cleaning – Monday March 16 and Tuesday March 17, 2015
Data Visualisation with Mapping – Monday April 27 and Tuesday April 28, 2015
Digital Storytelling with Data – Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15, 2015
Mapping for Justice – 2 June 2015, w/ Richmond, American University in London
Interdisciplinary Research Week: Turning Numbers into Narratives: An introduction to digital storytelling with data –14 May 2015, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University
Festival of Learning: Datastorytelling: How to Give Narrative to Numbers –13 July 2015, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University
Civic Forensics Design Workshop – 20 July 2015, Friends House, London

Prioritising collaborative exchange, we brought together researchers, students, journalists and NGOs to generate key insights and co-create tangible outputs. Partners included the Omega Research Foundation, who co-author reports with Amnesty International, and Minute Works, whose sustainable design roster includes Greenpeace. Together with our partners we co-created visualisation outputs including the Data Distortion Layer Cake, the Reclaim Brixton map, and the #RiotID civic forensics project. Partners also went on to put their new visualisation skills into action. Our partner IRIN, a humanitarian news agency, created infographics and maps, including this interactive map of migrant deaths.

Feedback from our survey of Datalabs participants showed that most people’s familiarity with the tools and concepts taught during the workshops increased substantially, with most participants leaving the workshops feeling ‘familiar’ or ‘experienced’ with the basic tools and techniques of Data Storytelling.

Challenges and Opportunities

The emergent area of data storytelling provides both opportunities and challenges. Like any new digital skill, visualising data requires time and resources. This puts NGOs and small organisations at a disadvantage in terms of their ability to tell compelling data stories with visualisation. This disadvantage does not only manifest itself in the lack of resources to afford certain technologies, but also to afford know-how in the form of data visualization designers that are being “snatched up” by the corporate sector to work under Non-Disclosure Agreements (Wilson 2015).

In addition, while the rise of digital tools and techniques certainly diversifies the kinds of narratives we can tell with numbers, not all data stories are easy to capture. Sensitive subjects often have no straightforward data source, documents are scattered across agencies and organisations.

Our BU Datalabs project contributed to broader initiatives to bridge the emerging ‘big data divide’ that stands to leave the third sector and SMEs behind. Here at BU, we can help to narrow this divide by bringing together our skills and resources with stakeholder partners, to co-create visual resources and data stories for public engagement.

What’s Next?

Our BU Datalabs Report reflects on the key insights that arose out of this co-creation project. The aim of the final report is to show how other universities and organisations can use our model as a template, enabling their organisations to co-create data stories with public stakeholders. A preliminary version of the report was presented at the Data Power conference in Sheffield in June 2015. A further presentation is scheduled for November 2015 at the Media Education Summit in Boston, USA.

This year we are working to institute Datalabs activities and Data Storytelling education at BU through continuing collaborations between the Faculty of Media and Communication, the Data Science Institute, and the GIS Lab. We also continue to work with our partners as we prepare for larger bids.

Our next public Datalabs event is scheduled during the ESRC Festival of Social Science. This day long workshop on Datastorytelling will take you through the full process of creating a data story, from scraping and cleaning to crafting the narrative.

To find out more about the Datalabs project you can visit civicmedia.io or email: afeigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk or ethorsen@bournemouth.ac.uk

References

Gershon, N. and Ward P., 2001. ‘What Storytelling Can Do For Information Visualization’. Commun. ACM, 44 (8),pp.31-37.

Hmelo-Silver, C.E., Duncan, R.G. and Chinn, C.A., 2007. Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A Response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), pp.99-107.

Wilson, M., 2015. What Killed The Infographic? Fast Company, [blog] 6 May, Available at: <http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045291/what-killed-the-infographic> [Accessed 27 July 2015].

September 3, 2015

Fusion co-creation project involving BU students and partners in Kosovo: rethinking post-war reconciliation via ‘gaming’ technology

Awarded & submitted bids, Festival of Learning, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, innovation, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, Research themes sssievers

In post-war societies such as in the Western Balkans, war monuments may serve to preserve a single narrative of the past. Sometime the intention is to shape future generations’ understanding of conflict, thereby perpetuating militant potentials and societal divisions. But how do young visitors really experience such war monuments? Our fusion-funded project aims to foster conflict transformation (reconciliation) by facilitating young people’s engagement with a plurality of narratives while simultaneously nurturing empathy and recognition of the cultural heritage of war via contemporary gaming technology.

