BU Research Blog

Category / Fusion

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, 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

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.

August 3, 2015

My month at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)

Fusion, Publishing mmoital

Last week my month long stay in Ciudad Real (Spain) as a guest of the University of Castilla – La Mancha (UCLM) came to an end. Over the period I worked with Dr. Angel Millan and Ph.D. student Marta Retamosa Ferreiro from the marketing department, exchanging ideas and experiences about research in marketing. Our main focus was on University branding as they have a substantial database about the perceptions of their university’s brand by multiple stakeholders.

Farewell lunch with Dr. Millan and PhD student Marta Retamosa Ferreiro

We worked on a paper about student satisfaction across different courses (engineering, business and nursing), using customer-based brand equity as the theoretical underpinning. This involved doing a factor analysis followed by a logistic regression and, as always, statistical analysis takes longer than you anticipate (even though we were already familiar with the tests!). In the end we got there and we are now continuing to write the paper.

Interestingly, I had not met Dr. Millan in person prior to my arrival in Ciudad Real. Five years ago I presented a paper in Portugal about emotions in events which Dr. Millan attended. He then started supervising a Ph.D. on business travel which featured a strong component of emotions (experienced by business travellers during their trip). In October they sent me an email asking if I was interested in co-authoring a paper with them. We ended up collaborating and submitted the paper to a good journal (three star according to the U.K.’s ABS list). After submission he commented that UCLM had funding for guest researchers and asked whether I would be interested in spending some time working with him. Fortunately I had a pretty uneventful July ahead and therefore we applied to the grant, which was awarded.

By the way, the paper we submitted got quite positive reviews, but as always we were asked to do some changes which we also worked on during my stay. We are now awaiting feedback about the revised version (we are optimistic as the changes requested were all possible to address!).

The month in Spain was not only about work. I have written about some of my non-work experiences in my blog.

July 22, 2015

Brazil – BU collaboration continues

Fusion, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer esilva

The Statistical Research Centre at Bournemouth University (BU) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC) in Brazil have an MoU for research collaboration, knowledge exchange and student exchange. The MoU was a product of the connection established between BU’s world renowned experts in Singular Spectrum Analysis; Dr. Hossein Hassani and Dr. Mansi Ghodsi, and PUC’s world renowned researcher in utility forecasting Prof. Reinaldo Castro Souza. The team from BU which involves Dr. Hassani, Dr. Ghodsi and their PhD student, Emmanuel Sirimal Silva is involved in an ongoing Brazilian national project which has been outsourced to PUC under the care of Prof. Souza. The project aims at producing 5-year-monthly scenarios for artificial natural energy (water available for hydroelectricity generation) in Brazil where 70% of the electricity relies solely on hydro power plants which in turn are largely dependent on rainfall. Given the high volatility and uncertainty associated with the problem, it is not viable to generate a single forecast in this case. Instead the problem requires a more complex approach which is where BU’s expertise in the time series analysis and forecasting method of Singular Spectrum Analysis comes into play. The project relies on Singular Spectrum Analysis for decomposing Brazil’s artificial natural energy and extracting the signal and noise for each of the four Brazilian sub-systems. The team from BU and PUC have exchanged several visits including a research stay of Emmanuel in Rio de Janeiro, whereby there has been considerable knowledge exchange via workshops and research collaboration. Professors Souza and Cyrino were in Bournemouth for a three-day visit to discuss developments and complications which required BU’s input. There was also an informal request to further engage with the BU team on a second Brazilian national project which could benefit from BU’s expertise in Singular Spectrum Analysis. The Head of the Accounting, Finance and Economics Department at BU, Prof. Jens Hӧlscher hosted the guests to exchange views on expanding the existing connection between the two Universities further in the future.

Prof. Reinaldo Castro Souza, Emmanuel Sirimal Silva, Prof. Jens Holscher and Prof. Fernando Cyrino at the Luncheon meeting.

