Category / PG research

This part of the blog features news and information for postgraduate research students and supervisors

Sport Management Researcher and Students Create Impact on International Field

PG research, Publishing

Last weekend, Dr Tim Breitbarth (Senior Lecturer in Sport Management) and MSc Sport Management students Lisa Kaisner, Manuel Perez Vehi, Chih-Heng Kwan and Junbeom Kim returned from their 8-day trip attending the 22nd European Association for Sport Management (EASM) Conference, EASM Masters Seminar and EASM PhD Student Seminar. Following various successes at the 21st EASM conference in Istanbul last year, the BU travel party again made strong contributions to this leading international sport management conference.

Together with 60 students from around the globe, the students worked in mixed groups on three different sport marketing cases and had to present their findings and plans in front of a critical jury over the period of 4 days before the main conference. Lisa and her team won the case competition on the Olympic legacy of the Coventry Ricoh Arena and, therefor, were invited to present at the main conference. Feedback from the students on the Masters Seminar in particular was largely positive – especially in terms of networking, making new friends, learn from one another and visiting sport venues/matches like the Rugby School and the season opening of the Leicester Tigers.

 

Invited Keynote and Conference Workshop Convener

Besides tutoring at the Masters Seminar, Dr Tim Breitbarth was invited to provide a keynote at the PhD Student Seminar titled “Book or articles? Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the form of your PhD thesis”. His contribution was very well received and awarded during the conference dinner. He also mentored three PhD researchers from Belgium, South Africa and Mexico at the Seminar and gave advise on their research.

At the main conference, Tim together with his small international team organized and convened a workshop on corporate social responsibility in and through sport. Again, the workshop was the second most popular in terms of submissions and all five sessions attracted a great audience. The academic workshop was spiced-up by inviting Nico Briskorn (Head of CSR at German professional football club VFL Wolfsburg) and Chris Grant (CEO, Sported Foundation – the London 2012 charity legacy) to contribute their expert insights into the application of CSR and sport.

 

Highly Cited Paper and Special Issue Editor

The relevance of the topic is also manifested by the fact that the paper “The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Football Business: Towards the Development of a Conceptual Model” by Tim Breitbarth and Phil Harris from 2008 published in European Sport Management Quarterly (second highest ranked sport management journal in the world) has been the journal’s most cited article over the past 3 years. Also, Tim is the lead editor of the Special Issue “Governance and CSR Management in Sport” in ‘Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society’ which will be published early/mid 2015.

In addition, Tim presented two research papers, one of which based on an awarded Bachelor dissertation by last year’s graduate David Thomas whom he supervised.

In general, despite being a rather small party at a 500+ delegates conference, the BU team created awareness for our sport programs in particular and Bournemouth in general. Travelling Masters students were somewhat lukewarm about the practical value of the main conference (e.g. as a means to find a job), but overall enjoyed the experience and talking to experts from various fields. Several visits from renown (inter-)national scholars, academics from partner universities and PhD students are already in planning for 2015.

Please contact Dr Tim Breitbarth at tbreitbarth@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

F.l.t.r.: Lisa Kaisner, Chih-Heng Kwan, Manuel Perez Vehi, Tim Breitbarth

F.l.t.r.: Nico Briskorn (VFL Wolfsburg), Christos Anagnostopoulus (Co-Convenor, University of Central Lancashire), Frank van Eekeren (Co-Convenor, Utrecht University), Tim Breitbarth (Lead-Convenor, Bournemouth University), Wojtek Kulczycki (Technische Universität München), Chris Grant (Sported Foundations), Stefan Walzel (Co-Convenor, German Sport University Cologne)

Group of Masters students at Rugby School

ARTS in Research (AiR) Collaborative: Two days of creative scholarship

Fusion, PG research, Training

Shared objects/stories of a past (click on photo to enlarge)

“I can’t remember ever attending such an inspiring ‘in house’ event “.

The newly formed ARTS in Research Collaborative recently held two days of exploration of biography and ways and means of expressing the stories of others creatively and ethically. The workshop was entitled, “A Past/A Present” ARTS in Research (AiR) Workshop.

Using shared objects representing a time or event in each participant’s life, a ‘partner’ then created a five minute presentation of and from the storied materials. Participants in the two-days of exploration came from HSC, the Media School and DEC. Both faculty and postgrad students took part.

The brief was kept simple and instruction to a minimum. Organiser Kip Jones shared examples from his own work of finding ways and means of responding creatively to detailed data as well as time and material constraints. Other than that, participants engaged in a learning process through participation itself and the sharing of their experiences. The group has agreed to write up the encounter for a journal article.

 

  • “Thank you all for the incredible willingness to be inventive, creative and think/be  outside ‘the box'”.

  • “An illuminating two days of deep sharing. I was honoured to be there and look forward to more creative adventures together”.

  • “Inspiring. An artful and generative suspension of ‘normal’ activity”.

The ARTS in Research Collaborative’s next workshop is planned for November at The Lighthouse in Poole. Details to follow. It will be open to a wider audience and there will be a charge to attend, but BU faculty and students are encouraged to apply for training and/or development funding within their Schools.

ARTS in Research (AiR) still accepting new members!

AiR Workshop: telling stories (click on photo to enlarge)

 

 

Congratulations to Dawn Morley

PG research, Research assessment

Congratulations to Dawn Morley, senior lecturer in HSC, who is taking on leadership of the Post Graduate Certificate in Education Practice with immediate effect from Linda Byles, as she is leaving BU shortly. Many of you will know that Dawn is currently CEL theme leader for innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity and is looking forward to this new role, which will be for semester one at this point. I’m sure you will all look forward to working with Dawn in this new capacity.

Thanks.

Gail

Professor B. Gail Thomas

Dean of Health and Social Care & Director of the Centre for Excellence in Learning

Bournemouth University

HSC student Jonny Branney’s main PhD findings published –

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

HSC PhD student Jonny Branney and his first supervisor Professor Alan Breen have had a paper published in the open-access online journal Chiropractic & Manual Therapies. It is entitled, “Does inter-vertebral range of motion increase after spinal manipulation? A prospective cohort study.” This is an important question in the field of manual therapy where the mechanisms behind the clinical effects of manual treatment are often poorly understood. This PhD aimed to shed some light on the mechanism of this particular therapy commonly utilised by chiropractors, physiotherapists, osteopaths and some doctors. It is hoped that improving our understanding of the mechanism will ultimately improve the targeting of spinal manipulation to those expected to benefit from it.

Please click on the link if you’d like to read the study:

http://www.chiromt.com/content/22/1/24

And email Jonny if you’d like to find out more!

jbranney@bournemouth.ac.uk

This PhD was funded by a grant from the European Chiropractors’ Union and Jonny is also very grateful to the BU Graduate School for a PGR Development Award and a Santander Mobility Award that allowed him to present his work at international conferences. His supervision team included Professor Jenni Bolton (AECC) and Dr Sarah Hean (HSC).

Epidurals PhD researcher wins EPSRC award

PG research

Congratulations to SciTech’s Dr Neil Vaughan who has won the EPSRC’s ICT Pioneers ‘Transforming Society’ award. The accolade, which recognises the most exceptional UK PhD students, was awarded to Neil at a ceremony in Westminster last week for his innovative epidural simulator project.

The simulator uses software to replicate the epidural process, thereby assisting in training for this delicate procedure that is performed over 1000 times each day in the UK.

Neil’s supervisor Dr Venky Dubey said: “This is an exceptional achievement for BU and the collaborating partner Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Neil was up against stiff competition from top universities, including the University of Oxford, University College London and the University of Bath.”

The clinical project was proposed by the senior consultant anaesthetist at Poole Hospital, Professor Michael Wee, who also co-supervised the PhD.

Neil’s work was judged by a panel of technical experts from academia and industry. He triumphed through a rigorous selection process over a six month period, which included a written proposal, video and poster presentation. This culminated in a high-profile research showcase, where finalists pitched their project to representatives from the EPSRC, Hewlett Packard, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), BT and an audience of hundreds.

For more information about the project view the news item on the research webpages.

Strong Presence of our Computing Research at RCIS’14 Conference in Morocco

PG research

Our research in the area of Human-Centred Software Systems has been presented through three full papers in the IEEE Eighth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), which was held on May 28-30 2014 in Marrakesh, Morocco.

http://www.rcis-conf.com/rcis2014/

Our presented papers in RCIS 2014 are:

  • Mahmood Hosseini, Keith Phalp, Jacqui Taylor, Raian Ali. The Four Pillars of Crowdsourcing: A Reference Model.
  • Malik Almaliki, Cornelius Ncube, Raian Ali. The Design of Adaptive Acquisition of Users Feedback: an Empirical Study.
  • Raian Ali, Nan Jiang, Sherry Jeary, Keith Phalp. Consideration in Software-mediated Social Interaction.

The papers were presented by Dr. Nan Jiang, and the PGRs  Mahmood Hosseini and Malik Almaliki. It was a great opportunity for knowledge exchange and to maximize impact and visibility of our research. Interesting ideas as a follow up of our research were discussed and a number of overseas colleagues expressed interest in visiting us to do a joint work.

To get the presentations, please visit our Slideshare at: http://www.slideshare.net/Sociad-BU/

 

 

BU student Jib Acharya presents poster in Ethiopia

PG research

HSC Ph.D. student Mr. Jib Acharya presented a poster in Ethiopia on his thesis research.  His poster accepted by the scientific committee of the Micronutrient Forum Global Conference in Addis Adeba, the capital of Ethiopia.

 

Jib Acharya reported on his Ph.D. research which involves a mixed-methods study of to assess knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about nutritious food amongst rural and urban mothers in one district of Nepal.  The poster highlighted that both knowledge of and attitudes towards nutritious food of rural and urban mothers are still poor in both rural and urban populations.

Jib’s supervisors in the School of Health & Social Care are: Dr. Jane Murphy, Dr. Martin Hind and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

 

Reference:

Acharya, J., van Teijlingen E., Murphy, J., Hind, M. (2014) A Comparative Study on Nutritional Problems in Preschool Aged Children of Nepal, poster presented at the Micronutrient Forum Global Conference in Addis Adeba, Ethiopia, June 2014.

 

 

Well done!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, CMMPH

Strong CMMPH presence at ICM conference in Prague!

PG research, Publishing, Training

Dr. Carol Wilkins

In the first week of June members of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health presented BU’s midwifery research and education at the 30th ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Congress in Prague (Czech Republic).

There were four oral presentations in total, one workshop and three poster presentations.  The oral presentations comprised:

  1. Dr. Carol Wilkins (see picture) presented from her Ph.D. work ‘Emotional processing in childbirth study: exploration of the relationship between maternal emotions in pregnancy and risk of postnatal depression’.
  2. HSC Professor Vanora Hundley presented her international work on clean birth kits.
  3. Senior Lecturer in Midwifery Alison Taylor gave a paper under the title ‘Letting off steam! Video diaries to share breastfeeding experiences.  Her Ph.D. thesis research uses a novel approach of giving hand-held cameras to make home video diaries about their ‘realities’ of breastfeeding.
  4. HSC student Sheetal Sharma presented her Ph.D. research ‘Getting women to care: mixed–methods evaluation of maternity care intervention in rural Nepal’.

Dr Susan Way led a workshop on escalating concerns in relation to poor clinical practice and disrespectful care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, three HSC posters were displayed as part of a special session on Midwifery in South Asia, all three related to different CMMPH maternity care studies conducted in Nepal.

  1. Sharma, S.  Sicuri, E., Belizan, JM., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Stephens J.,  Hundley, V., Angell, C.,  Getting women to care in Nepal: A Difference in Difference analysis of a health promotion intervention
  2. Milne, L, Hundley, V, van Teijlingen, E, Ireland, J, Simkhada, P, Staff perspectives of barriers to women accessing birthing services in Nepal: A qualitative study,
  3. Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V. Simkhada, P., Angell, C. Pregnant & Dirty?

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Bournemouth-Utrecht: Fusion Project Workshop

Fusion, PG research

We would like to invite you to the workshop of our BUUU project “Bournemouth University and Utrecht University Network on Empowering Software Production by Gamification and Crowdsourcing”. BUUU is funded by the Fusion Investment Fund of Bournemouth University.

   

Date: Thursday, 12 – Jun – 2014

Location: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 4BB

Program:

14:00 – 14:15 — Social Software Engineering at Bournemouth University. Raian Ali, Bournemouth University

14:15 – 14:30 — Gamified Software Engineering at Utrecht University. Fabiano Dalpiaz, Utrecht University

14:30 – 14:45 — Crowdsourcing for Requirements Elicitation in Large-scale Dynamic Software Systems. Mahmood Hosseini, Bournemouth University

14:45 – 15:00 — On the Use of Gamification for Obtaining Software Feedback. Mats Hofman, Utrecht University

15:00 – 15:15 — Crowd-driven Evolution for Socio-technical Systems. Alimohammad Shahri, Bournemouth University

15:15 – 15:30 — Development Techniques for Feedback-aware Software. Nick Linakis, Utrecht University

15:30 – 15:45 — Developing Adaptive and Socially-aware Feedback Acquisition. Malik Almaliki, Bournemouth University

15:45 – 16:00 — Crowd-centric Requirements Engineering. Remco Snijders, Utrecht University

 

The room is booked till 17:00. The participants and audience are invited to engage in further discussions and networking.

All are welcome.

 

 

 

BU Nepal health research at international midwifery conference

PG research

Yesterday HSC Ph.D. student Sheetal Sharma presented her key research findings under the title ‘Getting women to care: mixed–methods evaluation of maternity care intervention in rural Nepal’ at the 30th congress of the ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) in Prague.   Sheetal’s Ph.D. evaluates the effectiveness of a health promotion intervention aiming antenatal care attendance in rural Nepal.  Her evaluation suggests that practice should be socio-culturally appropriate and inclusive not only of women but also their families.

This afternoon three HSC posters were displayed as part of a special session on Midwifery in South Asia.  All three posters featured aspects of maternity care research conducted in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health in Nepal.

Poster 1:        Staff perspectives of barriers to women accessing birthing services in Nepal: A qualitative study

Milne, L, Hundley, V, van Teijlingen, E, Ireland, J, Simkhada, P,

Poster 2:        Pregnant & Dirty?

Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V. Simkhada, P., Angell, C.

Poster 3:        Getting women to care in Nepal: A Difference in Difference analysis of a health promotion intervention

Sharma, S.  Sicuri, E., Belizan, JM., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Stephens J., Hundley, V., Angell, C.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

PGR Development Fund Activity Report by Nada Sherief: SciTech

PG research

About Me

I am Nada Hany Sherief, a 2nd year Part-time PhD Student in Computing at the Faculty of Science and Technology.

The Conference (EASE 2014)

EASE’14, the International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, is one of the top conferences in the area Software Engineering (CORE Rank: A).  This year, EASE was held on 12-14 May, in London, UK.

The Papers

I have submitted two papers to EASE’14. The first is titled by “Crowdsourced Software Evaluation”, and was accepted in the New Ideas track. The second is titled by “Software Evaluation via Users’ Feedback at Runtime” and it was accepted in the Doctoral Symposium of the conference.

The Benefits

The PGR Development Funds from BU enabled me to attend EASE’14, which was an ideal place to launch the new idea of my research and have it discussed with colleagues and experts in the empirical software engineering community.

The research idea of a socialized software evaluation was found very interesting. Both presentations discussed the preliminary results of my research. Also, I presented several research challenges that are not yet addressed in the literature, and could be a starting point for future work not only in my research but also in the wider scope of the community.

This participation has added several skills to me. On the personal side it gave me a good motivation and confidence to continue my work in that area. It also gave our research more visibility in the research community. On the research side, I have gained much feedback about how to enhance and better frame my work which will certainly consolidate my PhD experience.

 

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the Graduate School at Bournemouth University for their PGR Development Fund which sponsored this activity which had very positive impact on my PhD journey.

PGR Development Fund Activity Report by Malik Almaliki: SciTech

PG research

The International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ) is one of the leading international forums in the area of Requirement Engineering for software systems. My main activity was to present a full research paper at this conference which was held in Essen, Germany, April 7-10, 2014. The paper was titled “Requirements-driven Social Adaptation: Expert Survey” and was collaboratively written with colleagues from University of Birmingham.

In this research paper I disseminated a part of my findings of the first year of my PhD. It reports on the results of a two-phase Expert Opinion study that was conducted to identify core benefits, domain areas, styles of use and challenges for the socially-adaptive software and users’ feedback acquisition. The study involved around 30 experts in Requirement Engineering and Adaptive Systems which also helped us to know how our vision in the area is perceived by the wider community.

The Graduate School PGR Fund provided me with a great opportunity to attend the REFSQ’14 conference and get my work published and recognized. Being able to participate in REFSQ’14 was one of the distinguished events in my PhD journey. It played a significant role in increasing my motivations and confidence and giving my research a visibility in such a well reputed venue. The  reviews of the paper and the feedback given by REFSQ’14 attendees were invaluable and, together with the constructive feedback and critiques,  helped me preparing well for the transfer exam which went very well.  This activity consolidated my presentation and communication skills.

I would like to thank the Graduate School for this PGR Development Fund which enabled me to have this great opportunity.  Participation at REFSQ’14 was a huge motive that pushed me step further towards a successful PhD journey.

PG Researcher Development Workshops

PG research

WHAT’S ON in June 2014

  • Introduction to Bournemouth Research Information & Network (BRIAN) – 4 June
  • Managing Pressure Positively – 10 June
  • Nvivo (Day 1) Introduction – 16 June
  • Nvivo (Day 2) Advanced – 17 June (attendance Day 1 is mandatory – to register your interest in this workshop – please email pgrskillsdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk).  Numbers are restricted
  • Importance of Publishing – 18 June
  • Introduction to Case Studies – 24 June

Full details and sign up lists are available via myBU (Graduate School PGR Community).

Don’t forget that if you have both staff and student email accounts, you’ll need to log on with your student username and password.  Please check your student email account for email reminders.

HSC postgraduate student speaks at Canadian Conference

PG research

 

Pratik Adhikary spoke about his Ph.D. research at the American Canadian Conference for Academic Disciplines (Toronto: 19-22 May 2014).  Pratik presented the key findings from his thesis under the title ‘Health status and health risks to Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East and Malaysia’.

Pratik is originally from Nepal and he conducted his research with male migrant workers who were returning to Nepal for definite or for a holiday/break.  He is supervised by Dr. Steve Keen and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen both in HSC.

 

Pratik’s study has been supported by Bournemouth University, the PGR Development Fund and the Open Society Foundations.

 

Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH