Considering we were late and included much of Monday’s news in the last update, this is a bumper update for you. Lots of data and lots of speculation about fees etc. We have managed to avoid the B word this week – as you will have had enough of it from all the other news sources.
Internships
Sophie Bradfield, the Policy & Campaigns Coordinator for SUBU, returns with another guest piece for us this week
Sutton Trust has published research today on graduate internships detailing that “39% of graduates in their twenties have done an internship, including almost half (46%) of young graduates under 24.” These statistics have a direct correspondence with research published in a Lancaster University HECSU-funded Graduate Resilience Project in 2016, looking at how students transition after graduating, where “45% of respondents identified a concern that they lacked relevant experience.” Pairing this with the competition for graduate jobs, it’s of no surprise that so many students seek to undertake internships. At BU gaining placements and real-world experience is a unique selling point and as BU proudly states on the placement information page “90% of our graduates have relevant work experience and this can give you a real head start in the competitive jobs market.” The Students’ Union at Bournemouth University (SUBU) is in absolute agreement that offering opportunities to gain experience can really help students to stand out from the crowd; learn transferable skills for employment; and increase employability and so we have a lot of extra-curricular opportunities on offer for students and collaborate with BU on a number of joint projects including recruiting paid students to be on programme review panels.
Congratulations to BU PhD student Dimitrios Vlachos who had his PROSPERO protocol published [1]. Dimitrios working on a project promoting the Mediterranean-style diet in childbearing age, he is supervised across faculties by Dr. Fotini Tsofliou and Prof. Katherine Appleton.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
Many congratulations to Dr. Nirmal Aryal, postdoctoral researcher in FHSS for his new publication ‘Blood pressure and hypertension in people living at high altitude in Nepal’ in Hypertension Research[1]. Hypertension Research is a prestigious journal published by Nature (Impact Factor of 3.4).
This is the first study of its kind to collect cardiovascular disease and risk factors related information at four different altitude levels above or equal to 2800 m and from ethnically diverse samples. This paper highlighted that despite known hypoxia-induced favourable physiological responses on blood pressure, high altitude residents (>2800 m) in Nepal might have an increased risk of raised blood pressure associated with lifestyle factors and clinicians should be aware of it. The authors previously published a systematic review paper summarizing global evidence on the relationship between blood pressure and high altitude [2].
This publication is available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41440-018-0138-x and pre-refereed version is available in BURO.
Well done!
Dr. Pramod Regmi & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
References:
Aryal N, Weatherall M, Bhatta YKD, Mann S. Blood pressure and hypertension in people living at high altitude in Nepal. Hypertension Res 2018 doi: 10.1038/s41440-018-0138-x[published Online First: Epub Date]|
Aryal N, Weatherall M, Bhatta YKD, Mann S. Blood pressure and hypertension in adults permanently living at high altitude: a systematic review and meta-analysis. High Alt Med Biol 2016; 17: 185-193.
You are warmly invited to participate to the final dissemination event of our AHRC e-Voices: Redressing Marginality International Network, titled Creativity and Marginality. The event will take place on December 5 (4pm-8pm), Lawrence Lecture Theatre and The Lees Gallery.
The Creativity and Marginality Symposiumwas conceived of, following a series of workshops and events held in the UK, Kenya and Brazil, as part of the AHRC E-Voices: Redressing Marginliaty Network (evoices.cemp.ac.uk). This network focuses upon marginalized groups across different geographical regions that are using technologies in a range of ways to bring voice to their experiences of marginality.
In this symposium BU academics across faculties will present their own research which resonates with the theme: addressing creativity in practice, research method and outcome and with socially marginalized groups. The symposium will be followed by the opening of an exhibition featuring a small selection of pieces presented at the ShiftEye Gallery in Nairobi Kenya. It will also include some pieces from other projects. Finally the evening will conclude with a screening of the documentary Aji-Bi: Under the Clock Tower (2015) by Moroccan director Rajaa Saddiki. A film about a group of Senegalese migrant women working as hairdressers and stranded in Casablanca.
The paper is based on research on research they undertook last year on the impact of Brexit on the social care workforce. A key finding is that, irrespective of whether they employ EU/EEA workers or not, research participants have deep concerns about Brexit’s potential impact on the social care labour market. These include apprehensions about future restrictions on hiring EU/EEA nurses, as well as fears about increased competition for care staff and their organisation’s future financial viability. This article amplifies the voices of managers as an under‐researched group, bringing their perspectives on Brexit to bear on wider debates on social care workforce sustainability.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
Read R, Fenge L‐A. (2018) What does Brexit mean for the UK social care workforce? Perspectives from the recruitment and retention frontline.
Health Soc Care Community [online first] :1–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12684
Last week was dominated by the Brexit political turmoil and no major HE reports were launched (although there are some coming later this week). The media continued to wring all the coverage they could out of the fee cut speculations and there was news on an American university who is currently registering with the OfS to takeover a London university college. And on Monday there was news for the TEF review and on accelerated degree fees.
TEF Review
The details for the Independent Review of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) have been announced. The Terms of Reference are here and the 2016 policy paper has also been shared here.
CoPMRE held its Fifteenth Annual Symposium Globalisation and Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges in October. The conference was a success thanks to the inspiring speakers and received excellent feedback. You can read a full report on the conference here and authorised presentations can be found here.
Congratulations to Denyse King, who is currently attending the Future Technologies Conference, FTC 2018; Vancouver, BC; Canada (15-16 November). Her conference paper ‘NoObesity apps – From approach to finished app’ has been published in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing[1]. Denyse is part of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMHP) where she is a Lecturer (Academic) in Midwifery based at BU’s campus in Portsmouth ,
Obesity is still a growing public health problem in the UK and many healthcare workers find it challenging to have a discussion with service users about this sensitive topic. They also feel they are not competent to provide the relevant heath advice and are seeking easily accessible, evidence-based, mobile health learning (mHealth). mHealth applications (apps) such as the Professional NoObesity and Family NoObesity (due for release late 2018), have been designed to: support families with making sustainable positive behaviour changes to their health and well-being, ease pressure on practitioners’ overweight and obesity care related workloads, as well as to support the education of professionals, students and service users. This paper describes the process of designing the apps from the inception of the idea, through the stages of research, app builds and testing. The processes of collaborative working to design and develop the apps to meet the needs of both service users and health professionals will also be reflected upon. Childhood obesity is an complex problem and whilst it is recognised that the NoObesity apps cannot singlehandedly resolve this health crisis, it is proposed that they can support families to identify and reduce the barriers that prevent them from living healthier, happier lives.
Reference:
King D., Rahman E., Potter A., van Teijlingen E. (2019) NoObesity Apps – From Approach to Finished App. In: Arai K., Bhatia R., Kapoor S. (eds) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2018. FTC 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 881. Springer, Cham, pp. 1145-1157.
Three weeks ago I had a pleasure and amazing opportunity to attend and engage with fantastic research training – the 4th European University Association (EUA) Funding Forum. The forum took place in one BU’s current and established Erasmus+ links – the Universitat Ramon Llull (Barcelona, Spain).
The 4th EUA Funding Forum, titled ‘Frameworks that empower, universities that deliver’ has primarily focused on macro-level changes that affect models and processes that EU universities traditionally apply.
The opening talk by Joseph Garrell I Guiu, Rector of Ramon Llull University (Spain); Jose Manuel Pingarron Carrazon, Secretary General of Universities (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) and Rolf Tarrach, President of the European University Association, highlighted the roles of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in a deeper engagement with social issues. This naturally can be done via education. However, research and business engagement would require different models of thinking in relation to funding. Investments should be attracted from elsewhere and with the purpose of HEIs being at forefront of sustainable living. BU with its new BU2025 vision and strategic plan puts a large emphasis on responsibility. However, to deliver an evidence-based impact would require reconsideration of processes and in many cases steeping out of the HE comfort zone and take risk by implementing different but importantly efficiency-based approaches.
Following the opening talk, Thomas Estermann, Director, Governance, Funding and Public Policy Development at EUA has presented astonishing statistics on how various HEIs within the EU operate in terms of attracting investment and students. Photo below show extract from the slides, presented by Thomas Estermann.
4th EUA Forum, Thomas Estermann
Thomas Estermann stated that the UK has a 20% decrease in attracting any sort of investment that supports HE sector. This is mainly driven by a lesser exposure to funding opportunities that the UK had access to but also nation-wide issues with decreasing student numbers. This left me wondering what can be done to minimise the gap.
Elvira Bolat, 4th EUA Forum
The event took place over two days, 18-19th October, and was an amazing opportunity to meet a frontline of EU HEIs’ leadership. Combination of plenary sessions and masterclasses offered the participants, not only an opportunity to network, but hear stories of ‘brave’ approaches to leading and managing HEIs and to learn about i.e. new types of partnerships within the HE context that can generate funding to support HEIs’ missions or importance of integrating business intelligence systems and management structures to inform HEIs’ processes.