July 22, 2015

The Midwifery quilt online- URA scheme funded project

Fusion, Women's Academic Network jhall

As part of my EdD thesis on ‘The essence of the art of a midwife..’ http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16560/ I created a reflexive textile quilt, with each of the squares representing an entry in my research diary. Whenever I have been to conferences with my quilt the question has always been asked ‘what do the squares mean’? Though I anticipate that anyone looking at it will gather their own interpretation of the squares my stories behind them are now accessible online. In the spring of this year I applied, and was pleased to receive, funding from the BU Undergraduate research assistantship scheme in order to create a web site for the quilt. For the past six weeks George Upson undergraduate student from the BA (Hons) Media Production course has been active in designing and creating the web site with me and learning about the world of academia in a small way. I am indebted to him for his creative abilities and to Garratt Lynch and Richard Wallis for their early support in the process, and also for the URA scheme!

The Midwifery quilt maybe accessed here http://www.midwiferyquilt.co.uk/

Dr Jenny Hall

July 20, 2015

Festival of Learning event demonstrates pilot Seen But Seldom heard e learning tool

Festival of Learning, Fusion, Knowledge Exchange, Public engagement, Research Ethics swincewicz

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

During last week’s Bournemouth University Festival of Learning, the team (Dr. Carrie Hodges, Faculty of Media and Communication; Wendy Cutts and Dr Lee-Ann Fenge, Faculty of Health and Social Science) held a pilot session for a new e-learning tool which they have developed in collaboration with young people from the Seen but Seldom Heard project.

This e-learning tool has been developed with funding from the Big Lottery Fund, and builds on previous work which has used participatory performative research methodologies, including performance poetry to enable young people with disabilities (aged 14-20 years) to explore the nature of disability within society and their own experiences of being disabled. The previous outputs from this project have included live performances as part of the Cultural Olympiad 2012, local literary festivals, a performance at the House of Commons in December 2014, as well as a documentary film (CLICK HERE for a ‘taster’).

The e-learning tool aims to develop understanding of the needs and experiences of young people with disabilities, in particular, amongst their peers, schools and communities. It includes information and engaging activities, and has been made in collaboration with young people from the Seen but Seldom Heard project. Media representations of disability are largely negative due to the limited number of stereotypes used and these stereotypes contribute to the ‘invisibility’ of disabled people within society. This tool hopes to challenge this ‘invisibility’ by encouraging people to think differently about aspects of discrimination linked to disability. It is hoped that this will be used widely in educational settings, as well as in the wider community to change hearts and minds. It will facilitate learning either as a stand-alone tool, or as part of a wider approach towards diversity and inclusivity.

The pilot session for the tool was helpful in terms of gaining feedback on how it could be further refined, before it is officially launched during the Autumn 2015. CLICK HERE for more details on the Seen But Seldo m Heard project

July 17, 2015

FoL event: What’s your story? Childbirth over the last 60 years.

Festival of Learning, Fusion, Public engagement jhall

Midwifery educators and researchers from CMMPH Dr Jen Leamon and Dr Jenny Hall, with help from Shelly Anne Stringer RDO, spent the day in an empty space engaging creatively with shoppers in the Sovereign Shopping centre in Boscombe. As part of BU Festival of Learning this is an ongoing project to consider the social history and contexts around people’s stories of birth. The childbirth process has in the last 60 years moved from being a private event shared by woman, their partner and the midwife to become a public one shared via many formats

of multimedia.

The day was spent encouraging members of the local community to contribute to a visual timeline of personal experiences of receiving or providing midwifery care, over the last sixty years.
The aim had been to engage local people in order to interrogate the local history of birth in the area. However on the day we gathered a wealth of stories from mothers, partners, grandparents and children with tales from the 1960’s to the present day but with a very international flavour!

We are very grateful to all those who sat and took the time to share their personal stories and were willing to add to the timeline. The stories were both moving and unexpected- that’s how research goes sometimes! More will develop on this project over time. We are also grateful to the team at the Sovereign centre who were so accommodating.

July 15, 2015

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

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, PG research, Post-award, Public engagement 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 15, 2015

Introducing Jo George, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Fusion, REF Subjects, Research assessment, student research zsheppard

Hello, I will be working within the Health and Social Sciences Faculty with Impact Champion, Zoe Sheppard, over the next six weeks on the endeavour to monitor and measure the impact of research.

My work will involve:

Exploring methods of dissemination
Conducting literature searches to investigate the demonstration of impact
Working on two research case studies from the Health and Social Social Sciences Faculty

I can be found in R613 and contacted at jgeorge@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any ideas or challenges you’d like to discuss. I will be sharing my findings towards the end of my six weeks here.