BU’s fusion approach encouraged me, a Balkan specialist and social anthropologist, to seek collaboration across faculties with Dr Avital Biran (‘dark tourism’/FM); Dr Melanie Klinkner (‘transitional justice’/ FMC); and Assoc. Prof. Feng Tian (‘gaming’/ FST). The new fusion-funded project is directly related to our Conflict Transformation Studies Team’s contribution to a major European Union Horizon 2020 bid: a working package on enhancing visitors’ perception and consumption of memorials via gamification, submitted in May 2015 (Reflective Societies, RED 8756).

The team presented its overarching research concept at BU’s Interdisciplinary Week on 12 May with our interactive session on Transforming conflict after war: memory, heritage and digital media. With support of two consecutive Undergraduate Research Assistants, a social anthropological spin-off exercise entitled Reconciliation-in-Practice was then conducted at the Festival of Learning. During the sessions, to which also Wendy Cutts (FHSS) contributed, we challenged participants’ assumptions about the ease with which reconciliation expectations can be exported to countries of Western geo-political interest after war and conflict.

This fusion-funded sequel aims to co-opt interested student from different disciplines into the process of story line development and game design based on post-war memory at selected sites in Kosovo. As part of FiF strand Co-creation and Co-production, collaborations will not just include students and staff from BU’s four faculties but also external stakeholders in post-war Kosovo. We hope to include local students and colleagues of University of Prishtina, Human Rights activists, the British Council, site managers and artists.

Pending ethics approval and faculty support, our aim is – with help of the creative abilities of all involved students and partners – to explore the potentials of ‘gaming’ for education and enhancing visitors’ experience at heritage sites. We plan to, firstly, research the challenges associated with contested memorials in Kosovo; secondly, develop ideas for a story-line for gaming to promote tolerance and understanding; thirdly, explore the possibilities of designing a ‘serious game’; and, finally, under the leadership of Feng Tian, devise a Game Development Document (GDD) which may serve as a blue print for the application of gaming at post-conflict sites.

Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Faculty of Health & Social Sciences
sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk

August 26, 2015

Beauty in the eye of the user?

Fusion Investment Fund smcdougall

If we are going around an art gallery we are often aware that we are evaluating the aesthetic appeal of the artworks. What we may be less aware of is that when we are interacting with computers, websites, and applications on our mobile phones the aesthetic appeal of the interfaces we are using matters too. Appeal can make interfaces easier to use and certainly makes our interactions more enjoyable.

Angela Gosling and Siné McDougall (Psychology, Faculty of Science) recently received Fusion Funding to support a collaborative network with colleagues in at Fribourg in Switzerland and Swansea University to find out more about the role of aesthetic evaluations in human-computer interaction. We want to examine how we make decisions about the appeal and usability of an interface. These ‘decisions’ start when we unconsciously respond to interface appeal within the first few milliseconds that we encounter an interface and continue through to habitual everyday use. By investigating these processes we will develop a better understanding of how interface appeal influences user performance and lead to better interface optimisation. Our Fusion Funding is going to support our collaboration while we prepare grant proposals to take this work forward.

August 25, 2015

Matt Bentley’s Fusion Fund Research – South Africa -The Student View

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, student research mbentley

The student view from Daniel Wirepa.

Wednesday 10^th June marked a surprisingly wet and cloudy arrival into South Africa after a near 17 hours of travelling, with the first day spent catching up on some well needed rest. The visit was to conduct research into the shell-boring worm Boccardia proboscidea, and ironing out the kinks of a novel method of pest control for this invasive species. Overall, the trip offered some very valuable experience and insight into academic and scientific research and helped further fuel a strong interest into all aspects of science. Most importantly, the trip was thoroughly enjoyable throughout especially with South African winter being akin to the British summer – discounting the torrential thunderstorms. I’d like to thank Matt and Carol for providing me with this opportunity, and wish them good luck with future research.

August 25, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund: International approaches to the investigation of juvenile crime – a comparative analysis to inform UK policy.

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund llaver

Thanks to Fusion Investment Funding, the developing Forensic Psychology group in SciTech will be working on an international project aimed at improving the UK’s management of child suspects of crime.

Of the 1 million arrests for criminal offences in the UK each year, around 12% are of children aged 10-17 (Youth Justice Annual Statistics: 2013/2014, Ministry of Justice). Most of these 126,809 juvenile arrests are followed by a police interview. Evidence taken from these interviews contributes to charging, prosecution and custody decisions for young people and plays a role in nearly 100,000 juvenile convictions and cautions a year. The police interview therefore plays a substantial role in a child’s criminal record, future inclusion in the criminal justice system and long-term well-being. However, there is little research or guidance informing the interview process for child suspects of crime. The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (1999) and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) recognise that children have differing needs from adults when involved in criminal proceedings. However, most ‘Special Measures’ and interview guidance for children in the UK legal system pertains only to child witnesses or victims of crime.

