Category / Research communication

Training opportunity: writing for The Conversation

BU research, Events, Research communication, RKE development framework, the conversation

Would you like to build a media profile and take your research to a global audience?

Find out more about writing for The Conversation and have the chance to pitch your article ideas to one of their editors in a face-to-face training session on Wednesday 15 March.

The Conversation is a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists.

The training session will run by one of The Conversation’s Editors and will take place in the Fusion Building from 1pm – 4pm.

It is open to all BU academics and PhD candidates who are interested in finding out more about working with The Conversation.

Learn how to consider the news potential of your expertise, make your writing accessible and engaging to a diverse range of audiences, and pitch your ideas.

After an initial introduction to working with The Conversation, there will be the chance to chat with the editor and share your research and article ideas.

Why write for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a great way to share research and informed comment on topical issues. Academics work with editors to write pieces, which can then be republished via a creative commons license.

Since we first partnered with The Conversation, articles by BU authors have had nearly 9 million reads and been republished by the likes of The i, Metro, and the Washington Post.

Find out more and book your place

 

BA/Leverhulme Small Grants 31st May 2023 – date update-

Funding opportunities, Research communication

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants

The call for the next round of BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants will be opening soon.

We will be welcoming your proposals for the upcoming BA/Leverhulme Small grants call!

The below deadlines will be in place to ensure that the pre-award team can provide all interested academics with optimal support in a timely manner.

Please see below our timelines and the updated process.

 

 

Wed 22nd Feb 2023

 

 

Wed 22nd Feb 2023- 5th April

 RDS British Academy Guidance session 

Join us to review the guidance and then start work on your application; Slides and proposal form will be available after the session on Brightspace.

 

Work on your proposal and once ready, forward to RDS.
5th April 2023 Call Opens – latest date to send your proposal to RDS for peer review.
5th April- 17th April 2023 Proposal reviews, RDS  will inform you of your peer review results and advice on next steps.
24th April 2023 Intention to bid form latest date to be submitted, only for peer reviewed applications that have been advised to progress.

Remember to advise your referee that you will be sending them your completed application on FlexiGrant and they will need to provide their supporting statement by 26th May.
24th April 2023 If you are Grade 8 or below and you wish to use the support of an External Application Reviewer (EAR), you must submit your draft application to RDS by this date.
24th May 2023 Nominated referee supporting statement to be completed via FlexiGrant

Note that the earlier you complete you application on FlexiGrant, the more time the referee will have to review your bid and provide the supporting statement.
24th May May 2023 Your final application must be submitted on FlexiGrant by this date at the latest.

Click ‘submit’ and the form will be sent to BU’s account for RDS checks.
24th – 31st May  2023 Institutional checks to take place by RDS

RDS will work with you to ensure compliance with all funder’s requirements.

 

If you have any queries, please contact Eva Papadopoulou or your Funding Development Officer. 

Ageing and Dementia Research Forum – 26th January – Accessible Tourism

BU research, Fusion, Research communication, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, research methods, research opportunities, research staff

Details of the next ADRC ageing and dementia research forum are listed below. The forum is an opportunity for staff and PhD students to get together to chat about research and share experiences in a safe and supportive environment. Specific topics are discussed but there is also time for open discussion to mull over aspects of research such as project ideas and planning, ethical considerations and patient and public involvement.

Date, time, and campus Research areas
26th January 2023

15.30-16.45

BG601, Bournemouth Gateway

Lansdowne Campus

 ‘Accessible Tourism for Ageing and Dementia travellers’

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis and Dr Daisy Fan

Please confirm attendance by email to adrc@bournemouth.ac.uk

If you would like to discuss your research ideas at a future meeting, please email Michelle mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk

We look forward to seeing you there.

