BU Research Blog

Category / Fusion Investment Fund

August 18, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund — Introducing the Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS)

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund Shamal Faily

Although largely invisible to us, our lives are dependent on critical infrastructure (CI). CI is made up of roads, rail, pipelines, power lines, together with buildings, technology, and people. Some of this infrastructure is modern, but much of it is ageing and interconnected in so many ways that we fail to realise our dependency on CI or its dependencies until its loss disrupts our day-to-day lives.

This dependency has not been lost on governments, which now invest significant sums on securing this infrastructure from cybersecurity threats. Unfortunately, in most cases, this investment entails bolting security mechanisms onto existing infrastructure. Such investment decisions are made by people with little knowledge of the infrastructure they are securing and, has such, little visibility of the impact that poorly designed security might have on the day-to-day delivery of these critical services. Moreover, because technology innovation does not evolve at the same pace in different cultures, and security which mitigate the risks faced by critical infrastructure in one country may not be as effective in another. The reason for these differences are myriad, and range from differences in working practices to expectations about the scale of infrastructure being secured. There is, therefore, a need to evaluate security solutions against specification exemplars based on these nuanced, representative environments. However, to develop exemplars of such environments requires data collection and knowledge sharing about nuances associated with particular forms of critical infrastructure for different cultures.

The Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS) project will examine and model the nuances associated with two forms of critical infrastructure in different national cultures. It will do so by building a network between Cybersecurity researchers at BU, and the Information Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection Laboratory at Athens University of Economics & Business (AUB). These nuances will be modelled as specification exemplars of UK and Greek water and rail companies. By developing these exemplars, researchers and practitioners will be able to conduct a cost-effective evaluation of new ideas based on realistic CI environments. The exemplars will also help students appreciate the challenges associated with designing security for complex, real-world systems. The exemplars will be modelled using the CAIRIS security design tool; this is an open-source software product maintained by researchers at BU. The data necessary to build these exemplars will be collected over a series of visits by AUB researchers to BU, and BU researcher to AUB.

Please contact Shamal Faily if you’re interested in finding out more about BANCIS, or getting involved in the project.

August 14, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement bangele

The seal of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

I have reveived funding from the Santander strand of the Fusion Investment Fund to establish working relationships and collaborations with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA a Santander Partner University.

In early 2016, Professor Adrian Staub from UMass, one of the leading experts on eye movements in reading and psycholinguistics, will visit BU order to present a talk here and meet with BU staff and postgraduates. Prof. Staub will also present a short workshop on distributional analysis techniques, which should be of interest to many PGRs and staff. I will make a return visit to UMass in spring. We hope that this exchange will enable us to begin work on a number of collaborations.

UMass Amherst is the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system, which is one of the USA’s leading public university systems. UMass has 28,635 students, 6,383 of them postgraduates. Both the Department of Psychology and the Department of Linguistics at UMass are consistently rated as some of the best departments nationwide.

Bernhard Angele

August 14, 2015

Successful completion: Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Valencia, Spain

BU research, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement bangele

Valencia, near the conference site

Thanks to the Fusion Investment Fund (Santander), I was able to organise two visits between Bournemouth University and the University of Valencia in Spain. The first visit was by Prof. Manuel Perea to BU. Prof. Perea gave a talk at the Psychology Research Seminar which was very well received and attended by staff, postgraduate, and undergraduate students. We also planned a series of collaboratory experiments. Subsequently, I visited UV from July 1st to July 13th 2015. This visit enabled me to attend the 12th International Symposium of Psycholinguistics (organised by Prof. Perea) and present a talk there. Additionally, we presented two posters resulting from collaborations with Prof. Perea and his students and associated staff at the conference. I was able to network with most of the top Spanish researchers in Psychology of Language and Psycholinguistics, many of which are interested in collaborations with BU. For the moment, I will work on expanding the collaboration with the University of Valencia. Ideally, we would like to enable undergraduate and postgraduate students from both universities to be able to visit the other and gain valuable experiences and knowledge.

UV is one of Spain’s leading academic institutions and was founded more than 500 years ago. Its 55,000 students are distributed across three campuses. The Faculty of Psychology is consistently ranked as one of the top three Psychology research centres nationally and one of the top 50 research centres in Europe. UV has a strong international orientation and participates in many international exchange programmes and networks.

Bernhard Angele

Giving a talk at the Psycholinguistics Symposium in Valencia.

