Faisal Alsubaie (PhD, BUBS) with this poster entitled: The effect of cultural tightness-looseness on tourism destination choice for Western Europeans: Evidence from Saudi Arabia.
Click the poster below to enlarge.
This study addresses the question “How do the changes in cultural tightness–looseness (CTL) influence the perceptions of Western European tourists and their willingness to visit Saudi Arabia (SA)”? To answer this research question, the study adopts a research design of two phases sequential mixed method; (1) first phase employs a quantitative survey to measurement the tourists’ perceptions of the recent changes in cultural tightness (i.e., the strength of cultural norms and tolerance for deviant behaviour) and their impacts on their intention to visit SA. (2) the second phase employs a qualitative semi-structured interviews to get an in-depth explanation of the findings of the first phase of the study. This study contributes to the literature by developing a framework using CTL theory to investigate the effects of CTL on tourism destination choice in a Saudi context which has not been examined before.
You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.
If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.
Ceyda Kiyak (MRes, FST) with this poster entitled: Minimising online gambling related harm through persuasive technologies.
Click the poster below to enlarge.
How effective are the various types of interactions in breaking through disassociation of at-risk and social gamblers? After identifying whether the participant is at-risk or social gambler with The Problem Gambling Severity Index on an online survey, fifty participants will be invited to the lab experiment. Participants will be given two tablet devices: on the first device they will play the gambling session with virtual money for 20 min; on the second device, participants will be randomised to five different interactions (experimental groups: cognitive tasks, interactive dialogue, infographic; control groups: neutral interaction, no interaction). Participants will then complete Jacob’s Disassociation Questionnaire, acceptability, and demographic questionnaire. The results of this research may enable prevention and intervention strategies in problem gambling. Moreover, it will allow gambling industry and policymakers to better develop responsible gambling applications and may even lead a policy change.
You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.
Daniel Dimanov (PhD, FST) with this poster entitled: MONCAE: Multi-Objective Neuroevolution of Convolutional Autoencoders.
Click the poster below to enlarge.
With this poster, we present a novel neuroevolutionary method to identify the architecture and hyperparameters of convolutional autoencoders, which has been published in an ICLR workshop. Remarkably, we used a hypervolume indicator employing neuroevolution for in the context of neural architecture search for autoencoders, for the first time to the best of our knowledge. We rely on novel decoding of the architecture to automatically reconstruct the decoder from the encoding. We tested our approach with MNIST, Fashion-MNIST and CIFAR10 to verify the performance of the approach. Results show that images were compressed by a factor of more than 10, while still retaining enough information to achieve image classification for the majority of the tasks. Thus, this new approach can be used to speed up the AutoML pipeline for image compression and much more.
You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.
If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.
Abier Hamidi (PhD, FHSS) with this poster entitled:HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps.
Click the poster below to enlarge.
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) became a public issue in Libya after the infection of 400 children in El-Fatih Hospital in 1988. Due to the civil war, social and religious barriers, HIV prevalence is hard to establish, but it is generally believed to be increasing. This review (a) assesses the size and scope of the available literature on the HIV epidemic in Libya; and, (b) identifies the nature and extent of research conducted to date. A comprehensive search was performed using PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Academic Search Ultimate, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. Primary research studies and official reports that are exclusively on Libya published during 1988 -2021 were considered. In total 25 studies were included. The literature suggests there is an increase in HIV infection rates in Libya. Culturally sensitive research will assist in reducing HIV stigma and decreasing infection rates.
You can view the full poster exhibition and pre-recorded presentations on the conference webpage.
If this research has inspired you and you’d like to explore applying for a research degree please visit the postgraduate research web pages or contact the Doctoral College dedicated admissions team.
Join our free online event with Dr Alejandro Estudillo, Thursday evening at 6pm.
An ESRC Festival of Social Science 2021 event
What is it about?