Ageing and Dementia Research Centre

Conversation article: Terrorist recruitment now happens mainly online – which makes offenders easier to catch

BU research, Featured, Research communication, the conversation

BU’s Chris Baker-Beall co-authors this article for The Conversation around new research into the different journeys and patterns of extremist offending…

Terrorist recruitment now happens mainly online – which makes offenders easier to catch

Shutterstock

Jens Binder, Nottingham Trent University and Chris Baker-Beall, Bournemouth University

It is notoriously difficult to work out how and why someone becomes a terrorism risk. While attacks cause immense pain and suffering, the actual number of terrorist incidents in the western world is small. That makes it difficult to arrive at reliable, quantified evidence.

But in our research, we’ve started to identify important patterns when it comes to different journeys into extremist offending. Most notably, we’ve found that in recent years, people who go on to be convicted of terrorist offences are far more likely to have been radicalised online – without any offline interactions at all – than was the case in the past.

While the seeming ease with which this can happen is worrying, we’ve also found that people recruited purely online are less likely to commit violent attacks and less committed to their extremist causes than those recruited via in-person meetings. While face-to-face radicalisation continues, the process is now found to take place primarily online.

Our work, which uses detailed risk assessment reports on people sentenced for terrorist offences in England and Wales, draws on 437 cases between October 2010 and December 2021. These reports, written by trained prison and probation professionals, focus on the pre-history of an offence and the current circumstances of the offender. As well as a detailed narrative, they also contain estimates of the levels of risk that the individual poses.

The shift online

We wanted to look into how people became radicalised in the outside world before they committed an extremist offence. We found that, over time, it is less and less the case that people are radicalised offline, such as at local meeting places or via direct contact with peers and relatives.

Mixed radicalisation, where extremist offenders are subject to both online and in-person influences, has also been declining. It is now much more common for people to be radicalised online. They might learn from online sources or engage with extreme views on social media. They might also use internet forums and chat groups that provide easy access to like-minded others.

Our findings show that despite current perceptions about the growth of encrypted messaging services, online radicalisation is not necessarily happening predominantly through one-to-one communication channels. The most commonly named platform is YouTube.

While encrypted applications will always play their role, monitoring and regulating the more public online spaces is likely to make the most difference.

It was also interesting to note that those radicalised online consistently showed the lowest level of estimated risk. They were less engaged with extremist causes than those radicalised offline. They were also the most likely to have committed a non-violent offence, such as inciting and encouraging others to commit terrorism or possessing terrorist material, and to have committed their offences solely online.

Police caution tape sectioning off an area of a street.
Police were more likely to thwart online plots.
Shutterstock

They were also far less intent on committing further offences after leaving prison than those who were radicalised offline – and they appeared to have the lowest capacity to commit further crimes because of having less access to the knowledge, networks or materials they might need.

So it seems that while online radicalisation is the most pervasive form at the moment, it is not overly effective at permanently immersing people in an extremist mindset. Nor is the online approach particularly successful for conveying the skills and knowledge necessary to commit graver offences.

Disrupting online plots

In order to check for potentially more dangerous sub-groups, we also focused on those offenders classed as attackers. These were people who did not necessarily carry out full attacks but had, at the very least, cast themselves in such a role and had pursued attack plans.

The online group showed the lowest frequency of attack-related activities, and attackers in this group were least successful in progressing plots for attacks. Only 29% of these plots moved from planning to the execution stage and only 18% were successfully carried out.

All the plots we studied, which were not successful, had been disrupted by the police or other security services. The online world is, after all, not a perfect hiding place. Online activities often leave traces that can be detected by counter-terrorism practitioners.

While this could all mean that online radicalisation is comparatively harmless, there is a thin line between a relatively ineffective online-only radicalisation and a much more effective mixed radicalisation that includes both online and in-person influences. Online communication can slide into real-life interactions, and people radicalised via the latter technique were assessed as being highest in engagement and intent.

