
Issue 4:1 of MERJ, now a fully BU-edited journal, is published. Details and some open access content are here:
Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
This part of the blog features news and information for postgraduate research students and supervisors
Issue 4:1 of MERJ, now a fully BU-edited journal, is published. Details and some open access content are here:
With the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics and Andy Murray winning at SW1 Wimbledon (again) it seems Britain is still riding a wave of optimism with the birth of a male heir to the throne; the Prince of Cambridge. The baby was delivered on 22 July 2013 at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, west London, weighing 8lb 6oz. The document said: “Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm today. He and the duchess will remain in the hospital overnight. A bulletin signed by the Queen’s gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, who led the medical team that delivered the baby – was taken by a royal aide from St Mary’s to the palace under police escort.
The implications are wide -reaching, in multi-cultural Britain the royal baby is unusual for London in having a mother originally from the UK and most babies delivered in the capital these days (57%) are to mothers born overseas and nearly half of all babies (48%) are born outwith marriage. With midwifery cuts and the further medicalisation of birth where the “cascade of interventions” often occurs when birth is induced. For instance, in the USA which spends more money on healthcare than any country in the world and yet the maternal mortality rate is among the highest of any industrialised country.
And on July 19, 2013, the USA the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee today approved a steep cutback in international family planning assistance for fiscal year 2014. Rejecting President’s Obama’s 2014 budget request of $635.4 million, the Subcommittee capped appropriations for international family planning and reproductive health programs at $461 million, $174 million less than the President’s request, and $137 million (23% below the current funding level). The cuts, if approved by the full Congress, would have a devastating impact: Several million women in the developing world would lose access to contraceptives services, resulting in more unplanned pregnancies and deaths from unsafe abortions. Each pregnancy multiplies a woman’s chance of dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Maternal mortality rates are particularly high for young and poor women, those who have least access to contraceptive services. It is estimated that one in three deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth could be avoided if all women had access to contraceptive services.
Not so lucky, therefore, are Kate’s counterparts in the South – Frightening statistics include that daily, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In our study site, Nepal every year, 4,500 Nepali women die in childbirth due to lack of medical care. In low-income countries, most maternal deaths are avoidable, as the health-care solutions to prevent or manage complications are well known. All women need is access to antenatal care in pregnancy, skilled care during childbirth, and care and support in the weeks after childbirth.
To make every birth worldwide as joyful an event as the royal birth in London we need is: a) more and better midwifery services; and b) improved access to care for pregnant women globally.
Sheetal Sharma is a HSC PhD student and currently a visiting researcher in Barcelona, supervised by Dr. Elisa Sicuri at CRESIB on an evaluation of a health promotion programme in rural Nepal aiming to improve access to care; in which socio-economic and cultural barriers exist.
Thanks to Edwin & Elisa for their input in this piece.
References:
http://www.populationinstitute.org/newsroom/press/view/57/
http://midwifeinternational.org/how-to-become-midwife/business-of-baby/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23408377
The first PGR Health, Wellbeing and Ageing Community meeting took place on Wednesday 10th July at Royal London House. The purpose of the event was to bring together post graduate researchers from across schools to present and discuss their research under the Health, Wellbeing and Ageing theme.
Jo Hawkes (ST) began the meeting by presenting her research on the impact of premenopausal osteoporosis on physically active females. This was followed by the impact that children’s hospices have on parental relationships by Ashley Mitchell (HSC). Phillip James (ST) discussed his work on how active seniors engage with the internet when choosing holidays. We were also joined by Alister du Rose (DEC) from the AECC, who is using quantitative fluoroscopy and electromyography to determine normal mechanics of the lumbar spine.
Mevalyn Cross (HSC) discussed how her research was going to evaluate the effectiveness of a humanising framework to improve patient care in Poole Hospital. Becca Elisa (DEC) is who is due to start in September proposed plans and theory for her research into norepinephrine activity in ADHD. The meeting finished with Jib Acharya (HSC) presenting the results from his comparative study into nutritional problems in the preschool children of the Kaski district in Nepal.
All presentations were extremely interesting and the event was positively received by all those who attended. The event was also attended by Dr Heather Hartwell, Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor Les Todres and Julia Hastings Taylor who were on hand to give advice and feedback to those who presented. It also gave PGRs the opportunity to meet each other and network across schools.
It is hoped that community events like this will be a regular occurrence with even more PGRs presenting their research. If anyone is interested in presenting or attending the next event please email Ashley Mitchell (ashmitchell@bournemouth.ac.uk).