August 11, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund 2014/15: Upskilling the Engineering Workforce – an update

Awarded & submitted bids, Festival of Learning, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund psewell

In December 2014 we received funding from the Fusion Investment Fund for a project which we hoped would allow us to strengthen strategic partnerships with local/national engineering companies (see previous posting). We are happy to report that the project has been a success.

Over the past few months we have been working with the Missions Systems division of Cobham PLC, based in Wimborne, and four of their employees, who are also students on our innovative Flexible Learning MEng (Hons) Engineering degree, to develop a Professional Registration Mentoring Scheme. Cobham was an ideal company to work with as it is the third largest aerospace and defence employer in the UK with over 12000 employees globally and 500 employees at the Wimborne site alone.

The main outcome of the project has been the development of the structure of the scheme, scheme material and promotional material.

In addition, a Festival of Learning lecture was developed entitled: ‘what professional engineers do and how to become one’. The lecture was attended by a mix of children and their parents who wished to find out more about embarking on engineering as a career and engineering employees from a range of industries who wished to find out more about how to develop themselves professionally. Promotional flyers for the professional registration mentoring scheme were provided to the engineering employees to take back to their companies. It is hoped interest from employers in the scheme will be generated from the event.

The scheme has also been integrated into the flexible learning engineering degree curriculum through the Level 6 unit Advanced Engineering and Level 7 unit MEng Project. Students studying on the degree will be mentored for up to a year after graduation to provide professional development opportunities by achieving professional registration. Thus, preparing the individual with key skills for the workplace and creating sought after individuals who will be recognised as the future leaders in their field.

Finally, a strong link has been developed with Cobham which is expected to carry on after this project. The links and reputation of BU developed through this project will be used to build the relationship with Cobham to ensure the apprentices progress to BU to complete their academic studies on the FdEng Engineering and MEng Engineering degrees.

A future goal, once established regionally, is to secure recognition for the scheme from an appropriate professional body. This will then provide the credibility to expand the scheme nationally

Please do feel free to get in touch with us if you would like further information.

Dr Phil Sewell – (Principal Investigator) – Acting Head of Design and Engineering Department/Associate Professor – psewell@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dr Tania Humphries-Smith – Associate Professor – thumphri@bournemouth.ac.uk

August 10, 2015

GeoNet cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, REF Subjects, Research themes pgillingham

In our last GeoNet seminar Craig Young and Tim Darville discussed cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes, followed by Anne Luce who examined the presentation of suicide in the media.

Craig Young introduced the seminar discussing the evolving patterns of death and the changing social attitudes towards death. The physical absence of the dead body is becoming significantly apparent when illustrating the changes in the memorialisation of the dead. For example, new ways of scattering ashes such as sending in to space, converting it in to diamonds as a permanent keepsake and using social media to contact others to help spread ashes to different continents. An increase in the memorialisation at the site of death in the form of roadside shrines indicates a shift away from official ceremonies to more informal and open displays of grief.

Tim Darville, who has recently published on life, death, ritual and regional identity in Britain c. 1600 BC, discussed the relationship and practices between the living and dead. He used Stonehenge as an example. I found it interesting to discover that Stonehenge originated as a burial ground, and as a monument to the dead. Darville went on to explain links between the spatial orientations of the stone structures with the celestial calendar. The landscape changes from contained to dispersed, each holding its own celestial meaning as a burial site.

Anne Luce carried on the discussion talking about suicide in the media. Changes in attitude towards suicides have resulted in more high profile suicides reported in the media. For example, the Bridgend suicides in Wales 2008 were presented by the media as a suicide cult, therefore being picked up by the international press. The growth in social media sites, such as Facebook, has led to personal and public displays of remembrance in the form of memorial pages, which in some instances has led to an increased awareness of online bullying as a main cause of suicide.

Charlotte Unwin, GeoNet Intern

August 4, 2015

Understanding how people with depression think about how the past could have turned out differently

BU research, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund kthomas

The period of funding from the BU Fusion Investment Fund (Co-Creation and Co-Production Strand) has just finished for my joint psychology and psychiatry research project into the role of counterfactual thinking in depression. Counterfactual thinking is thinking about how the past could have been different. It is closely tied-up with the emotion of regret but can help people prepare to deal more effectively with similar situations in the future. For example, a person who thinks that an intimate relationship that failed would have survived if they had taken more account of how their partner was feeling (counterfactual thinking) can adapt their behaviour accordingly in their next intimate relationship in order to try to prevent the breakdown of the relationship and ensure its longevity.