So while the switch to online radicalisation appears to make people easier to catch and less likely to commit violent attacks, this form of radicalisation should still be taken seriously and be recognised as a potential stepping stone towards more dangerous behaviour.The Conversation

Jens Binder, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Nottingham Trent University and Chris Baker-Beall, Senior Lecturer In Crisis and Disaster Management, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Research reflections 2022 – Your highlights: The SPEED project

BU research, EU, Featured, Featured academics, Research communication, Uncategorized

Dr Deniz Cetinkaya, Principal Academic in Computing, writes about the SPEED project, an EU project to use advances in technology and data science to support new port ecosystems, which has just been completed… 

The SPEED project (Smart Ports Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Development) is funded by the EU European Interreg 2 Seas program, run for the European 2 Seas region (Belgium, France, Netherlands and the UK).

The project has been running for over four years now, since 2018, and we have completed it successfully and managed to deliver all expected outputs in our work package. BU has been one of the leading partners together with Antwerp Management School in Belgium.

A port at sunset The SPEED project aimed to develop and support the growth of a connected port solutions ecosystem backed by data science and IoT technologies. It helped to empower a cross-border community of port authorities, port stakeholders, data science and IoT entrepreneurs and knowledge centres to become a leading smart ports innovation ecosystem and hub for smart port application development.

The project was shortlisted for the 2021 IAPH (The International Association of Ports and Harbours) Sustainability Awards by The World Ports Sustainability Program in the category ‘Resilient Digital Infrastructure’. We have published and presented a conference paper in the 20th International Conference in E-Society in March 2022 and another paper in the 24th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in June 2022.

SPEED Smart Ports Innovation Portal is an open community platform to connect and bridge the worlds of port operations and smart technologies. You can check the SPEED Portal for more information and to register. SPEED Portal is one of the deliverables of the SPEED Project, and is developed and maintained by BU. Major events, outputs and some deliverables are shared on the portal.

We had the dissemination and closure event for the SPEED project as well as a networking opportunity for future collaborations on 25th of November 2022. The one-day event was very successful with several presentations and discussion sessions, and many BU students, colleagues and external guests from different disciplines attended the event.

More information is available on the SPEED website and https://www.smartportsecosystem.com/

You can also contact the project’s PI Dr Deniz Cetinkaya dcetinkaya@bournemouth.ac.uk or Co-I Dr Gernot Liebchen gliebchen@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Research reflections 2022 – Your highlights: The RaNTrans project

BU research, Featured, Research communication, research staff

Dr Dan Franklin, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, and Annesia Lamb, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant/Senior Research Associate, write about RaNTrans, an Interreg project addressing the issues of excess nutrients in coastal waters… 

The Interreg (Rapid Reduction of Nutrients in Transitional Waters) project is a partnership of several UK and French organisations addressing the issues of excess nutrients (particularly nitrogen) in coastal waters. Human modification of the nitrogen cycle is recognised as one of the “planetary boundaries” beyond which humanity currently operates. Excess nitrogen in coastal ecosystems can cause dramatic ecological changes and significantly alter how ecosystems function.

The surface of Holes Bay covered in a green algae with three people wading in it

Seaweed collection in Holes Bay, Poole Harbour

RaNTrans has had a strong focus on the use of seaweeds and oysters to mitigate excess nitrogen conditions. Seaweeds and oysters take up and store nutrients in their tissues and when harvested can act as a removal mechanism to offset human nutrient discharges from agriculture and wastewater treatment works. They are also the subject of large-scale ecosystem restoration projects through European coastal waters.

Green seaweeds (such as Ulva) are often very abundant in high-nutrient estuaries. They can form “mats” and shade other species of seaweeds, potentially change dissolved oxygen conditions, and can also change the amount of food available to wading birds in the underlying sediments. Improving our understanding of mat species and biochemical composition, mat dynamics and computer modelling, and mat detection with remote sensing are other aspects of the project.

An aerial image showing areas of algae at Holes Bay

Holes Bay algal mat detection

This year RaNTrans successfully completed a large-scale seaweed collection trial in Holes Bay, Poole Harbour, which removed several hundred kilos of seaweed mat. This effort involved up to 10 project personnel working at our Hole’s Bay experimental site.