One of my favourite talks was a panel formed by Mikulas Bek, Rector of Masaryk University (Czech Republic); Francisco Jose Mora Mas, Rector of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) and Petra Wend, Vice-Chancellor of Queen Margaret University (United Kingdom).
The 4th Funding Forum Plenary Panel I
The panel shared personal professional stories of their HEIs’ journeys in tackling financial uncertainty. It was quite refreshing to see how HEIs are moving, although I must admit this is a slow follow-up on some comprehensive business models, towards evidence-based decision-making via data mining and data-based intelligence. It is uplifting for me to witness the shift in HE leadership mindset, as my and Dr Gelareh Roushan’s PhD student, Claudia Vanzellotti, is exploring how for instance social media intelligence is embedded into small and medium sized enterprises’ (SMEs) strategic decision-making. In era of Big Data HEIs ought to observe trends around own sector but also other related and unrelated contexts which will spark ideas for efficient processes and funding models that will generate impact. Listening to students and open consented online conversations is also something educators should be doing in order to adapt pedagogical models and deliver effective and exciting education experiences.
Overall, attending the 4th Funding Forum had a number of immediate benefits for me:
Expansion of networks with various organisations (i.e. HEIs, governments, other public organisations and businesses);
A better understanding of the HE environment, challenges and future areas of consideration, critical for the UK HEIs operating in post-Brexit context;
Knowledge around the latest thinking in the debate around sources of funding for HEIs – the programme covered sessions around leadership, evaluation of economic impact of research activities, on how to develop income-generating partnerships, on designing institutional efficiency strategy, university management and overview of next generation of EU funding;
Feeding lessons learned on HE strategic directions into design of new UG and PG programmes across the Business School departments as well as within global engagement models we ought to consider.
Of course following BU’s Fusion I would like to reflect on some teaching and pedagogical lessons I gained from attending the 4th Funding Forum. In particular, I learnt about new TEL tool, Sli.do, that is alternative to Mentimeter and Kahoot and allows engaging large groups of students via Q&A feeders or group discussions to stimulate a better understanding and critical thinking around the content. I already experimented with the Sli.do during several talks in October/November 2018 period and found it easy to use, from both facilitator and audience perspectives. In addition I am planning to use the interviewing / conversational approach to Panel session discussions during the conference that Dr Kaouther Kooli, Dr Julie Robson and I are co-organising with the University of Manouba in Tunis this December.
Last but not least the training, funded by Erasmus+, enabled me to meet and network with the host institution’s colleagues. BU’s Business School has a long lasting and successful relationships in terms of staff and student mobility with the Universitat Ramon Llull (URL). URL is located in fantastic location, Barcelona, and has amazing facilities which are combined by modern architecture and historical buildings.
Quite impressed by Ramon Llull University campus. It is our Business School’s @BUAACSB1 current Erasmus partner so I recommend all students to consider coming and spending a semester abroad here @GlobalBUpic.twitter.com/K6zcm7qY9G
— Dr Elvira Bolat👩🏻💻👩🏻🏫🤳🏻💡🏃🏼♀️🏖 (@Elvira_MLady) October 18, 2018
URL did truly amazing job with hosting the 4th Funding Forum, showcasing its facilities, professionalism of staff and students and warm hospitality of Catalonian capital.
Overall it has been an amazing experience, which will feed into many more exciting professional projects for me personally but also for the Department of Marketing, the Business School and BU. To conclude this post, I would like to leave you with this slide:
The 4th EUA Funding Forum: Presentation by Thomas Estermann
To survive, HEIs need to experiment, expand their external networks and defend their autonomy.
If you wish to experience something new, learn, network and enhance your knowledge in areas of research and/or education, and/or professional practice, I would highly recommend applying for the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Training funding.
Elvira Bolat, Principal Academic in Marketing (The Business School), e-mail:ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk
Two major reports out this week covering value for money and international students plus all the excitement and intense debate from Wonkfest. Enjoy!
Value for Money in HE
The Education Select Committee have published their inquiry report on Value for Money in Higher Education. The committee calls on both universities and the Government to ensure better outcomes for students, expand degree apprenticeships, make university more accessible to a more diverse range of students and tackle Vice-Chancellor pay. Here are the key recommendations taken from the report: (more…)
The conference was attended by over 1,400 participants from 51 countries in Europe and beyond. During the event more than 1,000 academic presentations were delivered in more than 100 themed sessions and two plenary sessions by Prof. Eszter Hargittai, Dr Lina Dencik as well as Prof. José Van Dijck and Dr Thomas Allmer. The plenaries focused on the central theme of the conference, ‘Centres and Peripheries: Communication, Research, Translation’ and addressed some of the most pressing pan-European issues in the field of media and communication. One of the sessions, delivered in the format of a critical intervention, focused on the issues surrounding the exploitation of academics in the field. Among the conference organising committee members was Dr Paweł Surowiec of the Faculty of Media of Communication, who also serves as the ECREA’s Treasurer. For more information about the conference follow #ECREA2018 or speak to the ECREA Coordinator in the Faculty, Dr Einar Thorsen (Ass. Prof.). The next biennial ECREA conference, 8th European Communication Conference, will take place between 2-5 October 2020. The event will be hosted by the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal.
