Category / Fusion Investment Fund

Undergraduate Research Assistantships – Summer Round – Academic Applications now live

Funding opportunities, Fusion Investment Fund

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 

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

Fusion Investment Fund

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?!

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

Fusion Investment Fund, Uncategorized

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?!

Fusion Investment Fund- Santander and Erasmus funding still available

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

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 23rd 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.

 

Symposium on Interagency in Technologically-Mediated Performance

Fusion Investment Fund, Uncategorized

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

Teaching Staff Exchange with Universitad Ramon Llull

Fusion Investment Fund

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.

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Beauty in the eye of the user?

Fusion Investment Fund

cowlookingatpicture

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.

Fusion success: Spanish Civil War memorials and tourism

Fusion Investment Fund, Uncategorized

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.

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

 

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.

 

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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):

 

TheHorseCourse 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.