We are now monitoring the impact of this collection effort on bird ecology, sediment macrofauna (the clams, worms etc that live in the mud) and we are quantifying how fast the seaweed mat returns to the harvested plots. We have found that the growth conditions for green mat-forming species of seaweeds in Holes Bay are especially benign, resulting in an almost single-species mat which is relatively straightforward to harvest.

The project runs until June 2023 and we hope that our findings will lead to a better understanding, and greater innovation, in how we manage an environmental issue that is significant throughout the coastal waters of the world.

Find out more on the RaNTrans project website 

Research reflections 2022 – Your highlights: DONATION project

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, Research communication

Dr Rounaq Nayak, Lecturer in Sustainability, writes about the DONATION project, which explored the impact of the cost of living crisis on food aid programmes… 

The research success I have had is with a project that I started at the beginning of the year, titled ‘Design of a social sustainability and food utilisation matrix for food banks (DONATION)’, using the Charity Impact fund (internal call).

The fund helped me explore the impact of the cost of living crisis on various food aid programmes in the UK (including food banks and community markets in Dorset, Leicestershire and Shropshire).

I would term this project a success due to 3 reasons: it gave me the chance to carry out research in a new topic area, it allowed me to network both within the university as well as with key stakeholders outside the University, and apply successfully for seed funding from the British Academy.

Findings from the study were published in a Call for evidence on the UK Parliament website, which is a first for me. Detailed findings will also be published as a peer-reviewed paper in a special issue journal that is widely read by audiences in the sector.

Vegetables in packaging in a food bankWhat started out as a small project that was awarded £2500 at the start of the year has led to a larger project with a defined theme (£7900) that is attracting interest from various stakeholders such as BCP, Bristol City and Oxfordshire Councils, key stakeholders associated with food aid programmes in the UK, and charities that work with vulnerable populations.

The findings have also led to the identification of a new group of clients that need access to food banks due to food and fuel poverty – people working full-time jobs and on an annual salary. Based on these findings and the gravity of the situation identified through this project, I am aiming to apply for a UKRI New Investigator Grant in the autumn of 2023.

Research reflections 2022 – Your highlights: ECHO project showcase event

BU research, EU, Events, Featured, Featured academics, Research communication, research staff, Uncategorized

Dr Jane Henriksen-Bulmer, Principal Academic in Computer Science, writes about a three-day event that took place at BU in early December to mark the end of the ECHO project, which aims to strengthen the proactive cyber defence of the European Union…

This is the largest event we have ever arranged and the culmination of the H2020 pilot programme (consisting of only 4 projects, including ECHO) on Cybersecurity. BU is the one of only 3 universities involved in the project, with most of the partners being from industry (44 partners in all). We are the only project partner from the UK, so we have a lot to be proud of.

Presentations took place as part of the ECHO dissemination event

This event was the showcase for all the outputs from the ECHO project and we had an impressive line-up of prominent guests and speakers, both local and from Europe. On top of that, we involved 4 cohorts of students in the event, from L5 through to L7, so this truly is a fusion exercise where learning, teaching and industry come together to showcase the best of what we can do when we ‘fuse’ the three aspects.

The 3 days were jam-packed with excitement starting on the Monday with a kick-off event where we had talks from a number of prominent speakers from across Europe including ENISA, DG CNECT, Accenture, DSTL and ESET.

This was followed by a series of student-led workshops run by our final year undergraduate and master’s students (Huseyin’s Human Factors unit) where they interviewed the ECHO partners and conducted Human Factors evaluations on the Early Warning System, which went really well.

On Tuesday, we and our ECHO guests spent the morning recording some footage on the Green Screen in the Faculty of Media and Communication, which they are going to turn into an animation that we hope to use for dissemination. This was followed by a visit to BAE Systems’ STEP facility in Christchurch, where my final year business IT students presented their ideas for how the various plug-ins created as part of ECHO can be commercialised, which went down really well.