A large body of psychological research into the communication abilities of child witnesses has indicated that children have different needs from adults in interviews because of their underdeveloped cognitive skills (such as decreased resistance to suggestion and difficulties with timeline recall). These findings form the basis of the Home Office (2007, 2011) ‘Achieving Best Evidence’ guidelines, which provide police with step-by-step instructions on interviewing child witnesses in accordance with their specific vulnerabilities. The guidance serves to ensure that evidence taken from child witness interviews is reliable enough for fair use in court. Child suspect interviews, however, are not considered by the guidance, despite juvenile arrestees being at higher risk of cognitive delays.

Young offenders have been shown to have increasingly delayed neuro and socio-cognitive development in comparison to their non-offending peers, leading to deficits in inhibition, attention, time-perception, perspective-taking and interpersonal abilities (Al-Attar, 2010). These additional developmental delays mean that the established age-related difficulties experienced by children in interview are likely to be greatly exaggerated in suspects. Without additional precautions to account for these extended (but often well-hidden) difficulties, evidence from child suspect interviews can be inaccurate or misleading, resulting in the potential for serious miscarriages of justice. With a suspect’s testimony often being key to their own prosecution, its reliability as evidence is central to a fair trial – a basic human right.

Working with policy makers in the UK, Norway, Belgium, Singapore and Israel, BU will initiate development of child suspect interview guidelines and work with the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group to improve management of child suspects worldwide.

Please contact Lesley Laver if you would like to learn more or get involved with this project.

August 23, 2015

Indonesian primate and elephant research programme: it started with FIF

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion Investment Fund, student research akorstjens

Thanks to Fusion Investment Fund support in 2013 (sabbatical to myself that set things in motion) and 2014/2015 (SMN&CCCP for Ross Hill, Vijay Reddy and myself), we have managed to establish a well running training and research platform in Sumatra, Indonesia. The first students to benefit were MRes students Rosanna Consiglio and Helen Slater. They have written (more or less actively) about their experiences in their online blogs: Rosanna: http://indonesiasikundur.blogspot.co.uk/ and Helen: http://pisforprimate.blogspot.com/. Rosanna’s August post sums up the incredible experience she’s had during 8 months in Indonesia.

Ross and I also had a very productive time during our much shorter 2-week training and networking visit at the start of the fieldwork in January 2015 and we cannot wait to go back again in January 2016 thanks to a new FIF SMN grant to expand the network and training platform to include exciting new research and training opportunities in ecotourism and conservation of the critically endangered Sumatran elephant in a wider region throughout the iconic Leuser Ecosystem.

During our visit we started up a now well-established research and training programme on Landscape Ecology and Primatology, we call it LEAP. LeapLogoFinal_07

LEAP brings together a team of landscape ecologists, primatologists, biogeographers, and specialists in remote sensing, carbon stock assessment and forest inventory, led by myself and Ross Hill. Thanks to FIF funding and the impetus created by our visit to Indonesia we have presented several staff-student posters and papers at international conferences about LEAP research and had team meetings with other UK collaborators in Liverpool. We have now submitted several funding applications, of which our successful Marie S Curie Intra-European fellowship application is most notable because we will have a postdoc starting in October to analyse the data that our MRes students are returning with. SK2_0194_MadeleineFace

The aim of LEAP research is to develop methods for rapid assessment of forest structure and relate this to carbon stocks stored in tree biomass and habitat quality for keystone species. This research programme fits perfectly into the concept of FUSION as it includes a range of opportunities for students to get a global experience whilst contributing to world-leading new research with national and international scientists on applied conservation issues that are globally important. The programme is inter-disciplinary within life and environmental sciences but also includes colleagues from tourism Vijay Reddy and Susanna Curtin, to develop eco-tourism opportunities in the region and we welcome further collaborations.

Our personal visit to Indonesia has been instrumental in making Bournemouth University visible to the local stakeholders from the charity programme Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), the university of North Sumatra (USU), forestry and wildlife departments, and the people at the Sikundur field site. IMG_1321_20150122_SikundurTeamOrangObs_SMall We could show the important skills we bring to this collaboration and are now well embedded into various research opportunities. We are the main primate community researchers at this field site (although Prof Wich from Liverpool John Moores and the SOCP remain the prime orang-utan researchers) and can truly call it a Bournemouth University field site.