My collaborator on the Fusion-funded project is Dr Paul Walters who’s a Consultant Psychiatrist for Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (DHUFT) based at Weymouth. A student from the Psychology Department’s Foundations in Clinical Psychology Master’s degree course (Stephen Richer) worked on the project by interviewing DHUFT patients who are diagnosed with depression. The project ran from December 2013 to July 2015, in which time a total of 29 patients were assessed. Although the project funding has ended, participant recruitment will continue until the required number of 65 participants is reached, which should be by October 2015.

Preliminary analysis of the data from the project suggests that the patients assessed tend to focus on aspects of the self (e.g., personality characteristics) when thinking counterfactually about a negative social event from their past. This finding contrasts with the counterfactual thoughts of people that have not received a formal clinical diagnosis of depression who, our previous research has found, tend to focus more on factors that are external to the self (e.g., other people’s behaviour) when mentally ‘undoing’ a previous negative social event. Once the data are collected from all 65 participants with depression, more meaningful comparisons between the counterfactual thoughts of depressed and non-depressed people will be drawn. Ultimately, Paul Walters and I hope that the findings of the project will aid in the refinement of the cognitive behavioural therapies that psychiatrists and clinical psychologists administer for the treatment of depression. Once the results of the data from all 65 participants have been analysed and written-up for publication, Paul and I plan to submit a funding bid to the National Institute of Health Research for a follow-on intervention project into tailoring cognitive behavioural therapies for depression based on the factors that influence the counterfactual thoughts of the patients with depression.

Overall, the BU Fusion funding has been immensely beneficial for engaging students and a key external stakeholder in the local community (DHUFT) in a valuable piece of applied research that has important psychotherapeutic implications for mental health patients and professional best practice implications for mental healthcare professionals.

Thank you, Fusion Investment Fund, I couldn’t have done the research without you.

Dr Kevin Thomas, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology.

July 15, 2015

From Stour Valley to Silicon Valley-Dr. Dinusha Mendis on Research Leave in Stanford University California

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Featured academics, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, PG research, Post-award, Public engagement, Research news cippm

In January 2015, Dr. Dinusha Mendis, Associate Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) in the Faculty of Media and Communications was awarded a period of research leave funded by the Fusion Investment Fund which commenced on 1 January 2015. The study leave was granted to further Dr. Mendis’ research into the digital aspects of Copyright Law and the Intellectual Property (IP) Implications of 3D Printing.

Since 1 January 2015, Dr. Mendis has held appointments as Visiting Fellow at University of Bocconi in Italy and as Lord Provost Fellow at University of Tasmania in Australia. For further information about the collaborative work carried out by Dr. Mendis during this time, please see here (BU Research Blog post dated 13 March 2015).

Dr. Mendis will complete her research leave in July 2015 having spent two months as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School, Stanford University California.

During her time as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Dr. Mendis was involved in working with Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School, to further her research into the intellectual property implications of 3D printing. Sponsored by Professor Lemley, Dr. Mendis utilised the time at Stanford to complete two research papers (to be published in Autumn 2015) and collaborate with IP experts from University of California, Berkeley; Emory University; Georgia Tech University and Indiana University in taking forward a project in the area of 3D printing and intellectual property implications.

The Research Leave was made possible by the generous support of Bournemouth University’s Fusion Investment Fund which in turn led to the Visiting appointments for which Dr. Mendis is very grateful.

The appointments have all proved to be very productive and rewarding in taking forward the research on the IP implications of 3D printing. The final appointment, which involved being a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School was a very positive experience – and will be an unforgettable one.

July 8, 2015

Networking and research dissemination in San Diego

Fusion Investment Fund lesteves

For the ones interested in human interaction with coastal and marine spaces and oceanography in general, San Diego (California, USA) is one of the most interesting and iconic places on earth. San Diego has a diverse and thriving marine life due to the rich waters of the California Current; an outstanding coastal geology shaped by tectonics and coastal erosion; and settings that create a varied range of landscapes and habitats (not to mention the perfect sunsets). If the natural settings alone were not already extraordinary, the proximity with Mexico, the vast military facilities, and the southern California lifestyle make San Diego a unique location. In addition to all that, San Diego is home of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the oldest, largest, and most important research centres in the world for ocean, earth and atmospheric science.