CEMP convened the 12th Media Education Summit in Hong Kong last week. It was the biggest MES so far, with 170 delegates from 27 countries attending at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Feedback from delegates has been overwhelmingly positive – see the MESHK18 twitter thread – including invitations from prospective hosts in Asia. North America and central Europe for future years and several CEMP Ed-Doc enquiries have already been made by delegates from Hong Kong, China and Japan. Here are two examples:
I would like to thank you once again for a wonderful time in Hong Kong. For me it was a learning experience like no other, an experience that i shall never forget. (Doctoral student, Malta).
First of all, thank you so much for producing such a lovely conference for 170 participants from 27 countries including me.I know how hard you have been working on the preparation and facilitation. Few people can do such matter. Take a sound rest and nice tea of Hong Kong, please. (Professor, Tokyo)
Researchers who presented have been invited to submit their work to Media Practice and Education, the journal edited in CEMP and BU doctoral graduate Marketa Zezuokova teamed up with South Island School to run this year’s youth strand, concluding with the school students forming a ‘flipped panel’ to field questions from the academics.
All the keynotes, the Youth MES video and Karen Fowler-Watt’s film with Fergal Keane will be available on the CEMP site in due course.
MES is a big project and the team at the event (Karen Fowler-Watt, Mark Readman, Annamaria Neag and Julian McDougall) are grateful to the people who make it happen at BU – Laura Hampshaw and Lokesh Sivakumar.
Watch this space for an announcement soon about the next MES!!
As previously trailed in the media the Autumn Budget was focused on demonstrating the end of austerity. There wasn’t much in the way of HE announcements, however paperwork released with the budget confirms that the Government intends to continue to freeze the maximum tuition fees at the current £9,250 level (UUK report this means £200 million less funding for the sector by 2023-24). Previously announced increases to research and development funding (£1.6 billion more) were reiterated:
£1.1 billion through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
£120 million through Strength in Places fund
£150 million for research fellowship schemes
Funding for 10 university enterprise zones, and for catapult centres
Congratulations to Lesley Milne, senior lecturer in midwifery, on the acceptance of her latest paper on maternity care in Nepal. This new paper ‘Gender inequalities and childbearing: A qualitative study of two maternity units in Nepal’ will appear soon in the Open Access publication: Journal of Asian Midwives[1]. This is the second publication from a qualitative research study undertaken in two birthing facilities in Kathmandu Valley to examine barriers to women accessing these services from the perspective of hospital staff [2].
The study received financial support from Wellbeing of Women and the RCM (Royal College of Midwives) as Lesley won their first International Fellowship Award. The study was a collaboration led by Lesley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) with two of FHSS’s Visiting Faculty, namely Prof. Padam Simkhada who is based at Liverpool John Moores University and Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate based at Poole NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust.
Well done!
Profs. Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen
References
Milne, L., Ireland, J., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P.P. (2018) Gender inequalities and childbearing: A qualitative study of two maternity units in Nepal, Journal of Asian Midwives (accepted).
Milne, L., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Ireland, J. (2015) Staff perspectives of barriers to women accessing birthing services in Nepal: A qualitative study BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth15:142 www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/15/142 .
Find out more, by contacting Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework Facilitator and BU’s EURAXESS Local Contact Point, if you are:
Using EURAXESS as a BU researcher
Using EUARXESS as an external researcher and want to know more about BU’s opportunities (where your email will be forwarded, if necessary, for further attention)
Using EURAXESS as a member of the BU Team to make more use of EURAXESS services, in order to promote BU’s research activity, supporting incoming researchers to BU or other related purpose
In February 2018 I was invited by Artercitya on a (still on-going) residency as an audio artist in a very large international project called Freiraum, organised by the Goethe-Institut and funded, amongst other important funders, by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. In the project, 38 cities in Europe, are dealing with the question of freedom in Europe today and consider where or how this freedom might be in danger.
