Category / Fusion themes

Pokhara workshop on academic writing 2022

This week from Sunday till Tuesday (21-23 August) Hotel Mount Kailash Resort hosts a three-day writing and publishing workshop for academics and researchers.  The workshop is led by Dr. Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen all three from Bournemouth University in the south of England, Dr. Emma Pitchforth from the University of Exeter in the west of England, and Dr. Rashmee Rajkarnikar from the Central Department of Economics at Tribhuvan University.  Shovita highlighted: “As sociologist and a female researcher I think it is very important to address gender issues in all part of society, including academic writing and publishing.”

This workshop targeting young academics in and around Pokhara and it is funded by The British Academy.  The project builds research capacity of early career researchers researching gender in Nepal-based higher education institutions by improving their chances of getting published in international journals in English.   In Nepal the workshop is further supported by Social Science Baha and Green Tara Nepal.  The workshop centres around the 23 chapters of the textbook ‘Academic Writing and Publishing in Health and Social Sciences’ was published this year by Social Science Baha and Himal Books in Kathmandu. 

IMSET publishes position paper on long-term sustainability

Fabio Silva of the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, together with a group of co-authors from 32 other institutions, has led the publication of a landmark position paper in the journal Sustainability entitled Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée.

Stemming from a transdisciplinary workshop held online during 2020, the paper argues that current crises – in land use, biodiversity, novel pathogens, water management – can only be fully understood by doing research over timescales that greatly exceed the lifespan of any individual human. This so-called longue durée is the key to fully understanding the full extent of socio-environmental processes and their implications.

 

The spatial and temporal scales of key social and environmental processes of interest

 

As well as identifying key processes and challenges, IMSET and colleagues set out how key issues may be addressed by fully integrating humans into environmental modelling and planning. By including ancient human activity and future outcomes in our mission statement, we aim to provide a manifesto for developing an integrated approach towards socio-ecological systems in the long term.

Silva, Fabio, Fiona Coward, Kimberley Davies, Sarah Elliott, Emma Jenkins, Adrian C. Newton, Philip Riris, Marc Vander Linden, Jennifer Bates, Elena Cantarello, Daniel A. Contreras, Stefani A. Crabtree, Enrico R. Crema, Mary Edwards, Tatiana Filatova, Ben Fitzhugh, Hannah Fluck, Jacob Freeman, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Marta Krzyzanska, Daniel Lawrence, Helen Mackay, Marco Madella, Shira Yoshi Maezumi, Rob Marchant, Sophie Monsarrat, Kathleen D. Morrison, Ryan Rabett, Patrick Roberts, Mehdi Saqalli, Rick Stafford, Jens-Christian Svenning, Nicki J. Whithouse, and Alice Williams. 2022. “Developing Transdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainability Challenges: The Need to Model Socio-Environmental Systems in the Longue Durée Sustainability 14: 10234. DOI: 10.3390/su14161023

 

 

NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) seminar – 1st September 12-2pm

Are you interested in finding out about the NIHR RfPB funding
programme? Join our online seminar on 1st September 2022 from
12.00pm – 2.00pm

About the seminar

The seminar will be hosted by the NIHR Research Design Service and will provide a great opportunity to hear from members of the RfPB programme team and funding panel, as well as from successful applicants. There will also be information about the RDS and the support available for people who are applying to the programme.

Who is the seminar for?

Researchers and health and social care professionals who want to learn more about the RfPB programme and the support available to them.

What will the seminar cover?
• An overview of the RfPB programme
• What the funding panel look for in an application
• Experience of previous successful applicant(s)
• Including Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in your application
• Including Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in your application
• How the NIHR RDS can support applicants

How to book a place
Please register via this link.
The full programme and further details will be sent nearer to the date of the seminar.

Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU)

We can help with grant applications to National peer reviewed funders. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.

Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice

Feel free to call us on 01202 961939 or send us an email.

New volume on skyscape archaeology edited by Dr Fabio Silva

A new volume on skyscape archaeology, co-edited by Dr Fabio Silva of IMSET and the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, has been published this week.

Solarizing the Moon: Essays in Honour of Lionel Sims (Archaeopress, 2022) gathers contributions from thirteen anthropologists, archaeologists and cultural astronomers that delve into three key areas: (1) Anthropology and Human Origins, (2) Prehistory and Megalithic Monuments, and (3) Theoretical Developments. These represent the research interests of our colleague Prof Lionel Sims (Emeritus, University of East London), who passed away in 2021, and which this volume celebrates.

More details, including a free download of the introduction, can be found here.

 

New paper on Amazonian Dark Earths involving IMSET researchers

Today, Nature Communications published a long-expected Matters Arising in response to a 2021 paper in the same journal: “A new hypothesis for the origin of Amazonian Dark Earths“. The new paper, involving more than 50 leading scholars involved in research on prehistoric Amazonia, affirms a human origin for the dark earths found throughout the central and eastern Amazon basin.

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are distinguished by their exceptional fertility and richness of archaeological remains. Evidently produced by various kinds of human activity, including but not limited to manuring, rubbish deposition, and biomass burning, they are a distinctive feature of later indigenous settlement of the Amazon river basin.