We judge so much from faces – attributes like age, gender and identity, as well as how someone is feeling emotionally. So what happens when faces are partially covered? The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot about how humans communicate and interact with each other, one of the most significant of which is the wearing of face masks.
Dr Alejandro Estudillo has been studying how face masks affect how we perceive faces – and what this can tell us about the psychology of face perception in general. At this online event we’ll learn what this means for social interactions, but also issues of security, eyewitness identification and face-recognition technology.
Everyone is welcome to join us online from 6pm, where you can chat to each other and type questions for Alejandro, or just sit back and enjoy the talk. Either way, your microphone and camera will be disabled so everyone can focus on the speaker.
What’s on offer?
This talk will be held online, and will take about 1 hour. Dr Estudillo will explore his research, and you will have the opportunity to interact, test your knowledge and share your thoughts throughout the talk.
Come along to support our postgraduate research community at the Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, Wednesday 1 December 2021, 09:30 – 17:30. Oral presentations will be hosted on Zoom.
You are also invited to FG06 during the day to network, and for PGRs we will be offering the opportunity to get a free professional headshot during the lunch break.
There will be a virtual poster exhibition on the BU website and across the blogs during the week of the conference with further pre-recorded presentations available to view at your leisure.
The full brochure, with all presenters and presentation types, will be circulated shortly. In the meantime, please see the live presentation conference programme for the day below.
It would be great to see many of you there. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch: pgconference@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Natalie Stewart (Research Skills & Development Officer), Doctoral College.
We’ll hear from Dr Mel Hughes and colleagues about PPI (Public and Patient Involvement in Research) and a new internal funding stream for public engagement.
Public engagement with research intersects with a number of other ways of communicating your research or involving people in it. At our next PER Network meeting we’ll look at one of those other ways, welcoming Dr Mel Hughes, Academic Lead for the BU PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) Partnership, Rachel Jury, PIER member, and Angela Warren, PIER coordinator who will provide a brief introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement in research, or PPI.
This is an opportunity to learn about different approaches to public involvement, the benefits to your research and the pitfalls to avoid. This session is co-designed and facilitated with a representative from the PIER partnership (Public Involvement in Education and Research), who has extensive experience of sharing their lived experience expertise in research studies. There will be opportunity at the end to ask your questions about public involvement.
Bournemouth University is involved in a wider collaboration which organises the Advanced Dementia Research Conference (ADRC 2021). The conference is delivered online today and tomorrow (19th-20th November). ADRC 2021 is led by Dr. Brijesh Sathian, BU Visiting Faculty, based in the Geriatric Medicine Department, Rumailah Hospital, in Doha, Qatar. Saturday morning Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen will be delivering a session on qualitative research, preceded by a session on mixed-methods research from Prof. Padam Simkhada, also BU Visiting Faculty, from the University of Huddersfield.
The programme shown is for Day 2 tomorrow. All sessions today and tomorrow are free to attend! You can register here! Please, note that advertised times a Qatar times which three hours ahead of the UK at the moment.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Come along to support our postgraduate research community at the Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, Wednesday 1 December 2021, 09:30 – 17:30. Oral presentations will be hosted on Zoom.
You are also invited to come along to FG06 during the day to network, and for PGRs we will be offering the opportunity to get a free professional headshot during the lunch break.
There will be a virtual poster exhibition on the BU website and across the blogs during the week of the conference with further pre-recorded presentations available to view at your leisure.
The full brochure, with all presenters and presentation types, will be circulated in the next few weeks. In the meantime, please see the conference programme for the day below.
It would be great to see many of you there. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch: pgconference@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Natalie Stewart (Research Skills & Development Officer), Doctoral College.
At BU we promote and celebrate the work done to engage public audiences with BU research.
The public engagement with research team in Research Development and Support (RDS) can help promote your event to relevant audiences through our regular newsletter and social media channels. It also helps us to stay informed on the public engagement work being carried out by BU.
Please note: we are keen to promote BU public engagement with research activity wherever possible, but completing this form does not guarantee that we will be able to promote your event. To be considered for inclusion, your event or activity must be;
Focused on BU research, either solely or as part of a wider programme.
Events or activities that do not involve BU research, such as marketing or recruitment events, will not be accepted.
Intended for and open to non-academic audiences, either entirely or as a portion of the audience.
Submitted, at the latest, in the first two weeks of the month preceding the event.
For example, an event taking place in June should be submitted via the form any time before 14 May. This is due to lead times on producing and sending the newsletter.
Event descriptions may be edited for consistency in style with other content. If you have any questions about this process, please contact us.
At Café Scientifique, you can explore the latest ideas in science and technology in a relaxed online setting. Enjoy listening to a short talk before engaging in debate and discussion with our guest speaker and audience.
We’ll be joined by Dr Marin Cvitanovicon Tuesday 7 December from 7.00pm until 8.30pm.
Wildfires and Us
Every year wildfires engulf 3.4 million square kilometres of Earth’s surface – approximately the size of India. These fires have massive economic, social and environmental impacts and, due to climate change, are expected to increase in the future. However, wildfires are also a naturally occurring global phenomenon that many ecosystems depend on.
Join us to discover how scientific research at Bournemouth University could fill in some of the gaps in this complicated relationship between humans and wildfires.
BU Social Entrepreneurs Forum (BUSEF) is proud to announce our newest members of the team, our advisory board consisting of Bournemouth University members of staff- Ian Jones, Head of External Engagement; Lois Betts, Sustainability Manager; Stacy Wall, Senior Lecturer In Digital Advertising And Marketing Communications, Faculty of Medica Communications (FMC). With this stellar team in place, we are humbled to be supporting, through mentorship and other support, BU Eco Entrepreneurs Competition 2022 with Santander.
Lois Betts, Sustainability Manager at BU
Ian Jones, Head of External Engagement, BU
Stacy Wall, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Media Communications, BU
Background
BUSEF was set up in June 2019 by three individuals who are passionate about the power of social entrepreneurs in changing society- Sukanya Ayatakshi-Endow, BU; Gwyn Jones, Association of Sustainability Practitioners and Alun Williams, Rotarian.
Our Vision
To champion social entrepreneurshipin BCP/Dorset.
Aims
Support and develop social entrepreneurship within BCP/Dorset
Encourage businesses generally to consider adopting a social entrepreneurship approach
Promote and encourage social entrepreneurship amongst students
Objectives
Support and develop social entrepreneurship within organisations in Dorset
Encourage businesses generally to consider adopting a social entrepreneurship approach
Promote and encourage social entrepreneurship among students through
Encourage BU students to undertake projects/placements/careers with social entrepreneurs
Establish BUSEF as an independent, sustainable, organisation
Since its inception, BUSEF has explored numerous avenues to support the development and growth of socially focused businesses in the community, including student-led projects at BU; showcase events including the Global Entrepreneurship week events – two in 2019 and two in 2020 on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Covid-19 and Refugee Entrepreneurs and Covid-19; numerous skills-based sessions supporting the specific needs of individuals and businesses who aspire to or identify with social entrepreneurship.
Through numerous student projects at Bournemouth University Business School and Faculty of Media Communications, BUSEF has worked closely with many local small businesses and purpose-led organisations in supporting them with digital and social media marketing outputs; and business model innovation and business planning support. Some of the projects, our students in the final year of their study, have worked on, include Musica; The Poole Powerhouse Project; We Do Ethical; Vita Nova and many more. Kelly Levell, Founder of We Do Ethical, said ” students brought in tremendous value added to our vision and gave us wider perspectives“. Stacy Wall, whose final year students in FMC, who worked with B.O.L.D Lewy Body Dementia project, said , “An exceptional piece of work that was developed by our 2019/20 final year Communication & Media students was the piece that I shared at a BUSEF event that was developed for B.O.L.D. Colour & Sound”. The Poole PowerHouse Team capped it all up by adding , “we are extremely grateful to all the students for their engagement, research and insights into our project. They have all given us useful data, ideas and cause for thought”.
Through the pandemic and its associated lockdown, BUSEF continued supporting social entrepreneurship through knowledge exchange projects via BU courses and other events and workshops. BUSEF was an exemplar in BUBS Small Business Charter Accreditation application (2021) and included in the BU Race Charter Application (2020-21).
With the experiential knowledge and observed impact of BUSEF on social entrepreneurship and on education, BUSEF is now poised to grow and is seeking additional support on numerous levels. With our new advisory board, BUSEF aims to create a lasting impact on social entrepreneurship in the region through meaningful collaborations and projects.
If you are interested in the work of BUSEF and want to know more or get involved, please contact Sukanya Ayatakshi-Endow at the following email address: sayatakshi@bournemouth.ac.uk
At Café Scientifique, you can explore the latest ideas in science and technology in a relaxed online setting. Enjoy listening to a short talk before engaging in debate and discussion with our guest speaker and audience.
We’ll be joined by Dr Luciana Esteveson Tuesday 2 November from 7.00pm until 8.30pm.
Climate change and coastal flooding – relocate before it’s too late?
For an increasing number of people, coastal flooding and erosion are a real threat to property, the local economy and, in some cases, life. With the effects of climate change, this threat is quickly growing.
Should coastal communities at risk be relocated before they are forced from their homes? Or could engineering and nature-based solutions provide the defences they need?
Join us to discover the challenges faced by coastal communities in an uncertain climate future, and what society could do to address them.
What’s in it for us? An introduction to Public and Patient Involvement from the public’s perspective
Sign up for the new RKEDF online interactive workshop to find out about getting the public involved with your research.
Date:Tuesday 19 October 11-12:30pm
This short workshop offers an engaging introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement in research. It is co-designed and facilitated by Rachel Jury and Tim Worner who have extensive experience of sharing their lived experience expertise in research studies, Dr Mel Hughes, Academic Lead for the BU PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) Partnership and Angela Warren, PIER involvement coordinator. The workshop will cover the different approaches to public involvement; the public contributor role; the benefits of public involvement and what pitfalls to avoid.
The workshop will also provide an opportunity for researchers to learn about public involvement and to consider this from the perspective of experts by experience and in relation to their own research. This will be an interactive workshop with opportunities for researchers to share and discuss ideas and plans.
What is public involvement in research?
Public involvement in research means research that is done ‘with’ or ‘by’ the public, not ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them. It means that patients or other people with relevant experience contribute to how research is designed, conducted and disseminated.
Intended learning outcomes of this session
Develop knowledge and understanding of different models of public involvement
Consider the benefits of public involvement for a research study and all those involved
Identify best practice in designing and conducting public involvement in research
Who is this session aimed at?
Researchers at any career stage or level who are actively considering or developing a public involvement strategy for their own research or wish to find out more.
• Individuals or teams whose educational research work has shown demonstrable public engagement or impact
• Practitioners or researchers whose work is grounded in educational research and has led to demonstrable public engagement or impact
• Those whose activities have boosted public engagement with educational research or its impact, or whose efforts have increased recognition and support for education research in public
Two awards, worth £500 each are available. One is given to an individual’s research and the other for a team of researchers. The winners will also have a featured article in BERA’s magazine.
This award is designed to support early-career researchers who show exceptional talent in both research and public engagement, emphasising and demonstrating the importance of academic research and creative thought at a time of rapid political and societal change.
The British Academy, in collaboration with the Wolfson Foundation emphasises the importance of award-holders communicating their plans and results to a broad audience. It is expected that six awards will be offered and that they will continue to participate with future cohorts building a network of outstanding researchers.
Funding
The grant maximum is £130,000 across three years. Awards can be used flexibly: at least £90,000 for time buy out, and up to £40,000 for research and travel expenses and dissemination of findings.
The funding is expected to be divided:
First, to buy out time of the academic duties of the award-holder in order to focus on their research goals.
Secondly, for travel and public engagement across the three years of the award to help with research costs and to undertake dissemination of the findings from the fellowship research locally, nationally and globally.
Eligibility
Applicants must have a full-time or part-time permanent or fixed term post that covers the length of the award (three years) at a UK university or other research institution, such as a museum or gallery, which can provide a suitable environment and support for applicants.
Applicants should have research, teaching and other related duties from which they would need to be released from in order to heighten their focus on the research and engagement supported through the fellowship.
Applicants should be within seven years of completion of their doctorate, though applications are also welcome from those researchers who have taken time out since the completion of their PhD for maternity/paternity/adoption leave, for caring responsibilities or for periods of illness.
Applications are welcome from museums and galleries, including but not necessarily limited to those with Independent Research Organisation (IRO) status.
At BU we promote and celebrate the work done to engage public audiences with BU research.
The public engagement with research team in Research Development and Support (RDS) can help promote your event to relevant audiences through our regular newsletter and social media channels. It also helps us to stay informed on the public engagement work being carried out by BU.
Please note: we are keen to promote BU public engagement with research activity wherever possible, but completing this form does not guarantee that we will be able to promote your event. To be considered for inclusion, your event or activity must be;
Focused on BU research, either solely or as part of a wider programme.
Events or activities that do not involve BU research, such as marketing or recruitment events, will not be accepted.
Intended for and open to non-academic audiences, either entirely or as a portion of the audience.
Submitted, at the latest, in the first two weeks of the month preceding the event.
For example, an event taking place in June should be submitted via the form any time before 14 May. This is due to lead times on producing and sending the newsletter.
Event descriptions may be edited for consistency in style with other content. If you have any questions about this process, please contact us.
Dr Sue Thomas shares her experience of presenting at a BU Café Scientifique event on 6 July 2021.
For my talk at Café Scientifique I took a fresh look at the topic of my 2017 book “Nature and Wellbeing in the Digital Age: How to feel better without logging off”, which has new relevance in the age of digital wellbeing during COVID-19. This continued the theme of my previous book, “Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace”, which looked at the prevalence online of nature-derived metaphors and imagery, and which I discussed at Café Sci in 2013.
My talk topic – Technobiophilia
Intuitively we all know that Nature is good for us. Research has backed that up, showing that contact with nature can support emotional wellbeing and better concentration, as well as reduce stress and lower heart rate and blood pressure. Sometimes even simple psychological connectedness to nature can produce the same effects.
Biophilia is a hypothesized hidden programme which runs in the background of our lives. The term was first coined by Erich Fromm but became more popular when the eminent biologist EO Wilson described it as “the innate attraction to life and lifelike processes”. Wilson believes that biophilia may have the ability to lie dormant for periods of time until something triggers it into action again.
The notion of biophilia led to my own definition of ‘technobiophilia’ as “the innate attraction to life and lifelike processes as they appear in technology”. Technobiophilia connects our lives in nature with our lives in the digital, and this process has been very evident during the Covid-19 Lockdowns. Here are some examples:
In October 2020, the Metro newspaper declared that “Nature documentaries are ‘perfect lockdown viewing and make people happier’ in an article about the TV programme “Seven Worlds, One Planet” which highlighted the story of the last two northern white rhinoceros left alive on the planet.
On Instagram, thousands of RSPB #breakfastbirdwatch watchers shared their photos. Sussex_sara posted “Is anyone else feeling in a state of suspended animation these days? 😕 Living alone, the only tangible sense I have of days passing are the changes in nature as our lives are put on hold.”
Country Life magazine, perhaps not the most techie of periodicals, listed the best live animal webcams to get you through lockdown. Their Top 3 were: Little penguins, Phillip Island Nature Parks, Australia; Folly Farm, Pembrokeshire (sheep, goats, newborn lambs) and Edinburgh Zoo (Panda cam, Penguin Cam, Koala Cam and Lion Cam)
The BBC launched a collaboration to bring virtual soundscapes of music and nature directly to audiences with Radio 3, 6 Music, and BBC Sounds, and also embarked on The Virtual Nature Experiment with The University of Exeter, a ground-breaking study exploring how virtual experiences of nature might impact wellbeing.
Nintendo relaunched its old online game “Animal Crossing” and it was soon dubbed ‘the game of the pandemic’. Slate Magazine said “Animal Crossers new and old found comfort in exerting control over their islands’ virtual terrain as the world outside grew more and more chaotic” and the MIT Technology Review reported that “Gentle, comforting games like Nintendo’s latest hit are perfect escapist entertainment, but they’re also helping us to connect in these strange times.”
This last observation was born out by a study conducted before the pandemic and published in 2020, which reported a significant increase of feelings of connectedness to the community after watching digital nature. Interestingly, they also found that tended nature scenes elicited more social aspirations than wild nature scenes.
In 2020, Natural England surveyed the changing relationship with nature during lockdown. It reported that 41% of people said that visiting natural spaces had become even more important to them than before. Also in 2020, in a study conducted before the pandemic, the University of Exeter found that the best way of delivering virtual nature for improving mood was computer-generated virtual reality, which proved more effective than high definition TV or 360° video.
During the lockdown pause, Nature was busy regenerating. As early as April 2020, carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide fell by up to 40%. Air traffic fell 50%. UK road traffic fell 70%. And during that year, wildlife came closer – wild goats wandered the empty streets of Llandudno, coyotes walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, there were deer in Washington DC, and wild boar in Spain and Italy. Everyone heard more bird song. By April 2021, marine noise pollution had decreased so much that the seas had become measurably quieter.
So, what has lockdown taught us about digital nature and wellbeing? It seems that we have learned that we can connect with nature in many different ways, both physically and digitally. We have been reminded that we can live more of our lives outdoors, and that nature can help connect our local communities.
But individual nature connection is not enough. Covid has taught (some of us) to better connect with nature, but has that process sedated us? Distracted us? Separated us even more from what else is happening? This year, floods and fires around the world have reminded us that there are other disasters too, most of them a result of the global warming.
While we in the First World are busy self-soothing with nature, many millions of people have no access to vaccines. In January 2021, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus WHO Director-General, warned “The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”
Of course, this moral failure can be seen in the climate emergency too. In his 2020 film ‘A Life on Our Planet’ David Attenborough delivered his Witness Statement and told the story of ‘our greatest mistake’. The film begins and ends in Chernobyl which, although still devoid of humans, has seen the return of many thriving animals and plants. This allows Attenborough to make his final message one of hope. ‘We have’, he says, ‘the opportunity to become a species in balance with nature’.
When my book ‘Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace’ was published in 2013, some thought the idea of using technology to connect with nature was contradictory, even harmful. But the last 18 months of the pandemic have shown the benefits of nature in the digital age, for some of us at least. But there is much more work to do. Perhaps digital nature can play a part in helping humanity to finally, to quote Attenborough, “become a species in balance with nature” – if there is time.
My Café Scientifique experience
I enjoyed my second Café Scientifique session. It went very well and was followed by a lot of positive feedback and a lively exchange of ideas, which brought the July lecture to a successful conclusion, slightly over the scheduled two hours.
The audience asked some excellent questions and we were pleasantly able to deepen our exchanges. It was interesting to hear from those providing opportunities for engaging with digital nature, especially Radio Lento https://radiolento.podbean.com/ who produce entrancing virtual nature tours in the form of weekly sound postcards from beautiful places. Find them on Twitter @RadioLento where they regularly share some wonderful sounds. There was a lively exchange of views about the relative values of visual, audio, VR and analogue nature experiences, especially when created from the same sources.
It was a great experience with people from all over the world, including old friends. My talk was recorded and is available to watch on the Café Sci YouTube channel. I hope that it inspires you to think and act on the relationship between nature, digital nature and our well-being.