In May 2015, I went to San Diego to attend Coastal Sediments, one of the most important international conferences with focus on coastal research (there were over 350 attendees from the private, public and research sectors). The presentations of my two papers were very well-attended and created very good opportunities for networking. For example, after my presentation on the first day, Julia Chunn-Heer (San Diego County Policy Manager at Surfrider Foundation) contacted me to say she found the presentation very relevant to their work, in particular to current coastal development pressures they face in San Diego. As I was staying in San Diego after the conference to visit local organisations and collate material for teaching and research, I was able to meet Julia again and find out more about one of their projects. She showed me locations in Solana Beach where local property owners are filling wave-cut notches at the cliff base with ‘erodible concrete’ as an attempt to slow down the cliff retreat. Surfrider’s concerns are the preservation of the natural cliff line and therefore to ensure that the concrete used is actually eroding at rates similar to the natural cliff.

After the conference, I visited colleagues of the San Diego State University, Geography Department, and many interesting coastal locations in southern California, including: the Border Field State Park at the border with Mexico, the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, Coronado Beach, Cabrillo National Monument, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve and many other interesting coastal settings between the Mexican border and Oceanside Beach.

I also had the opportunity to visit Scripps installations, including the famous pier, with Ron Flick. At the Scripps pier measurements of water parameters, waves and weather have been collected since 1975. These data and other coastal environment data collected elsewhere are made available online through the Coastal Data Information Program. Ron is currently interested about how high water levels are used as a public land boundary at the coast, and the implications concerning private property legislation (e.g. the implementing private coastal defence structures). One important aspect we discussed, which may result in a future collaborative publication, concerns changes in the position and elevation of the high water line due to major storm impacts or sea-level rise and how/how often public land boundaries may need to be updated. So watch this space for updates!

Conference attendance and the extended stay in San Diego were facilitated by a Fusion funds (SMN) and my R-budget.

July 4, 2015

BU research, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Public engagement, Research communication rherbert

BioBeach

The BU Bio-Beach Fusion Investment Fund project aims to increase biodiversity, public engagement and research on sustainable coastal development through design and build of novel structures that can be fixed to existing coastal defences on Bournemouth seafront. http://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/impact/bio-beach/

With so many ‘known unknowns’ in terms of materials that could withstand this extreme environment this proved extremely challenging. Several designs for features, including artificial rock pools were developed by BU staff, which involved UG and PG students in focus groups.

Bournemouth Borough Council Tourism and Coastal Management staff supported the design process throughout and commissioned public artists and designers Ecclestone George to build 12 concrete ‘artificial rock pools’ to be installed on the groynes at Boscombe.

On 17^th June 2015, small, medium and large pools were fixed across two groynes on Boscombe beach in an experimental array and will be monitored by BU staff and students. Prior to installation, the texture and roughness of the structures was recorded with a 3D laser scanner. Monitoring will include monthly assessments of the condition of the structures and the colonisation process.

Following successful field trips to Boscombe beach around 30 pupils at Avonbourne College and Harewood College from Years 7 – 9 worked on ideas and prototypes for the BioBeach project after school, supported by BU student ambassadors and the AspireBU outreach team. The pupils came up with designs inspired by everything from rubber ducks to scuba divers, which were made of sustainable and recycled materials including old rope and tyres.

Fay Lyon, Science Teacher at Avonbourne College, said: “I think it has been brilliant. They have really loved it”. “I think it’s the fact that it’s real world application of science – it’s really useful. These are genuine problems that need to be solved and they can contribute something for that. They have the chance to make a real difference.”

Several students gained the Bronze Crest Award from the British Association of Science.

http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/crest-bronze

In August 2014, BU STEM Outreach Team and BioBeach RA Ben Thornes took the project to the Green Man Festival Brecon Beacons, Einstein’s Garden – the largest Science public engagement event in BritainBioBeach to Einstein’s Garden

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/08/08/a-summer-of-science/

BioBeach will feature at NERC public engagement event on Boscombe beach 4-5 July 2015.

BU Biobeach have provided materials for the new Seafront Visitor Centre displays and aquaria at Boscombe, that features interpretation of the Bay and its marine wildlife and BU Research

The project is on-going and we are seeking new opportunities to create new features and undertake further research and development.