My involvement in the project, engaged Artecitya and ArtBOX (a big Creative Arts Management company) with my work as an educator here at Bournemouth University. They became particularly interested in the Graduate Production work created by our Level 6 students in the BA Media Production Course and particularly in the Graduate Production Project Unit, which I lead.
During the unit, ArtBOX, who organise the 3rd Artecitya Art Science Technology Festival – THE NEW NEW, realised by the Thessaloniki International Fair – HELEXPO, with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, came to the university and students had a chance to present to them prototypes of their graduate production work.
As a result, two of our BAMP Level 6 graduating students and my own supervisees, Daniel Bell and George Fisher, whose work fulfilled the brief of this new media arts event, were selected and presented their work, along with mine, in this major international exhibition, THE NEW NEW, in Thessaloniki –Greece between September 8 -16 2018.
In the link below you can see video and pictures from the exhibition and read details of our artworks and involvement in this major international event: http://www.artbox.gr/AST-2018.html
The three artworks, Daniel Bell’s Spectra, George Fisher’s Echoes in Space and my own Air Free, were very warmly received by the visitors and first survey results from the even organisers suggest that the work was seen by over 10.000 people and that the exhibition was voted amongst the most popular events in this major international fair.
Echoes in Space – George Fisher
Echoes in Space consists of 8 unique soundscapes and visuals themed after each of the planets’ characteristics. These soundscapes are an artistic reimagining of the Voyager probes recordings, though scattered throughout are real excerpts from the original Voyager recordings. Echoes in Space is a blurring of reality and crafted content; it asks the viewer to consider the divide between reality and fiction. As well as to understand the difficulty in comprehending what is real and what is crafted when you find yourself confronted by the unknown, and to ask oneself if there truly is a difference?
Spectra – Daniel Bell
Spectra is an audio-visual installation focusing on the contrast and convergence between the human and natural worlds. Stemming from the artists philosophy that every new concept we face in life comes to us as a spectrum of information, and to fully comprehend new concepts we must appreciate each spectra in their entirety
Air Free Future
The first iteration of my artwork Air Free that was presented in Greece, is made up of interviews with members of local communities in Thessaloniki, responding to questions on isolation and freedom. As a response to the Freiraum brief, the artwork is now entering a second phase. During this phase, I will be visiting Carlisle (UK) in order to conduct further recordings with members of the local community there on the same themes, by bringing the recordings from Greece to them. These new recordings will then be used along with the recordings from Thessaloniki in a second iteration of the artwork, which will be presented in an exhibition organised by the Goethe-Institut in Berlin Germany, between 12-13 March 2019.
Air Free Impact
My own work for Freiraum, due to its themes and very large scale international reach, lends itself rather strongly for an impact study, which I am now working on. Particularly looking at how the work brings forth issues of isolation in Europe today by bringing the voices of local communities, including the voices of minorities, in communication with each other as well as with international audiences.
George Fisher, Echoes in Space, 2018
Daniel Bell, Spectra, 2018
Evi Karathanasopoulou, Air Free, 2018, (audience member listening).
The New New festival at TIF- Helexpo, Thessaloniki
As co-editor of the Journal of Asian Midwives I receive occasional updates from the Aga Khan University (AKU) library in Pakistan on the number of downloads of articles published in the journal. The journal is fully Open Access and does not charge a submission or processing fees! All articles in the Journal of Asian Midwives are stored online in the AKU Institutional Repository. The latest update with data until end of September 2018 informed us that there had been: 18,462 downloads, from 167 countries/regions, across 56 articles. Nearly 20,000 downloads is not bad for a fairly new journal, which only published its inaugural issue online in 2014.
What is interesting is that the detailed download figures show that Bournemouth University is the highest ranking university of all the downloading organisations. Listed as fifth on the download list, Bournemouth is behind two commercial organisations, the Pakistan library network and Bangladesh-based Icddr-B. The latter is one of the largest NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations in the world based on staff numbers. Of course it helps that Bournemouth academic staff and PhD students have published five scientific articles in the past four editions of the journal [1-5].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Dorset Global Health Network invites you to its next meeting focusing on Africa on Wednesday 7 November 2018 in Bournemouth University’s Executive Business Centre. The meeting organised by Primary Care Workforce Centre starts with a dinner at 6.30 PM with the event running between 19.00 and 21.00. You can register here!
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George Fisher, Echoes in Space, 2018
Daniel Bell, Spectra, 2018
Calling all PGRs! Apply for the May Research Café by 14 March
Coming soon : The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey 2025
BRIAN drop-in surgery, 11th March.
Being Human Festival 2025: call for applications now open
Presenting HSRI results at Nepal Dialogue UK
Horizon Europe info days 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.