I look forward to meeting you,

July 4, 2015

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Public engagement 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.

July 1, 2015

BU Researchers Deliver Journalism Training for the Big Issue

Fusion Daniel Jackson

The Big Issue Online Journalism training programme finished off last week with a gallery exhibition of the participants’ work, open to the public. The event which took place in Poole Library featured articles and photos produced by the trainees during the 6-week course. The course, organised by the Big Issue, in collaboration with communications agency Poached Creative and Bournemouth University, targeted as participants Big Issue sellers or unemployed people with an interest in writing or photography. Its main aim was to equip the trainees with basic journalistic skills that would help them find their own public voice and offer a pathway to future employment.

BU researchers Dr Ann Luce, Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Einar Thorsen were approached by the Big Issue to deliver part of the training, after their successful collaboration with Access Dorset – a charity for disabled people – on a similar project that aimed at empowering people with disabilities through citizen journalism.

The Big Issue Online Journalism included lessons on news and features writing and photography, with a focus on interviewing and how to connect to the audience, as well as promoting work through social media. Participants also had the opportunity to put their newly adopted skills to practice by creating photo-essays and covering the Wheels Festival in Bournemouth, and individual choices for stories included such on the Dino Exhibition in Christchurch and a feature article about Chaplin’s bar in Boscombe. Works by all of the participants were published on the project’s blog. Guest talks were also given, including one by the editor of Dorset Life magazine.

One trainee said: “Training like this is not available anywhere. This is really good because it’s hands on as well as the written part of it. I’ve learnt a hell of a lot in a short period of time.”

Another participant also praised the course: “I’m stepping back into the right zone of getting back to work. Freelancing is difficult. This is good for networking, getting back with people, seeing how different people work and getting good feelings about yourself.”

Many said the training had given them a clearer idea of what topics they want to implement in their work, and a better understanding of what editors are looking for in order to get their work published in the future.

All of the participants had an artistic background and were engaged with writing, photography, music or painting – a hobby for some, a means for a living for others.

Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Einar Thorsen – assisted by students Daniel Weissman, Naomi Mihara and Stefani Tasheva – also worked on evaluating the project through interviewing the participants prior to their training as well as after to learn about their background, their expectations of the course and their experiences throughout the six weeks, and in what ways it was beneficial to them. The data from these interviews will be disseminated in upcoming publications.

June 30, 2015

Game AI Master Class

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, REF Subjects, Research themes 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 23, 2015

Collaborative ethnography and undergraduate learning

Fusion, Public engagement, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, student research Rosie Read

The value of providing undergraduate students with experience of conducting first hand, empirical research is widely recognised. As a social anthropologist, I’ve long been interested enabling students to discover and engage in ethnographic research. I’m presently developing a new taught unit in which for our BA Sociology and BA Sociology and Anthropology students will carry out ethnographic projects developed in collaboration with local community organisations. This endeavour necessarily poses challenges. One of them is time. Undergrad students’ learning is divided into units delivered over semesters, but a semester is very short time frame in which to design, carry out and write up an ethnographic project. The other is the nature of the collaboration with the non-academic partner, whether that be an NGO, community group, local government partner etc. How can this collaboration be shaped in a way which is beneficial to both parties?

IUPUI students visiting a housing redevelopment scheme in a lower income neighbourhood, Indianapolis, February 2015.

This term I have visited IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis), USA. IUPUI is a public university in which dialogue and engagement between faculty and students, on the one hand, and citizens, organisations and businesses, on the other, is a priority for both teaching and research. My visits have provided me with an opportunity to see a diverse range of ways in which this dialogue is promoted and sustained. Here I will summarise some of the strategies I have seen in action at IUPUI which are most pertinent to the kinds of collaborative, community-engaged student ethnographic projects I hope to develop at BU.