June 30, 2015

Game AI Master Class

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

Creative Technology are hosting a Game AI Master Class on Tuesday 7^th – Wednesday 8th July, 2015 at Bournemouth University, UK

Venue Day 1: Coyne Lecture Theatre
Venue day 2: Lawrence Lecture Theatre

Who can participate? Students, researchers, lecturers and professionals in computer games technology, games programming with interest in GamesAI can participate in the MasterClass.

Interested to participate? Participants register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gameai-masterclass-tickets-16145456495

For further information, please contact Prof Edmond Prakash, eprakash@bournemouth.ac.uk

June 29, 2015

GeoNet mapping for Social Change

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement, REF Subjects, Research themes, Uncategorized pgillingham

This time Dr. Steve McFarland visited us from the University of Tampa. Steve gave us a lot of interesting food for thought – I’d never considered before that maps historically have given more power to those who already have power. For example, city maps often included important landmarks and the houses of the wealthy, but slums were left as blank spaces. He then went on to describe some projects that have tried to redress this balance in the past few years. One project, ‘Queering the map’ , aimed to use maps to construct and affirm identities. Sometimes using maps has resulted in new concepts, such as environmental racism – through the work of Laura Pulido, who showed that toxic waste in LA tended to be released in areas inhabited by people of colour.

He then talked about some of his own work mapping the relative salaries of pthp lecturers in HEAs across America – rates of pay are very different across the country and it turned out that a pthp lecturer at his own university teaching 6 classes per year (as expected of a tenured academic) would just about make minimum wage. We had a very interesting discussion after the formal presentation, about the future of mapping crowdsourced information to help in disaster/crisis management. However, some people can be fearful of taking part in such projects as the maps could be subverted away from their originally intended use. For example, protestors could upload information to be mapped in real time to show where teargas is being deployed, and use this to stay away from police. However, the police could also potentially use these maps to target protesters. In this case however, the police are likely to have helicopter access, so the presence of a crowdsourced map would close the information gap between the two sides.

Ultimately, we discussed whether the growth in the use of maps has outpaced our ability to understand them. Going forwards, spatial literacy is likely to be just as important as numeracy, which is music to the ears of any geographer!

We would like to hear your thoughts on the GeoNet seminar series, please fill in our very short survey on https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HSY29L6

June 18, 2015

European Fusion: An Early-career Academic’s Experience at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

BU research, EU, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement, Knowledge Exchange tbreitbarth

From Dr James Gavin — I began writing this Blog in Oslo Gardemoen Airport last Sunday when my evening flight was delayed, and have just got round to finishing it now after a week catching up with colleagues (and work!). Having begun lecturing at Bournemouth University in September 2014, I was excited by our international partnership with the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NSSS); particularly due to the institution’s reputation as a small, campus-based university capable of producing both innovative teaching, and high-impact research. Supported by Dr Tim Breitbarth, I was later awarded Fusion funding on the Erasmus staff mobility strand to visit the School for a week this June. Departing London Gatwick at 9.20 am on Sunday the allure of Scandinavia, and being seated next to a passenger with extreme airsickness, meant my arrival in Oslo Airport two hours later couldn’t come too soon.

The School is a located 30 minutes outside Oslo in Sognsvann, an idyllic forest used for cross-country skiing during the Winter. Established as the State Gymnastics School early last century, the government-funded university was surprisingly understated, yet as I soon found out, it’s timber-panelled façade housed laboratories dedicated to: Biomechanics, Strength testing, Exercise Physiology, Histochemistry, Immunology, Performance Analysis, as well as an aged environmental chamber and swimming flume. Staying at the campus-based Olympiatoppen Hotel (used by elite athletes and visiting academics), my week started with a chance, breakfast chat on blood doping with a Professor David Collins, who turned out to be the Institute of Coaching and Performance Director at UCLAN. Out of interest I attended the ‘public’ PhD viva he was examining that morning discussing: How can environmental resources contain or enhance athlete development? Supporting the values of BU Fusion, the PhD defence supported: 1) Research, through the dissemination of emerging findings, 2) Education, engaging students and promoting discussion, and 3) Professional Practice, by involving those external to the university. After this I was given a campus and departmental tour by the Prof Bojsen-Moller, which included an introduction to course frameworks and teaching facilities. BSc courses include: Physical Activity and Health, Sports Biology, Coaching and Sport Psychology and Sport Management/Physical Education. Unique to any UK institution, the NSSS holds the national responsibility for higher education and scientific research in these fields in Norway. Although well-funded, is it nationally-accountable and now receives competition from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and University of Stavanger.