Students sat at computers

Students take part in an exercise as part of the ECHO event.

Then, on Wednesday we had the Incident Response Scenario where a group of second year students (Cagatay’s Ethical Hacking Unit) played blue team, defending multiple systems under attack. They then used the Early Warning System to raise tickets to warn of the attack as it was happening. It was a real eye-opener for them to see how this might play out in real life and they had a fabulous day, as did the observers and guests.

Overall, the whole 3 days were a resounding success, we have really enjoyed the experience (although we now must sleep!) and are hoping to host similar events in the future, watch this space!

Research reflections 2022: Your highlights

BU research, Featured, Research communication, research staff, Uncategorized

As we come to the end of 2022, we’re taking a look back at some of our research and knowledge exchange successes from across the year.

In today’s blog post, members of the BU community share some of their highlights…

In 2022, we celebrated the REF 2021 results (and associated increase in QR funding) and our increase in performance in KEF2. We also supported BU to successfully retain the HR Excellence in Research Award for the 8th year.

We had a successful internal research audit and we received positive feedback from the Senate review on URPPC management, administration and advice.

We supported the launch of the Strategic Narratives, including organising the Online Public Lecture Series, and we ran our first research conference in several years, which was a great success. We also re-started our in-person Café Scientifique series and delivered several events as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.

We established the Research Excellence Team and welcomed the Business and Knowledge Exchange Managers to BU, as well as launching the RCaTS scheme.

We made further improvements to the RKE processes by working with the BU Transformation Team, such as the implementation of the enquiry management system, the eItB, and the launch of a new process for Research Centre memberships.

We’ve increased our number of bids compared to the previous year, which has led to some exciting new awards, such as Dr Philip Riris’ AHRC grant and a Knowledge Transfer Partnership led by Professor Marcin Budka.

RDS moved into Studland House and Joelle Fallows, RDS Operations Officer, has been instrumental in linking a new charity (Story Works, set up by Dee Hughes in FMC) with a local primary school, launched with a visit from Michael Rosen (the charity patron) to BU – pretty cool!

Julie Northam, Head of RDS

The work being undertaken by myself and Henry Bang from the BUDMC has had major impacts through projects such as AFRICAB, EVALDIS and ELIED, working with governmental organisations in preparing for, responding to, and recovery from crisis.

Elsewhere in the Faculty, Professor Mike Silk has concluded his big grants around the Paralympics, with major coverage in the year of the Paralympic Games; Professor Dimitrios Buhalis’s achievement of being the most cited academic in terms of individual papers in the field of Tourism and Hospitality; Professor Janet Dickinson and her exciting e-drones project; and Professor Chris Chapleo has been supporting local business Actisense, enhancing and automating their customer service through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

Professor Lee Miles, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice, BU Business School

As part of the BOU (British Ornithological Union) panel that records fossil and archaeological birds from the last 2.6 Million years for the official British list (category F) we published a paper in Ibis detailing our database. This can be used to inform policy decisions on native status of British birds. The paper includes a discussion of some of the more interesting and controversial records like the mandarin duck, pigmy cormorant etc.

Professor John Stewart, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeoecology, Faculty of Science and Technology

The launch of the Research Excellence Manager role, full stop; having a role which has specific responsibilities for BU’s research environment and research culture is pretty brilliant. Equally, the launch of the Research ‘Most Excellent’ team – having a team with this lens brings a lovely perspective to the work we do.

Our REF results and QR funding increase was a massive achievement and testament to the hard work everyone has been putting in for years. We’ve been rejuvenating connections among the UOA teams, with a large number of expressions of interest from staff wanting to get involved (50 plus), ranging from ECRs to Professors. We’ve also been working with academic colleagues to achieve 100% compliance on our Research Outcomes submission.

We have lively, active and full research leadership programmes, ECR network and almost fully represented Research Staff Association, and the research conference had a large number of attendees and great speakers – cracking!

It’s been great to reconnect our RDS team after a few unsettling and disjointed years and move into our new home on the 8th floor of Studland House (complete with sea views!) Finally, a special shout out to Peng Peng Hatch for being awarded the Doctorate in Education!

Shelly Anne Stringer, Research Excellence Manager, RDS

A paper published by Dr Laura Renshaw-Vuillier, Dr Rachel Moseley and Dr Maddy Greville-Harris (entitled “The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with eating disorders: the role of emotion regulation and exploration of online treatment experiences”) was selected for the Best COVID-19 2022 Research Paper award in the Journal of Eating Disorders.

Professor Jan Wiener, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology

Research reflections 2022: the year in numbers

BU research, Featured, Research communication

2022 has been another great year for research and knowledge exchange at BU. From receiving our excellent REF 2021 results to securing prestigious external funding and supporting new research activity, there’s a lot to celebrate.

Across the coming days, we’ll be featuring stories and reflections from across the BU community, sharing some of their highlights from across the year.

To get us started, here are just some of the numbers that make up the year in research at BU…

We received 171 new awards, representing over £7.5 million in research income

94% of BU research was found to be internationally-recognised or above, with 19% world-leading in quality (REF 2021)

95.7% of our research was found to be delivering considerable impact or above. Nearly one third of our impact case studies achieved an outstanding (4*) impact score. (REF 2021)

We held 20 public engagement events (as part of our regular events series) – attended by 1,231 people

16 positions were funded in 3 new research clusters through the Research Capacity Transformation Scheme (RCaTs)

36 new academic members of staff joined BU

2 new research centres were established – the Centre for Sustainable Business Transformations and the Computing and Informatics Research Centre

27 articles were written by BU academics for The Conversation, which had over 987,000 reads across the world

We’d love to hear from you – please share your reflections, successes and stories from across 2022 in the comments or by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk

Reflections on the 14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference

BU research, conferences, Doctoral College, Events, Featured, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, research methods, student research

 

Thank you to all of our presenters, poster exhibitors, session chairs and of course delegates who supported the 14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference. It is always a highlight on the Doctoral College events calendar and we hope you all enjoyed the day.

The conference had an amazing buzz and vibrancy about it, and it was so nice to see so many PGRs and colleagues turn up to show their support and promoting our positive PGR research culture across BU.

Here is what some of our presenters and delegates had to say about the day:

(more…)

Tomorrow – The 14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference

BU research, conferences, Doctoral College, ECR Network, Events, Featured, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, student research

 

Register to attend the 14th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference. We will be hosting a PGR poster exhibition in FG06 with over 40 research posters on display (our biggest exhibition yet!).

The conference will also see oral presentations presented via Zoom with a screening room in Create LT (spaces limited).

You can see the full programme with presentation and poster abstracts  in our conference brochure.

Online training opportunity: Writing for The Conversation

Events, Featured, Research communication, Research Training, RKE development framework, the conversation, Training

Would you like to build a media profile and take your research to a global audience?

Find out more about writing for The Conversation and have the chance to pitch your article ideas to one of their editors in an online training session on Wednesday 7 December.

BU is a partner of The Conversation, a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists.

The training session will run by one of The Conversation’s editors and will take place from 2pm – 3pm over Zoom.

It is open to all BU academics and PhD candidates who are interested in finding out more about working with The Conversation.

Learn how to consider the news potential of your expertise, make your writing accessible and engaging to a diverse range of audiences, and pitch your ideas.

Why write for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a great way to share research and informed comment on topical issues. Academics work with editors to write pieces, which can then be republished via a creative commons license.

Since we first partnered with The Conversation, articles by BU authors have had over 8.8 million reads and been republished by the likes of The i, Metro, and the Washington Post.

Book your place via Eventbrite

Find out more about our partnership with The Conversation on the Research Impact, Engagement and Communications Sharepoint site