The success of this developing international multi-disciplinary network has resulted in an opportunity to expand the focus to the critically endangered Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus). For that project we have been applying for several external funds with a Marie S Curie application for a postdoc fellowship due in on the 10th of September 2015 with a new collaborator, Dr Gaius Wilson from India.

We have been tweeting about the research, as have our students (e.g. #sikundur), and recently, a BU funded UG Research Assistant, Matthew Hammond, from the media school started up our new website. We plan to launch it fully at the start of this academic year. He also created the new logo you can see above give the research programme and learning platform a recognisable logo and to advertise all the exciting things that are happening at BU.

So what’s next for LEAP? The elephant conservation programme – work in progress.
Starting in September/ October: a PhD studentship, Kelly van Leeuwen, to study Ugandan savannah chimpanzees and their landscapes as part of the Institute for Landscape Studies and Human Evolution (ISLHE); a PhD studentship, Chris Marsh, to study the primate community of Sikundur; an MRes student, Emma Hankinson, to study the primates at Sikundur; Marie S Curie funded postdoc fellow, Cici Alexander, studying methods to assess carbon and analyse remote sensing data at Sikundur based on photographic data from drone-mounted cameras; and of course the launch of our website and various grant applications and conference submissions.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or Ross if you are keen to become involved in LEAP.

August 21, 2015

Fusion success: Spanish Civil War memorials and tourism

Fusion Investment Fund lbrown

I have been fortunate to win Fusion funding to conduct research into the link between Spanish Civil War memorials and tourism. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) is a focus for war memorials to the victims of the struggle. They often form the backdrop for tourism and they also attract tourists in their own right. My study will investigate the link between political identity and pilgrimage , using the renowned Spanish Civil War walking tours in Barcelona and Madrid as sites for data collection. The research will adopt the method of participant observation, and it will take place in April 2016.

August 20, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund: Neuroscience has found that emotions are a primary factor in learning to change behaviour: A project to apply and study these findings in many areas of practice (for example, public health, sports science, youth work, neurological rehabilitation, special education, and potentially many others).

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund scarter

We were very fortunate to receive Fusion funding for our collaboration between colleagues and students in Health and Social Sciences, Sports Science, and a variety of external practice partners. Essentially the funding will enable us to obtain psychophysiological recording equipment to be used to measure emotional responses in a wide variety of learning and training settings. Below is a screenshot of a typical recording from this kind of equipment.

Huge progress has been made over the last couple of decades in our understanding of emotion and feelings. A compelling conclusion from this enormous body of work is the primacy of emotion in how we operate in the world. Darwin knew this, as did Freud, but many still cling to the notion of the achievements of homo sapiens (“wise man”!) as founded on cognition and rational thinking. For them, feelings are a vestigial remnant of our evolutionary past, not dissimilar to the appendix – no longer having any purpose, and also potentially a threat to our well being.

Affective neuroscience completely opposes this so-called rational approach: emotions and feelings guided our survival in our evolutionary past, but the big news is that they still do! Accumulations of theory and research from fields such as affective neuroscience, positive psychology, and health psychology support this simple but crucial switch in emphasis. Some everyday practice reveals the primacy of emotion, for example emotionally skilled doctors tend to bring about better health outcomes for their patients, children are taught to pay attention to their ‘uh oh’ signs (involuntary emotional responses of sweaty palms and heart beating faster) to keep them safe. So emotions are not the redundant and fickle “appendix” of our behavioural systems, but in fact are their driving force.

Despite an array of pragmatic findings about the way emotions and feelings work, this largely ‘pure’ body of neuroscience has not been directly applied to any particular field of practice. This project aims to correct that omission. The applications of affective science to how we learn and change our behaviour are potentially enormous, as the physiological emotional measures offer a straightforward ‘window’ into the person’s emotional responses.

The Fusion funding enables us to build on one of the applications, through running a study developing a previous pilot. This will be based on a form of training using natural horsemanship that has been demonstrated to be very successful in behaviour change for young offenders and young people who do not engage with school. This is an example of what it looks like (thanks to TheHorseCourse for the picture):

The equipment, and experience gained through carrying out the initial study, will also allow for projects with other practice partners to go ahead, for example, work with people with acquired brain injuries, and children with profound learning disabilities. If any of this interests you, please get in touch with Sid Carter or Emma Kavanagh, and we’d be glad to tell you more.

Category / Fusion Investment Fund

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New Forest Centre
High Street
Lyndhurst
Hampshire SO43 7NY