1. Investing time
The importance of investing time in developing relationships with local organisations which will have a stake in the research cannot be overstated. Whoever the partner is and whatever the nature of the collaboration, the project is enormously enhanced when both parties make time to talk to each other, arrive at a suitable, realisable aim of the project, and figure out how they are going to achieve it within the fixed timescale. This is of course easy to state and much harder to realise, as it involves all parties investing a very scarce resource, time, into the process. I followed an ethnographic research methods course closely during my visits, a project exploring urban regeneration within a low-income neighbourhood. This made clear the benefits of that early investment of time. Both the academic course leader and management, staff and volunteers at the community development organisation in the local area set aside considerable time in identifying the possibilities and foci of student research projects, long before the teaching proper started. This communication and collaboration also continued throughout the course itself, adjusting to changing and contingent circumstances as the student research projects progressed.

2. Framing the question
Central to the process above is negotiating the research question; what is it that the students will research and why? The question needs to address the interests and priorities of both partners. It must contain the potential for students to formulate their empirical focus and interpret their data in the light of theories and critical questions within their disciplines, and to produce findings which are of some benefit or use to non-academic partners, organisations and citizens. At IUPUI, I found out about series of student projects on urban development issues such as poverty, homelessness, housing, city regeneration strategies, gentrification and food production and consumption, to name some of them. These kinds of topics resulted in findings and interpretations which had both critical value as pieces of academic work and practical value to local people and organisations.

3. Moving teaching to community settings
I closely followed two courses which were taught off-campus in community settings – one in a church / community centre, the other in a women’s correctional facility. The success of any ethnographic project hinges on proximity and familiarity and so establishing this sense of closeness is obviously of enormous value to students. Teaching in a setting within which students will find an immediate mutuality of interest in their engagement with the people and organisations they are going to study helps students think of themselves as ethnographers. It provides the basis for developing relationships, trust, access and cooperation within the community, and for fostering local understanding of what the project is about. This is also a valuable experience that students take with them into their future careers.

4. Finding (new) ways of disseminating the research findings
Academics at IUPUI employed many different means of disseminating their students’ research projects and findings, enabling it to reach audiences within but also well beyond the city itself. Students were strongly encouraged and sometimes financially supported to attend national and international conferences. Funding was raised for publishing pamphlets, books and eBooks about their empirical studies and findings. Time was invested in developing impressive academic blogs and websites about their research. I provide a few links to just some of this fantastic work below.
I have gained many insights, ideas and sense of possibilities from my visits to IUPUI, and I’d like to extend my warm thanks to all colleagues and students whom I had the pleasure of meeting. Special thanks to Professor Susan B. Hyatt, whose scholarship inspired my visits and who made the whole thing possible in a practical sense.

Links to some online examples of IUPUI collaborative student research and scholarship:

– The ‘Neighborhood of Saturdays’. Student research project about urban multi-ethnic neighborhood in Indianapolis.

– ‘Eastside Story: Portrait of a Neighborhood on the Suburban Frontier’: Student project exploring historical change and community identities in a suburban area of Indianapolis.

– ‘Urban Heritage? Archaeology and Homelessness in Indianapolis’. A student project using archaeological methods to explore experiences of homelessness.

– ‘Ransom Place’ project: Collaborative project on culture, consumption and race in an African American neighbourhood in Indianapolis: http://www.iupui.edu/~anthpm/ransom.html

– ‘Archaeology and Material Culture’: blog of Professor Paul Mullins.
https://paulmullins.wordpress.com/author/paulmullins/

June 18, 2015

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

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, 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

The Politics of Societal Impact: Community Development and Critical Scholarship

Fusion, Public engagement, student research Rosie Read

How can we do research that engages with communities in a genuinely collaborative way? What kind of research produces findings which address critical questions about the structural issues and problems faced by communities, but which are also of practical and transformative benefit to them? If these two objectives pull researchers in different directions, what kind of balance can be struck between them?

These are questions I have been pondering during two visits this semester to IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis), in Indianapolis, USA. This is a university which places strong emphasis on the importance of community collaboration and engagement in scholarship and education. During two visits, I have particularly followed the community engaged work of Professor Susan Brin Hyatt.

I have known Professor Hyatt since June 2013, when she came to Bournemouth University to give a research seminar presentation about urban ethnographic research projects she and her students had undertaken in Indianapolis and Philadelphia (e.g., Hyatt et al 2012, Hyatt et al 2009. See also Hyatt 2001). During her visit we talked a lot about our common scholarly interests and discovered that we had a shared interest in the British Community Development Projects (CDPs) of the 1970s. The CDPs provide a very interesting example of the politics of using academic knowledge to bring about social change – or what we now call (societal) impact.