The paper synthesises diverse archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, and historic data to demonstrate the human origin of ADEs. Source: Lombardo et al. 2022

For more information see: Lombardo, U., Arroyo-Kalin, M., Schmidt, M. et al. Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths. Nat Commun 13, 3444 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31064-2

Professor Feigenbaum and her team launch guide on social media storytelling for health literacy

Creating social media posts that aim to build health or information literacy is challenging. It is one thing to get likes on a video of a cute dog dancing or your latest holiday pics, it is another to develop reflective, empathetic understanding of complex phenomena in a bite-sized image or video.

To help guide people through the process of creating social media stories for information and health literacy,  Professor Feigenbaum designed the Pick N Mix strategy. This Pick N Mix method is based on research findings from her team’s UKRI/AHRC COVID-19 Rapid Response project that analysed over 15,000 webcomics to look at the role this medium played in public health messaging on Instagram during the first year of the pandemic. The guide also draws from current research in psychology, graphic medicine and media studies. It was designed by creative studio partners Minute Works.

On 10th June 2022 Professor Feigenbaum and her team of BU student RAs — Katie Penfound, Kristy Hart, Linh Trinh and Abbie Smith — launched the new guide during a training workshop for stakeholders delivered to project partners from University Hospitals Dorset, CILIP The Library and Information Association and CEMP’s EdD programme.
The guide and stakeholder training session are set to make a meaningful impact, already getting great feedback from stakeholders.
Reaching out to a wider audience, on 14 June 2022, Professor Feigenbaum and BU alumni Ozlem Demirkol Tonnesen, an AHRC project RA and PhD Candidate at the University of Southampton, published a piece for The Conversation’s Quarter Life series, translating their storytelling strategies for social media content creators in their 20s and 30s.
Professor Feigenbaum and her team’s research on social media storytelling for health literacy will feature later this year at the British Science Festival. For more resources on social media storytelling for information and health literacy, you can check out their healthy socials training pack and AHRC project website.

Another research league table

This week Research.com, a prominent academic platform, published its 2022 Edition of the Ranking of Top 1000 Scientists in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities.  Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), is listed as number 234 in United Kingdom ranking as well as number 1238 in the Social Sciences and Humanities world ranking.

 

FMC Researcher Lyle Skains Co-Edits Field-Defining Collection

THE ELECTRONIC LITERATURE ORGANIZATION PRESENTS VOLUME 4 OF FIELD-DEFINING COLLECTION

Announcing the publication of the ELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION VOLUME 4, a freely accessible, Creative Commons-licensed collection of 132 digital-born literary works from 42 author nationalities in 31 languages. ELC4 debuted at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference in Como, Italy, May 30-June 1, 2022.

The Electronic Literature Collection, hosted by the Electronic Literature Organization, defines the field of electronic literature. Each volume recognises contemporary works, trends, and emerging creators in born-digital narrative and poetry. This collection is used as a foundational teaching text in university programs incorporating studies of electronic literature, interactive narratives, and e-poetry around the world.

Selected from more than 450 works, ELC4 presents the largest group yet of author/makers writing in Afrikaans, Ancient Chinese, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, isiXhosa, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mezangelle, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Setswana, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, South African Sign Language, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Yoruba.

The Collection includes commercial works such as groundbreaking VR experiences and narrative video games. These join the many other works that are open access: database fictions, autoethnographies by GenZ makers, works that play with AI, geospatial storytelling via mobile phones–among many other styles and platforms.

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 was edited by Kathi Inman Berens, John T. Murray, R. Lyle Skains, Rui Torres, and Mia Zamora with the assistance of an international advisory board and three student fellows.

“We made a strong effort to discover artists who were previously unknown to us,” said the Editors. “Curators in Mexico, India, West Africa, and international consultants from six continents helped us discover and evaluate works in languages we don’t speak.”

“Our driving purpose was to expand the collection in terms of diversity,” added Skains, “and to make the origins of these works searchable and transparent to all collection users.”

Teachers looking to engage students in cutting-edge literary works will find they can freely access ELC4 on their phones. Classroom computers aren’t necessary. It’s like a free textbook!

Scholars will appreciate being able to download and study the code and media assets of featured works. The Electronic Literature Organization hosts versions of the works to ensure perpetual access, even after operating systems and software are updated or become obsolete.

FREELY ACCESS THE ELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION VOLUME 4 here:
https://collection.eliterature.org/4/

ELC4 is the fourth collection published by the Electronic Literature Organization in 22 years. All four are available freely via Creative Commons license: https://collection.eliterature.org/

The Electronic Literature Organization was founded in 1999 to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment. A 501c(3) non-profit organization, ELO includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers from around the world.

NIHR Grant Applications Seminar ONLINE – 7th July 2022

  

Dear colleagues

– Do you have a great idea for research in health, social care or public health?
– Are you planning to submit a grant application to NIHR?

Our popular seminar continues online and will take place on Thursday 7th July 2022 from 10.00am – 12.30pm.

The seminar provides an overview of NIHR funding opportunities and research programme remits, requirements and application processes. We will give you top tips for your application and answer specific questions with experienced RDS South West advisers.

We also have a limited number of 20-minute 1-to-1 appointments available after the seminar should you wish to discuss your proposed study with an RDS adviser.

Find out more and book a place.

Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU)

We can help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.

Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice

Feel free to call us on 01202 961939 or send us an email.