Blog Post by Rebecca Watkins, Postgraduate Researcher – Media School
Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is an interdisciplinary field that comprises macro, interpretive, and critical perspectives of consumer behaviour, and the CCT conference has become the premier international venue for consumer culture researchers spanning a broad spectrum of academic disciplines to come together to share their ideas, empirical insights, and theoretical interests in an engaging, cutting edge, collegial forum. The conference invites original contributions in the form of full papers that undergo a rigorous peer review process with three double blind reviewers, and as a result research presented at the conference is consistently of an exceptionally high standard. At this year’s conference in Tucson, Arizona, Bournemouth University PhD student Rebecca Watkins and senior lecturer Dr. Mike Molesworth were awarded Best Competitive Paper for their contribution entitled ‘The Biographies of Digital Virtual Goods’. The paper communicated empirical findings from Rebecca’s PhD research which explores ownership and possession in the context of digital goods, from magical swords, luxury cars and avatars within virtual worlds, to mp3s, ebooks, and social networking profiles. Building on award winning research by Dr Denegri-Knott and Dr Molesworth from Bournemouth University’s Media School, Rebecca and Mike highlight the ways in which the nature of digital goods encourages the delaying of classification decisions, resulting in vast digital hoards, and in doing so contribute to existing understanding of digital goods as possessions by providing insight into their biographies, including the significant ways in which they diverge from the typical biographies of material goods. Thus a key contribution of the paper, and of Rebecca’s research more broadly, is to illustrate that our understanding of material culture and consumption, so understandably rooted in the materiality of goods, is problematised by the emergence of digital possessions, often leading to tense and turbulent relationships between consumers and the providers of these digital goods that are yet to be adequately addressed by policy makers.
*Rebecca’s attendance at the conference was partially funded by the Graduate School’s PGR Development Fund
Audio extracts of our CEMP conversation last week are here:
(1) Discussion of Marketa Zezulkova’s book chapter on a holistic approach to media literacy:
(2) Discussion of Richard Wallis’ journal article on media literacy and policy discourse: Richard’s article – discussion
And a reminder that the final CEMP Research & Innovation cluster meeting of the year is this Thursday the 11th July, 10-11am in the CEMP office, Iain MacRury is joining us to discuss a new AHRC call. The latest version of the CEMP R&I bulletin is here: CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 4.7.13
Copyright and the Regulation of Orphan Works, a report commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and co-authored by Dr. Marcella Favale, Dr. Fabian Homberg, Dr. Dinusha Mendis and Dr. Davide Secchi of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) at Bournemouth University and Professor Martin Krestchmer of CREATe, University of Glasgow was launched at the Orphans and Images event at the Law Society in London. It took place on 2 July 2013. Marcella Favale and Fabian Homberg introduced by Professor Martin Kretschmer presented the report.
The event was sponsored by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and CREATe, the Research Council UK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.
The report consisting of two Studies, included a comparative international review of actual and proposed orphan works legislation in several jurisdictions aimed at identifying key characteristics of orphan works licensing schemes and simulated rights clearance for six scenarios in order to identify pricing models in the studied jurisdictions.
A panel discussion chaired by The Honourable Mr. Justice Arnold followed the launch of the Report. The panel included Richard Boulderstone (British Library); Matthew Cope (Intellectual Property Office); David Hoffman (Editorial Photographers EPUK / Hoffman Photos), Dr. Ros Lynch (Copyright Hub), Professor Derek McAuley (University of Nottingham and TSB Connected Digital Economy Catapult) and Dr. Jeremy Silver (Bridgeman Art Library).
The event also provided an opportunity to launch the the research agenda of CREATe and to launch the CREATe working paper series. For more information, please see http://www.create.ac.uk/
The Report, titled ‘Copyright and the Regulation of Orphan Works: A Comparative Review of Seven Jurisdictions and a Rights Clearance Simulation’ can be accessed here
The Nutrition and Nurture in Infancy and Childhood Conference, providing an international interdisciplinary arena, offered the ideal opportunity for us to present infant feeding research and teaching materials developed at BU. With a wide range of research studies presented over the course of three days, we were able to absorb new and innovative research enhancing our understanding of socio-cultural, political and economic influences upon infant and child feeding practices both in the UK and across the world.
Alison presented for the first time preliminary findings of her PhD research study, which is exploring women’s experience of breastfeeding using video diaries. She used video clips to illustrate the daily struggles some women faced and the roller coaster ride that inevitably ensued over the first few weeks following birth, which brought the audience close to tears. The novel research method and opportunity to see and hear women’s diaries generated good discussion and also identified links with findings from other research being presented at the conference.
Catherine presented a poster of research which found that coverage of infant feeding in national newspapers in England over a one month period in 2011 was ‘bad news for breastfeeding’ because of the many negative connotations linked with breastfeeding compared to formula feeding. This created a good deal of interest and debate about the effects of media on the culture of infant feeding in the UK.
And we both presented a poster promoting BURP for infant feeding, an online resource that we have developed at BU to support student midwives and health practitioners in their professional practice to provide better care for mothers and babies. This poster provided the ideal opportunity for delegates to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of online distance learning as well as promoting the package itself.
Running over three days, the conference enabled us to maximise networking opportunities with national and international colleagues in research, education and professional practice. These strong links will no doubt continue for some time providing us with opportunities for further collaboration.
The University Research & Knowledge Exchange Committee (URKEC) recently approved the implementation plan of a mandatory research ethics e-module training course. The research ethics e-module is vital to ensure all academic staff and PGRs at BU are provided with training in research ethics. This will ensure all members of staff who conduct their own research and supervise students are proficient in basic research ethics principles. Additionally, this will fulfil the requirement to train all PGRs on research ethics, as strongly recommended by Vitae.
As some of you may be aware, the Research Ethics e-module training course was launched on 1 July for all academic staff to complete. PRGs (both new and current) will also be required to complete the e-module, but not until the start of the 2013/14 academic year. Further detail will be distributed in due course. If you would like to complete the e-module in advance of the PGR start date, please contact Julia Hastings Taylor.
The University procured two research ethics courses (Ethics 1: Good Research Practice and Ethics 2: Working with Human Subjects). Both courses will be available on the Graduate School’s myBU page in the coming months.
The first course (Ethics 1: Good Research Practice) covers standard practice and recent changes in universities’ ethics policies related to research that investigates people and their data. This course will be mandatory for all academic staff and PGRs. Successful completion of the course requires a score of 8/10 on the end of course assessment.
The second course (Ethics 2: Working with Human Subjects) covers the ethics of involving human participants – directly or indirectly – in research projects. This course is recommended for all academic staff and PGRs and is mandatory if the research project involves working with human participants. Successful completion of the course requires a score of 8/10 on the end of course assessment.
Due to the potential risks if relevant staff and PGRs are not adequately trained in research ethics, several non-compliance measures will be implemented to ensure they have basic knowledge of research ethics principles and best practice. Please visit the Research Ethics page of the blog for more information on the e-module, to include detail on engagement initiatives and non-compliance measures.
An extract from this morning’s conversation is here: CEMP conversation Tom Stacey
Tom Stacey shared an article about second language acquisition and related this to his own PHD research into coding as language acquisition.
He also talked about the practice-based element of his research, of which this robot is an example.
Next week – on Friday 5th July, at 11.30 – 12.30, in the CEMP office, our final CEMP conversation of the academic year will take place.
We’ll be discussing two related items:
(1) Marketa Zezulkova’s book chapter on a holistic approach to media literacy education: Marketa Book Chapter
(2) Richard Wallis’s recently published article, co-authored with David Buckingham, on the construction of media literacy within the policy context of the Communications Act: European Journal of Communication-2013-Wallis-0267323113483605
It should be a cracker, and,as always, all colleagues are very welcome to join us, in the current CEMP office, for the last time!
For many clinicians undertaking a PhD means choosing to either give up clinical practice for a period of time or studying on top of an already demanding full-time job. Now a partnership between the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHT) is making it easier for midwives to undertake a doctorate while still maintaining their clinical skills. The team has developed a novel joint studentship that will allow midwives to combine clinical practice with a research role, working across BU and PHT. The studentships will run for four years and PhD students will spend two days per week working as a midwife in clinical practice and three days per week working on their thesis. This set up facilitates the co-creation of knowledge.
In addition to providing the individual midwives with excellent education, these studentships are designed to examine an area of clinical practice identified by PHT where the evidence is lacking and research is needed. As a consequence the research studies will be directly relevant to practice and will have a demonstrable impact in the future. Hence BU will be able to show that its research and education have a direct benefit to the wider society. Finally, the studentships benefit midwifery practice by building a critical mass of researchers, which will help translate research findings into practice and so create a culture of evidence-based practice.
The result is a studentship that truly fuses research, education and practice.
The CMMPH/PHT partnership has developed three matched-funded PhD studentships for midwives, which will begin in September 2013. These joint PhD studentships will be supervised by both BU academics (Sue Way, Catherine Angell, Carol Wilkins, Maggie Hutchings, Edwin van Teijlingen & Vanora Hundley) and supervisors from PHT based in practice. We are excited about this novel approach to PhD studentships and hope that we will have many more studentships with other NHS Trusts in the future.
For further information please contact Prof. Vanora Hundley or Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
Academics based in HSC have experience in a wide-range of research. In the process of reflecting on all aspects of the research process several members of HSC have published about ethical issues that they have had to address in their own research. This BU Blog highlights some of these key HCS papers which may help fellow academics and students across the globe address similar ethical questions. HSC has a history of publishing on research ethics, Professor Emerita Immy Holloway wrote about the researcher who may have a dual role, or even conflicting role, as researcher and health care professional (1). More recently, several midwifery researchers in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health wrote about the issues facing practitioners doing research in the field where they work, especially concerning the similarities and differences between professional ethics and research ethics (2-3). Negotiating ethical paths cleaved by competing concerns between protecting research participants and over-managing the ethical process is tricky.
In her book Rainforest Asylum: The enduring legacy of colonial psychiatric care in Malaysia Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree in the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy, addresses the problematic issue of gate-keepers in research together with the ethics of critical observation of abuse (potential or actual), as well as the ethics of advocating on behalf of research participants (4).
The fear that the ethical application process in the UK is becoming more and more cumbersome and bureaucratic has been widely recognised as highlighted by Prof. van Teijlingen and colleagues (5-6).
Research ethics review processes are also considered in terms of access to participants regarded as ‘vulnerable’ in a recently published paper by Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree (7) of ethnographers working in health settings who are seeking to understand the context of care and patient/service user experiences. She concludes that paternalistic control of participation on the grounds of ethical protection of vulnerable people seriously disenfranchises potential participants in preventing them from being able to share their relevant, lived experiences as recipients of service provision.
Prof. van Teijlingen and BU Visiting Fellow Dr. Padam Simkhada highlighted that the social, cultural and economic contexts in which research is conducted often differ between developing and developed countries. However they stress that researchers need to apply for research ethics approval to the relevant local authority, if national legislation requires one to do so (8).
A new and challenging area of research is the use of discussion boards as a source of research data. In their paper Dr. Bond and BU colleagues discuss both practical and ethical dilemmas that arise in using such data (9). In earlier research, Prof. Parker of the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy, highlighted some of the benefits and dangers of using email and the Internet for research as the potential for electronic media continues its rapid growth (10).
Obtaining informed consent is something that all researchers need to consider. However, in some research situations obtaining consent can be particularly challenging. Prof. Hundley and colleagues discuss the ethical challenges involved in conducting a cluster randomised controlled trial, where consent needs to be considered at a number of levels (11). In a second paper issues of consent during pregnancy, where there is the potential for harm to two participants, are considered (12).
In research into the implications of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for social research, Prof. Parker explored the contested meanings and difficulties associated with informed consent in social research, highlighting some of the challenges raised by an almost unquestioned acceptance of biomedical research ethics in social research and questioning whether potential ‘harm’ is different in this context (13, 14). This research has led to further explorations of the potential for ethical covert research by Prof. Parker and Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree.
The way forward
There a plenty of challenges to research ethics in both the health and social care sectors. Ethical considerations relate to technological developments such conducting research over the Internet or the analysis of tweets. HSC staff will continue to publish on a range of moral dilemma as well as practical issues related to research ethics. Moreover, academic from the two centres are planning a Masterclass on research ethics to be held in early 2014.
References
Vanora Hundley, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Jonathan Parker & Edwin van Teijlingen
On Tuesday 11th June 2013, the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) showcased its research as part of the Law Department’s Festival of Learning event. The Law event showcased placement opportunities for students; various law provisions at Bournemouth and research carried out by the Law Department – which included a CIPPM Stall. The Stall was divided into three sections: Experience, Learn and Connect. The event was attended by academics, legal practitioners and students.
Under the theme, ‘Experience’, CIPPM showed videos on copyright law produced in 2012 in the run up to the implementation of copyright exceptions recommended as part of the Hargreaves Review. Videos shown on the day also demonstrated Intellectual Property issues surrounding 3D printing and evidence based copyright.
As part of the ‘Learn’ theme, CIPPM showcased its members’ research publications. These varied from peer reviewed journal articles to commissioned reports and recently published monographs. The collection of high quality research publications was also reflective of the various areas of research that CIPPM members are involved in. It was also an opportunity for CIPPM’s PhD students to exhibit their research.
Apart from demonstrating CIPPM’s various involvements in the areas of IP law, the Festival of Learning was an opportunity to present a platform for future collaboration which was carried out under the ‘Connect’ theme.
By representing previous partnerships leading to successful research projects, those with an interest in research into IP law were invited to collaborate and join forces with CIPPM.
Keeping up with CIPPM’s cake-cutting tradition and in celebrating 20 years of Law at Bournemouth University, the event was brought to a close by cutting and eating a very large cake!
Last year Prof. Matthew Bennett1 raised some interesting issues about academic authorship on this award-winning BU Blog. Authorship is an issue that many academic colleague see as challenging. On September 27th, 2012 two of us replied to this blog by adding some of our own observations on the web. 2 Having penned our online comments we discussed the issue with BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Padam Simkhada Senior Lecturer in International Health at ScHARR, University of Sheffield (www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/sections/ph/staff/profiles/padamsimkhada). Between the three of us we came to the conclusion that the issue of academic authorship can be very confusing as well as tricky.
We discussed a wide-range of issues around academic authorship, including who should be an author and who should not be so, the order of authors, and that there are different conventions between different academic disciplines. Being academic we rapidly came to the conclusion that there was a paper in this. We drafted our ideas, searched the literature for other discussions on authorship, general guidelines on authorship, etc. We wrote the paper and submitted it to the academic journal Health Renaissance; an Open-Access journal, which is freely available world-wide. The editor liked it and published our paper ‘Academic authorship: who, why and in what order?’ this month as a guest editorial. 3
We would like to highlight that there are two separate messages in the publication of this paper. The first message is about academic scholarship; some of our colleagues may find the content of this paper is a useful guide in deciding authorship order, or at least in helping to open the debate about who should be included as co-author and who is not eligible. The second message is more about academic citizenship, namely that messages on the BU Blog and even comments in reply to other people’s messages may contain useful information to the wider academic community and should be taken further. Our message here is don’t see the BU Blog as an end point, see it as a stepping stone to the wider academic world!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen*, Prof. Vanora Hundley* & Dr. Padam Simkhada**
* Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health, HSC, Bournemouth University
** ScHARR, The University of Sheffield
References:
The next CEMP conversation – our fortnightly readers’ and writers’ group – will take place on Thursday June 27th 12 – 1pm in the CEMP office.
This time we’ll be discussing this article, provided by CEMP research student Tom Stacey:
Psychological Science-2013-Frost-0956797612472207
Tom will make a link from the article to his own PHD research and open the discussion.
As always, anyone who wants to read the article and join the discussion is very welcome indeed.
I am pleased to announce that I am holding drop in sessions in each school for the BU community to ask questions about eBU: Online Journal.
These sessions will be:
Mon 24th June – DEC 12 -2pm in P411
Mon 24th June – School of Applied Sciences 2-4pm in C122
Tues 25th June – HSC 9-11am in the Wellbeing Centre, B112 Bournemouth House
Tues 25th June – Business School 2-4pm in EB205
Thurs 27th June – School of Tourism 1.30-3.30 in P410
Fri 28th June – Media School 8-10am in CAG04
Audio extract of today’s CEMP conversation 13.6.13 – a discussion of Allen et al: Work placements in the Arts and Cultural Sector: Diversity, Equality and Access, which was shared by CEMP PHD student Tamsyn Dent.
NB – some of the voices here are via skype.
The next CEMP conversation is on 27.6.13 and the reading will be posted here a week before. All are welcome to attend.
On 15-16th July 2013, Professor Ruth Soetendorp, Associate Director of the Business School’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM), will present a paper titled “Who Cares What Students Think about IP?” at the Seventh Annual Workshop of the European Intellectual Property Teacher’s Network (EIPTN) at University of Lisbon, Portugal. Details about the Conference can be found here
On 19th June 2013, Dr. Jesus Gonzalez will present on the “The Distinctive Function of Authorship” which will take place at Bournemouth University, Executive Business Centre Room EB302. The event will commence at 4 pm.
All welcome!
The next CEMP Conversation will be on Thursday 13th June, 12.30 – 1.30 in the CEMP office.
This is a reading and discussion group, and the reading this time has been shared by Tamsyn Dent, PHD student in CEMP: Allen, K et al (2010): Work placements in the arts and cultural sector: Diversity, equality and access
Here it is: ECU Allen et al Work placements_2010[1]
Tamsyn’s introduction: This is quite easy to scan through and some might have read already. I thought it would be interesting and relevant, particularly as a follow on from Richard Berger’s chapter in Catriona Noonan and Dan Ashton’s book.
All are very welcome to join us for this discussion.