Meadow Well playground, 1976. Photography courtesy of Ken Grint. Available at IUPUI Digital Archive: http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/CDP/id/3685/rec/120

Initiated in 1969, the CDPs were a major social policy initiative, by the standards of then and now. There were twelve CDPs across the UK – mostly based in urban, industrial areas affected by economic decline, job loss and poverty. CDPs were set up with the aim of using community action to tackle various social problems associated with poverty and develop more integrated forms of service provision which responded to the local population’s needs. Each of the twelve CDPs incorporated a research team based in a university, and an action team based in the community, accountable to a local steering group. The idea was that social science knowledge and methods should both inform and support the development of local projects. The CDPs had an estimated budget of £5 million – a lot of money in those days. Most of the funding came from central government, but local CDPs operated with a high level of autonomy.

It is interesting to reflect on the CDPs from today’s vantage point. This was the creation of an ambitious infrastructure, across 12 regions, linking universities and academic researchers directly with community workers and activists in poor areas, with the explicit aim of enabling social science to inform social transformation. It is hard to imagine such a wide-ranging initiative emerging now, backed up by an equivalent budget from central government departments, in spite of widespread current concerns about growing use of food banks, zero hours contracts, high levels of in-work and child poverty and obscene income and housing inequalities; the kinds of problems which, some argue, are far more endemic now in the UK than they were in the 1970s.

Yet the CDP story is one in which two conflicting explanations of the causes of poverty unfolded (Loney 1983). The politicians and civil servants who set up the CDPs assumed a social pathology definition. They understood poverty to result essentially from the actions and beliefs of the poor themselves. From this viewpoint, what was needed was better, more joined up local services to help the poor to improve their skills and lifestyles, and become better adapted to the new economic realities of deindustrialisation. By contrast, those who worked for the CDPs quickly abandoned this definition of poverty in favour of a more structural perspective, attending to how social and economic policies reflected within corporate and government decision-making directly and indirectly gave rise to poverty and related social problems. In effect the CDP researchers, workers and activists refused to ‘localize’ the cause of the issues they tried to tackle. Their structural perspective informed how community action and research was used to engage, inform and mobilise local populations, and transform people’s lives for the better. This brought about many positive changes in areas in which CDPs were active and left some important legacies. However, this kind of impact was not what the government had in mind. CDPs were eventually wound down in the late 1970s, by which time politicians and senior government officials had mostly switched off from considering the implications of their findings for social policy at a wider level.

Although this was forty years ago, the CDPs have a strong contemporary resonance. Many of the problems tackled by the CDPs (poverty, insecure low paid work, unemployment) continue today, as do debates over how to deal with them. The activism and scholarship produced by the CDPs illustrates vividly how attempts to bring about positive change (to make an impact) in poor communities necessarily depends upon definitions of poverty which are always, inescapably political, whether or not they are recognised as such. As part of her research on British CDPs, Prof Hyatt and her colleagues at IUPUI have created a unique and extensive digital archive of many CDP reports, publications and photographs. This is an excellent resource for both teaching and research and I would like to recommend it to all colleagues interested in the issues discussed here.

References

Hyatt, SB., Linder, BJ., and Baurley, M. eds. 2012. The Neighborhood of Saturdays. Memories of a Multi-Ethnic Community on Indianapolis’ South Side. Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing.

Hyatt, SB., Branstrator, DW., Baurley, M., Dagon M., and Yarian, S. eds. 2009. Eastside Story. Portrait of a Neighborhood on the Suburban Frontier. Indianapolis: Department of Anthropology IUPUI, Neighborhood Alliance Press.

Hyatt, Susan B., 2001. From Citizen to Volunteer. Neoliberal Governance and the Erasure of Poverty. In Judith Goode and Jeff Maskovsky, eds. The New Poverty Studies. The Ethnography of Power, Politics and Impoverished People in the United States. New York: New York University Press.

Loney, Martin 1983. Community Against Government. The British Community Development Project 1968-78. London: Heinemann

June 10, 2015

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

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.

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