Throughout the week I had opportunity to meet a range of academics and students (sitting in on a pre-lunch muscle biopsy!), gaining insight into their educational practices (three common 1^st year units, then five specialised units in 2^nd and 3^rd years/greater ‘transferability’ to courses in other departments after 1^st year) and course development. This allowed me to discuss potential future partnerships with BU for 1) Education, as their students are attracted to UK-based Exercise Science and Coaching courses, and 2) Research, as they are not limited by facilities, but time and skilled-personnel. Socio-cultural demands meant their BSc Sports Biology degree focussed on: Orienteering, Skiing, Hand-ball, Outdoors studies and Exercise Physiology. This was also evident through Research and Professional Practice, as it was a daily occurrence to have cross-country skiers and runners performance testing in the laboratories (a 4 m wide treadmill belt was embedded in the floor of one lab!). I was also fortunate to co-supervise undergraduates when laboratory testing junior cross-country skiiers. Having taught in similar fashion with Kelly Goodwin at BU, it was clear student learning processes were transferable, and I could adopt similar assessment processe.

The weekend’s down-time was spent in Oslo, taking in the National Gallery (Edvard Munch’s The Scream), the Royal Palace, Vigeland Park (Frogner Park) and…a chance, breakfast chat with David Elleray, the since-retired, English referee. My visit was a fantastic experience and I look forward to returning again in the near future to build upon the international partnership between BU and NSSS.

Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

Sognsvann Lake

June 16, 2015

FIF Erasmus – Teaching and archive research at Leipzig University

EU, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement, Research themes, Uncategorized Tom Watson

Professor Tom Watson of the Faculty of Media & Communication visited the University of Leipzig in Germany from June 7 to 12 on a FIF Erasmus visit.

In addition to a seminar on the history of public relations to students on the university’s highly-rated Master of Communication Management programme and workshops on academic writing and Delphi method to doctoral research students, he spent time in the university’s archive.

There he investigated the files of the German PR pioneer Dr Albert Oeckl, looking especially at Oeckl’s involvement with the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) whose archive is held at BU.

He was presented with a trolley containing 14 box files of material ranging from the late 1950s to the early 1990s (see Photo). In these, he found numerous papers and references to IPRA’s early work on the development of international curricula for university-level PR education.

“The Archive’s staff was very welcoming and so helpful in identifying relevant material. Selected documents will used in future research on the formation of public relations studies around the world,” Professor Watson said.

“Material from our IPRA archive has already shaped research papers from authors in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece and the UK. This link with the Leipzig Archive adds more detail to IPRA initiatives and policy statements that were already known about.”

Professor Watson said that archive research was already influencing a major revision of the history of public relations that will become evident in the teaching of courses. In his Masters seminar, he presented outcomes of recent multi-nation research that challenges many existing texts about PR’s historical evolution.

“I hope that BU can develop an archive similar to Leipzig University’s, although it has a head-start from its beginnings in 1409”, he said. “It’s a resource that aids the Fusion concept.”

Trolley of PR archives

June 10, 2015

The virtual and the field: enhancing visualisation in archaeology using serious game technologies

BU research, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund djohn

The FIF funded collaborative project between the Creative Technology and Archaeology Frameworks has produced another output.

A visualisation of the Iron Age banjo enclosure discovered in the Bournemouth University Durotriges Big Dig at Winterborne Kingston has been produced using Unreal Engine 4. The system allows users to explore the environment as it may have appeared in the Iron Age at a human scale.

This was a pilot study that was produced as part of a Fusion Investment Fund project at Bournemouth University in collaboration between staff and students on the Archaeology and Games Technology courses. It is anticipated that the environment will be further developed by Games Technology students as part of their final year project studies with enhancements made to the existing environment and with the addition of visualisations of the same site at different historical periods of habitation.

A fly through of the Iron Age environment can be seen at:

For more information about the visualisation please contact djohn@bournemouth.ac.uk.

June 8, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund – is it for you?

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund stownrow

Lots of people know about the Fusion Investment Fund (or FIF as it’s affectionately known!). Since 2012 we’ve awarded £2m spread across more than 200 projects. Here are a couple of facts that you might not know though…

Professional Services staff can apply for FIF too

FIF is open to professional services staff as well as academic staff. If you have a great idea which could change the way we work here at BU and move us towards our Fusion goals, then we want to hear from you!

What sort of ideas?

Well, in the past, FIF has supported these projects from Professional Services staff…

Under the Staff mobility and networking strand we have supplied funding for:

Visiting US partners to conduct research about / promotion of Summer Schools
My Community: Our Heritage workshops at the British Science Festival 2013

Under the Co-creation and co-production strand we have supported:

BU Lego Challenge
Sharing PAL: Students sharing their experiences of Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) to create collaboration, engagement and learning
Global Skills: articulating international experiences in academic and professional contexts

Interested? Then do get in touch. See the links at the bottom of this post.

Erasmus for training

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 staff (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.

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! Applications close this Friday at 12 noon. Visit the FIF website for further details and for information about how to apply. Sue Townrow, the FIF Co-ordinator, is available on both campuses this week so, if you’d like to meet, please get in touch. You can also contact us by email with any queries.

FIF – maybe it’s for you after all?!

June 2, 2015

Joint GeoNet/Datalabs seminar on digital storytelling

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, Public engagement pgillingham

On the 14^th May we were joined by Malachy Browne from the social media news service Reported.ly. Their role is to encourage social media users to report on humanitarian crises and disasters to get a fuller picture of events and involve people on the ground in journalism. This means that stories from ordinary citizens are represented, rather than the educated elite who tend to be over-represented in traditional journalism. Malachy and his team make good use of geocoded photos from the web taken by citizens on the ground at these crises. I was particularly impressed to learn about googles reverse image search, which allows the team to verify whether a photograph they want to use as a source is likely to be genuine or whether it has been used elsewhere on the web as evidence in other situations – sort of like a turnitin for images.

They also do some really interesting work matching up topographical references in videos (tops of buildings, stand out features) with geocoded photos on google earth to check that the videos are genuine. One very practical use of geographic information was for citizens on the ground to use a compass app on their phone to determine the direction that rockets were coming from during an attack. This was then used externally to work out where the rockets came from and work out a route to get people to safety. He also mentioned a field called forensic architecture, where the viewsheds of soldiers (the parts of a landscape each soldier can see from a set position) were mapped to determine which soldier shot a protester during a rally. Finally, and on to political corruption, he has tied instagram photos posted by politicians during their holidays to flight ownership by political donors, showing an inappropriate use of expenses. In this way he can develop new stories, given context to events as they are happening and provide real time support to those on the ground.

This was a really interesting talk which highlighted the extent to which social media and the internet can contribute geographic information at the short time scales needed to deal with such crises. You can follow @reportedly and @MalachyBrowne on twitter for more information.

Our next GeoNet event is from 12-2 in CG21 this Thursday the 4^th June.

A GEONET & BU DATALABS EVENT

Lunchtime Chat and Skill-share: Mapping for Social Change with Dr. Stephen McFarland

June 4th 2015 – 12:00-14:00

Talbot Campus, CG21

Dr. Stephen McFarland joins us from the University of Tampa to share insights and techniques for using QGIS and CartoDB in mapping projects. Drawing from his extensive work mapping labour and housing struggles, Dr. McFarland will explain how maps can tell stories for social change, make issues more visible, and be used to engage policy-makers and the public.

Lunch will be provided to those participating in the full session, places are strictly limited so please email pgillingham@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

May 26, 2015

Religion as Resistance: Problematising and eulogising contemporary faith positions – Islam and Buddhism

BU research, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement, Research news Jonathan Parker

The crisis of the Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar through perilous sea routes reminds us of our visit to Myanmar, as part of our Fusion Fund study leave last year, where we discussed the newly formed assistance centre in Penang, Malaysia, set up for such people, with our Southeast Asian colleagues. The city of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, in Myanmar is graced by the golden pagodas of the national religion, Buddhism, and is also where Christian churches of past colonial times and new ‘mega-churches’, and mosques stand within easy reach and visibility of one another. Seemingly, then, based on this rich and historical bricolage of spiritual phenomena, Myanmar is a jewel of multi-faith tolerance. Underneath this thin and brittle surface, however, boils a crucible of ethnic, religious and nationalist violence.

At Schwedegon in Yangon

Our ingrained Westernised hegemonic partiality, in which we are presented with images of Buddhism as symbolising peace, compassion and contemplation, in contrast with Islam as the font of world terror, is seriously challenged in the Myanmar context. We experienced religion here as a form of resistance in respect of the revivalist religiosity of Baptist Christian groups amongst the Chin tribes during our short visit, which was also a time of curfew and riot, although not one generated by these groups who found an outlet for their dissatisfaction in their ‘born again’ philosophies and the construction of a sense of belonging through ‘otherness’. At that time the curfew was ordered in parts of the country because of the increasing discord and physical violence between nationalist Buddhist groups, including (bizarrely to some maybe) Buddhist monks, and the minority Islamic peoples, the Rohingya, who, although officially robbed of citizenship status and therefore stateless, also claim autochthonous status in Myanmar.

Indigeneity, itself, is a much-contested concept, more so when we consider theories of human evolution or when we excavate the historical migratory patterns employed by human groups. Indigeneity offers a powerful discourse that has been applied by all sides of the political spectrum: the oppressed and disenfranchised, and also those who seek, by means of violent ethno-nationalism, to protect their state borders, or to impose a particular ideology which is put forward as legitimisation owing to the prerogatives of precedence.

The Buddhist majority exert the forces of ethno-nationalism as a means of purifying modern Myanmar from this Islamic group, a use of state religion to justify oppression and to forge a single state religion. What we witnessed last year in Myanmar and what is happening to the Rohingya currently represents an uglier face of our working analytical concept of ‘religion as resistance’, creating the overt challenge of supremacist politics.

We have seen some of the worst of humanity in dealing with the crisis of the Rohingya fleeing from Myanmar. With Thailand policing its physical borders more rigorously, the people have turned to people smugglers, traffickers and to the seas, in particular the dangerous waters of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. We have witnessed Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia’s attempt to remove the ‘problem’ from their national boundaries but also then adopting a more humanitarian response under international pressure, and we have witnessed the shock of individuals when the full horror of trafficking and death is revealed. Yet we have not seen the international community mobilise in support of the Rohingya people perhaps for some immediate reasons. Firstly, the Rohingya are Muslim, and a stereotype of contemporary terrorism as located in faith ideologies prevails. These prejudices may be strengthened further by Western applaud of the economic, rather than political, raising, of the formerly impenetrable bamboo curtain of Myanmar. Finally, Western eyes may view the state religion in Myanmar through lenses of prior assumption of Buddhism as fundamentally and prima facie incompatible with aggressive oppression of others.

The plight of the Rohingya echoes, to varying degrees, that of many other displaced or disenfranchised indigenous peoples: dislocation, diminishment of economic, political and religious rights, and the precariousness of marginal existence. To exploit terms that the sociologist, Max Weber, coined, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) offers the rational-legal authority to battle their cause. However, there is also a need to call upon traditional authority to reinforce beleaguered identities and it is here that we see the contemporary development of religious resistance. This has its positive aspects in creating a sense of belonging, of purpose, of transcendence but it may also have a downside in creating active resistance not to oppression but to the rejected Other – and together forms another important plank in our exploration and theorisation. Our continuing work with the experiences and voices of indigenous peoples throughout Southeast Asia, MENA and now Central America will further develop this deeply intriguing concept of religion as resistance.

Jonathan Parker & Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

May 20, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund open for applications

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund stownrow

FIF is open!

Excuse me? You don’t know what FIF is?

FIF stands for the Fusion Investment Fund. It is designed to support staff in developing as researchers, educators and practitioners. Since its inception in 2012, FIF has funded over 200 projects with awards totalling more than £2m.

Want to know more?

Two funding strands are available to staff: Co-creation and co-production strand (CC&CP), and Staff mobility and networking strand (SMN).

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-ordinator, Sue Townrow, at Fusion Fund.

Category / Fusion Investment Fund

Fusion Investment Fund — Introducing the Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS)

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Successful completion: Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Valencia, Spain

Fusion Investment Fund 2014/15: Upskilling the Engineering Workforce – an update

GeoNet cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes

Understanding how people with depression think about how the past could have turned out differently

From Stour Valley to Silicon Valley-Dr. Dinusha Mendis on Research Leave in Stanford University California

Networking and research dissemination in San Diego

Game AI Master Class

European Fusion: An Early-career Academic’s Experience at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

FIF Erasmus – Teaching and archive research at Leipzig University

The virtual and the field: enhancing visualisation in archaeology using serious game technologies

Fusion Investment Fund – is it for you?

Fusion Investment Fund open for applications

Other services

Don’t miss a post!

Recent posts

Search by Category

Research Information Network

UKRI

Category / Fusion Investment Fund

Other services

Don’t miss a post!

Recent posts

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics