Category / Research communication

Inspiring lectures at the IRW

BU research, Research communication

InterdisResWeek2The Interdisciplinary Research Week 2016 has thought provoking and inspirational lectures that will of interest to all.  These include:

Monday 25 January 2016

Professor Lee Miles

Inaugural public lecture: Entrepreneurial Resilience and Disaster Management: Where Innovation and Integration Meet?

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 18:30 for 19:00 – 20:00

BU’s inaugural lecture series returns in January 2016, with a fascinating glimpse into the world of disaster management, delivered by Professor Lee Miles, Professor of Crisis and Disaster Management. Professor Miles has carried out research into emergency and crisis management for many years and is currently exploring the relationship between innovation and resilience in successful crisis and disaster management.  Click here to read more.

Thursday 28 January 2016                            

Inspirational Speaker: Professor Jane Falkingham, University of Southampton

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 18:00-20:00

Professor Jane Falkingham is Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change and Dean of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton. Through a career spanning almost 30 years, her research pursues a multi-disciplinary agenda combining social policy and population studies, which span both developed and developing countries. Much of her work has focussed on the social policy implications of population ageing and demographic change, and what this means for the distribution of social and economic welfare.

Click on the links above to book these events.

Get your cultural fix at the IRW

BU research, Research communication

InterdisResWeek2The Interdisciplinary Research Week (IRW) has a number of cultural highlights for everyone’s tastes.  Free popcorn will be available at the films as well as refreshments.  The events include:

Tuesday 26 January 2016             

Written and Directed by Professor Erik Knudsen

Raven on the Jetty

PG16, Talbot Campus, 16:00-18:00

In the midst of separation, one boy’s silent longing has the power to change everything.

On his ninth birthday, Thomas travels with his mother to visit his estranged father who, since an acrimonious divorce, has abandoned urban living in favour of an isolated rural life in the English Lake District. The bitter separation of his parents is not something Thomas understands, nor does he understand his own dysfunctional behaviour as a silent cry for help. As a digital native city boy, Thomas’s encounter with the natural world, and his gradual understanding of the pivotal connection he provides for his, ultimately, lonely parents, leads to realisation and discovery. There are things his parents don’t know about each other that only he can reveal. Perhaps he has the power and the means to change everything. (Fiction: 88 minutes. 2014).

Following the film there will be a Q & A session with the Director.

Thursday 28 January 2016            

Lizzie Sykes

Are You There?

Coyne Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus, 16:00-18:00

In 2014, Lizzie Sykes was awarded an Arts Council-funded residency at Mottisfont, a National Trust property and gardens in Hampshire. Mottisfont is a place where artists have met and worked for hundreds of years.

Are You There? is a film made from inside the Mottisfont residence. It is performed by Louise Tanoto, and is a response to how it feels to be alone in the house and to be inescapably linked to it in a private and intimate way; free from expected codes of physical behaviour that such a formal space normally represents.

Following the film there will be a chance for a Q&A session

Friday 29 January 2016                            

Emerge music group performance

Allesbrook Theatre, Talbot Campus, 17.30 – 18.30

BU’s Emerge Research Centre has a research music performing group, a creative space where each person develops their own instruments and music based on personal research into sound as well as gesture and technology as part of their creative practice.

The experimental music and sound-art event features a soundtrack of electronic atmospheres, noisescapes, pulses and rhythms, tones and drones. It will include an exploration of hardware-hacked devices, simple electronic instruments, data networks and basic sensors to augment and inform laptop improvisations, immersive fixed-media soundscapes and live visuals.

Performers include:
Anna Troisi, http://www.annatroisi.org/
Antonino Chiaramonte, http://www.antoninochiaramonte.eu/
Rob Canning, http://rob.kiben.net/
Bill Thompson, www.billthompson.org
Ambrose Seddon, http://www.ambroseseddon.com/
Tom Davis, http://www.tdavis.co.uk/

Visuals by Kavi, https://vimeo.com/user324972

Click on the event titles above to book your tickets.

Join the debate at the IRW

BU research, Research communication

InterdisResWeek2The Interdisciplinary Research Week 2016 will host three lively debates.  These include:

Tuesday 26 January 2016             

Professor Barry Richards and Dr Sascha-Dominik Bachmann

BU’s Big Issues: Threats in a changing world

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 18:30 – 19:30

Global security is rapidly becoming one of the biggest challenges facing our society. From the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, to continuing unrest in the Middle East, security issues are rarely out of the news. Join some of BU’s leading academics in this area to discover how their work is changing the debate and shaping thinking around the future of global security.

Wednesday 27 January 2016      

Professor Adrian Newton, Professor Chris Shiel, Associate Professor Jane Murphy, Dr Juliet Wiseman and Dr Dawn Birch

BU’s Big Issues: Protecting the environment: humans vs nature

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 18:30 – 19:30

Protecting the environment and living more sustainable is a laudable aim, and one that many of us support, but how easy is it to change human behaviours and what does it cost?  Join us to hear how research being led by BU’s academics is making a difference to our local area, through developing an understanding of how local environments are changing in response to human activities, and how we can all live more sustainably by changing the way we source our food.

Thursday 28 January 2016            

Dr Andrew Callaway, Dr Bryce Dyer and Shelley Broomfield

BU’s Big Issues: The use of technology in sports: giving athletes an Olympic advantage

KG03, Talbot Campus, 14:00 – 15:00

With the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics fast approaching, all eyes will soon be turning to the world’s elite athletes and their astonishing sporting achievements. Sporting technology forms a key part of their preparation and can help to make significant improvements in performance.  Join us to hear from three of BU’s sports researchers – and competitive athletes in their own right – to learn more about the ways technology can improve athletic performance for both elite athletes and people taking part in sports for fun.

Click on the links above to book your place at the debate.

Interdisciplinary Research Week 2016 Programme of Events

BU research, Research communication

InterdisResWeek2The second Interdisciplinary Research Week (IRW) is being held from 25th to 29th January 2016.  Join us at one or more of these free events to celebrate the breadth and excellence of Bournemouth University’s research, across it’s many disciplines.

This five day event includes a programme of lectures, art based events, film, discussions and healthy debate all designed to stimulate new ideas and examine important societal issues from across the globe.

Events also include funder visits from the Wellcome Trust who will be talking about their most recent collaborative project ‘Hubbub’ and why working across various disciplines, sectors and organisations is important to them as funders; and the British Academy who will share emerging findings from a project they are carrying out on interdisciplinary research.  They are looking at how the whole higher education and research systems supports such research in terms of publishing, research funding, academic careers, teaching and beyond.

The IRW events are open to everyone (only one event is for BU academics and researchers only).  Do check out the whole programme of events to see what might interest you and publicise the week to your friends and family.

Bournemouth Academic invited to present at Developing Social Data Science Methodologies workshop within the Alan Turing Institute

Research communication, Uncategorized

Katarzyna Musial-Gabrys was invited to present her work on complex social networks during the upcoming workshop organised by the Alan Turing Institute within the Foundation of Social Data Science initiative.tag_claud_2011

The Alan Turing Institute was established in 2015 as the UK national institute for the data sciences in response to a letter from the Council for Science and Technology (CST) to the UK Prime Minister (7 June 2013), describing the “Age of Algorithms”. The letter presents a case that “The Government, working with the universities and industry, should create a National Centre to promote advanced research and translational work in algorithms and the application of data science.” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-age-of-algorithms).
Katarzyna’s presentation will contribute to shaping the portfolio of research challenges to be addressed within the Alan Turing Institute.

Title of Katarzyna’s talk: Methodological challenges in data aggregation in complex social networks.

Abstract of the talk:
For the first time in history, we have the possibility to process ‘big data’ (gathered in computer systems) about the interactions and activities of millions of individuals. It represents an increasingly important yet underutilized resource because due to the scale, complexity and dynamics, social networks extracted from this data are extremely difficult to analyse. There is no coherent and comprehensive methodological approach to analyse such networks which is crucial to advance our understanding of continuously changing people’s behaviour.
One of the methodological challenges is to cope with the variety of available big social data. This data comes from multiple systems (email, instant messengers, blogs, social networking sites, google searches, YouTube, etc.); in each system user can have one or more accounts; this data describes different types of activities (commenting, sharing, messaging, calling, etc.) and relationships (direct, quasi-direct and indirect). In order to be able to effectively process gathered data using data science approaches we need to develop new methodology that will focus on the multirelational (more than one type of connections in a network) character of data.
In general, there are two methods to do that: (i) analyse each relation type separately and then combine results from different layers or (ii) merge all relation types in one layer and analyse this newly created layer. Both approaches require effort in terms of redefining existing network analysis techniques. Analysing each network separately means that methods for combining results from different layers need to be developed. Merging some/all connection types into one heterogeneous relation means that a new approach for aggregation of data from different layers is required. Only by developing rigid approaches to data aggregation, the analytics task can be performed.

If you are interested and you would like to get some further information please contact kmusialgabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Report on the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) Age 17 Survey: Consultative Conference

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research communication, Research Training

I recently attended the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS7) Age 17 Survey: Consultative one day conference held at UCL’s Institute of Education in London. Cohort studies are extremely valuable because data is collected over time working with the same sample of people. Longitudinal studies permit to describe the natural history of the same population and can identify risk factors for example, for optimal health, educational attainment chances and/or employment opportunities. Professor Emla Fitzsimons is the Principal Investigator of MCS,m strategically invited leaders of the ‘Activities and Daily Life’, ‘Cognitive Development’, and the ‘Socio-Emotional Development’ to harness conference delegates’ view on what are the important and key issues that society should know when examining 17 year old adolescents’ lives. The leaders provided an overview of their current strategies for capturing participants’ unique style of life. Then through a series of workshops the pros and cons of these were discussed and summarised. I don’t envy their jobs! To study the individual characteristics and the associated environmental factors in such a large sample is a huge undertaking. The attendees were from very varied inter- and multi-disciplinary backgrounds working at a wide range of organisations, including government agencies. The common objective was to create a dataset that can inform many governmental policies on a variety of topics. The process of decision making over every aspects of the 7th sweep of the MCS is extremely complex. The key aspect of longitudinal studies is comparability. Although, each sweep is unique because of the cohort is ageing, there has to be a trend of using the same methodology overtime. Studies like the MCS are facing constant funding crises because they are very expensive to run. There is an ongoing revision of time taken to collect data, finding proxy to gold standard measures and considering cutting expensive data collection methods like, FMRI scans, use of accelerometers to assess physical activity patterns and conducting physical tests. Despite all of these difficulties, data from such studies are invaluable. For example, in the 7th sweep they want to omit interviewing parents about their child’s mental health. I argued to include this data at this sweep, as most adolescents in the study are still living at home and others (like family members) are the ones most likely to identify early signs of mental health problems. Early detection is vital, especially when 1 in 10 adolescents known to develop at least one serious depressive episode in the UK by the time they are 18. Check out the MCS website if you are interested. You can also access all speakers’ slides by following the link (http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/Conference.aspx?itemid=4285&itemTitle=MCS+Consultative+Conference&sitesectionid=28&sitesectiontitle=Events). Data from the previous 6 sweeps are available for researchers to interrogate.

FMC Research Seminar: Adapting to dominant news narratives: tax ‘fairness’ as a Trojan horse for anti-austerity politics: Wednesday, 9 December, 3-4pm, Room W240

BU research, Research communication

FMC Cross-Departmental Seminar Series 2015-16

Time: Wednesday, 9th December, 3-4 pm

Venue: The Screening Room W240, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus. 

Adapting to dominant news narratives: tax ‘fairness’ as a Trojan horse for anti-austerity politics

Over the past five years the issue of tax avoidance has broken through into mainstream news media and public debate, after many years in which the campaigning efforts of NGOs, trade unions and a few investigative journalists were met largely with indifference.  Protest group UK Uncut have been widely credited with increasing public engagement in the issue.  News routines are less reliant on official and elite sources than in the past, and protesters less universally delegitimised in dominant news discourse, but the political claims of social movements still tend to be neglected or reduced to vague or naive opposition.  UK Uncut were conscious of the common pitfalls and attempted to fit their own framing of the issue into existing news frames.  In presenting a practical alternative to cuts, they hoped to substantiate an argument against the broadly accepted ‘necessity’ of public spending cuts, smuggling an oppositional claim inside a familiar narrative.

Their framing of the issue in terms of compromised political interests and ‘fairness to taxpayers’ fitted with dominant news narratives and was widely adopted by other sources, including the Public Accounts Committee, and by journalists, but generally in terms of individual and organisational wrongdoing and self-interest rather as a systemic critique.  This did little to challenge or disrupt the overarching dominant narrative of fiscal crisis, necessary cuts, and even of fair tax as low tax.  However, the playful performativity of the protests themselves – although part of an activist repertoire, risking distancing themselves from the mainstream – were successful in achieving some limited press coverage of the cuts that they claimed could be prevented by corporations paying their ‘fair share’, but those arguments were not picked up by other voices.

This paper analyses the extent to which this ‘adaptation’ approach to news framing (Rucht 2013) or intervention in dominant narratives (Hirschkop 1998) was successful in advancing political claims and objectives, and whether this case supports the contention that strategically performative and rhetorical interventions in the public sphere can compensate for marginality and lack of discursive power.

Jen Birks is an Assistant Professor in the department of Culture, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham, where she teaches political communication and public cultures.  She is the author of News and Civil Society (Ashgate 2014).

All are welcome!!

About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies.  The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

 

Contributions include speakers on behalf of 

The Centre for Politics and Media Research

The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community

Narrative Research Group

Journalism Research Group

Advances in Media Management Research Group

Emerging Consumer Cultures Research Group

Public Relations Research Group

Academy of Marketing 3rd B2B Marketing Colloquium in Paris, 11-12 APRIL 2016: Opportunity to publish in Special Issue, Journal of Industrial Marketing Management (3* ABS ranking)

conferences, international, Publishing, Research communication, Uncategorized, writing

Dear All,

Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne in partnership with Bournemouth University is hosting 3rd annual colloquium for academics and professionals investigating the theory, context and practice of the B2B marketing.

Please see details on the theme, the indicative programme and submission instructions below. We are also pleased to inform that Professor Peter Laplaca is coming to facilitate the session aimed at helping you to write and publish in high quality journals. Moreover, the colloquium is sponsored by the Journal of Industrial Marketing Management (the lead ranking journal for the B2B marketing, 3* ABS ranking).

For any information related to the event and submission/registration process, do email Dr Elvira Bolat at ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk and Dr Kaouther Kooli at kkooli@bournemouth.ac.uk

Theme: ADDRESSING THE BIG PICTURE: MACRO-ENVIRONMENT CHANGES AND B2B FIRMS

 

Organising team:

Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

Bournemouth University

  • Dr Kaouther Kooli, Lecturer in marketing, Faculty of Management, Bournemouth University, kkooli@bournemoth.ac.uk
  •  Dr Elvira Bolat, Lecturer in marketing, Faculty of Management, Bournemouth University, ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk
  • Dr Julie Robson Senior Principal lecturer   in marketing, Faculty of Management, Bournemouth University, Jrobson@bournemouth.ac.uk
  • Dr Nektarios Tzempelikos, Tzempelikos , Senior lecturer in marketing, Anglia Ruskin University, Lord Ashcroft International Business School, nektarios.tzempelikos@anglia.ac.uk

To-date, B2B research has examined the factors that drive successful buyer/seller relational exchanges in business markets. However, the focus has mainly been on the supplier, the customer and/or the interaction between them, with little attention being paid to the impact of macro-factors on these interactions. The result is limited knowledge of the complexities that the broader macro-environment encompasses, how these affect the theory and practice of B2B marketing and how their management could be a source of differentiation for B2B firms. In other words, the ‘big picture’ of where and how B2B firms operate is still lacking.

Macro-environmental changes are both major and uncontrollable. They range from political and legal changes, to demographic and social conditions, as well as technological developments, natural disasters and civil wars. These factors influence firms’ decision making, their strategies, innovation, technological prowess, and market performances. . This need, to address the big picture of the impact of the macro environment on B2B firms, provides the topical basis for this Call for Papers.

Relevant topics for the Colloquium and special journal issue include (but are not limited to):

  • Analysis of B2B relationships and firm responses to macro environmental changes.
  • The management of macro-environment changes by B2B firms in the present and the future.
  • The effects of political changes on B2B relationships g. the current discussions on Britain’s continued membership of the EU
  • Legal changes, g., the growth of patent applications and issues of Intellectual property as indicators of firms’ R&D and innovation activities in a country or countries.
  • Social and psychological effects of B2B activities with the business custom
  • The impact of technological changes, g. how Social media is affecting B2B firms’ intelligence gathering and product marketing for their B2B
  • How environmental factors affect (positively or/and negatively) relational exchanges in B2B m
  • Value co-creation between firms and/or sub-contractors in similar or different industries
  • Other topics affecting B2B firms, such us services marketing, customer relationship management, supply chain management and log

This colloquium is dedicated to researchers in B2B marketing. Day one will provide an opportunity for authors to present their papers and gain feedback from their B2B peers. On day two the keynote speaker will provide insight into how to get published in top B2B journals. Papers presented at this conference will be considered for publication in a special dedicated issue of Industrial Marketing Management.

 

Programme

Day 1

8.15-8.30         Welcome and refreshment

8.30-10.30      Parallel Session 1 Paper presentation ( 2 x 4 papers)

10.30- 10.45    Coffee break

10.45-13.00     Parallel Session 2 Paper presentation ( 2 x 4 papers) 13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.45     Parallel Session 3 Paper presentation ( 2 x 4 papers) 15.45-16.00 coffee break

16.00-17.30     Parallel Session 4 Paper presentation ( 2 x 4 papers)

19.00              Dinner

Day 2

7:30 – 8:00      Refreshment

8:00 12:00       Keynote Session: How to get published in a top B2B journal

Chair: Professor Peter Laplaca

12:00 – 12:15 Coffee break

12:15-14.00     Keynote Session: B2B research needs: Advancing the discipline & Close of Colloquium

Chair: Professor Peter Laplaca

14.00               Lunch

 

Deadlines

  • 11th January 2016 :   paper submission closes at midnight
  • 25th January 2016     Paper decision notified to authors.
  • 12th February 2016 Conference registration deadline for those presenting

Paper Format & Review

Full-length paper submission according to the guidelines of Industrial Marketing Management to B2Bcolloque@gmail.com

Manuscripts must be original, unpublished works not concurrently under review for publication at another outlet and are expected to follow the standard formatting guidelines for IMM (Guidelines can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/journals/industrial-marketing- management/0019-8501/guide-for-authors ). Do not submit a paper at the IMM paper submission website. Address questions regarding the special issue to any of the organising team.

The papers will undergo a rapid-response review process by end- January and must not be submitted to a journal prior or during this time. Success in the review will not guarantee publication in the special issue, but in order to be accepted for special issue publication, papers need to be presented at the colloquium.

Colloquium fees: Academics € 300 PhD students € 200

IMPORTANT

  • For any cancellation after the 01 March 2016 there will be no refund of the fees

To register for the colloquium please go to http://b2b2016.sciencesconf.org

What do we know about back pain? The Society for Back Pain Research AGM Bournemouth 2015

conferences, international, Research communication, Research themes

 

SBPR logo

I was delighted to attend and represent BU at The Society for Back Pain Research (SBPR) Annual General Meeting 5-6 November 2015 which was conveniently held in Bournemouth, at Anglo-European College of Chiropractic, a partner college of BU. SBPR was formed in 1971 to promote the study of all clinical and scientific aspects of spinal pain, including the neck (my area of interest), and to encourage research into its causes, treatment and prevention. There are now over 200 members of the Society, from a wide range of disciplines including all sorts of healthcare professionals and scientists. Suffice to say if there is anything about back pain this audience does not know it is probably not worth knowing! Having said that, attending this meeting reminded me just how much about back pain is still unknown…

Biological Factors in Non-Specific Back Pain

The title of this year’s meeting was ‘Biological Factors in Non-Specific Back Pain’ to place an emphasis on the ‘biological’. It has been over 25 years since the biopsychosocial model was applied to back pain but lately research has tended to be more concerned with psychosocial aspects, such as fear-avoidance behaviour or depression; research into physical findings to diagnose back pain has sadly not been very fruitful. [An important point was made by Professor Maurits van Tulder, that research has actually been largely focused on psychological factors, to the expense of social factors]. While psychosocial factors do seem to be important in influencing patients’ recovery, they don’t get us much closer to a diagnosis, to finding out what is producing and driving the patient’s pain.
However, one of the presentations at SBPR hinted at where the research focus as regards imaging (and MRI specifically) could perhaps go. One of Associate Professor Mark Hancock’s suggestions was that we need studies that focus on changes on MRI, in response to treatment (or no treatment). But how do we best measure such changes? Which treatments and for whom? Could findings on MRI in a person without back pain predict back pain in the future?

Want to know more? For a longer version of this blog, click here.

Many thanks to the Professional Practice Development community, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, for making my attendance possible.

Dr Jonny Branney

TetraGrip: A functional electrical stimulation (FES) device for restoring hand and arm functions in people with spinal cord injuries

BU research, Featured academics, innovation, PG research, Research communication, Research news

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.TetraGrip

 

Speaker: Lalitha Venugopalan

 

Lalitha is a Bournemouth University Creative Technology postgraduate student researching for a PhD in Biomedical Engineering based at the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.

 

Title:   TetraGrip: A functional electrical stimulation (FES) device for restoring hand and arm functions in people with spinal cord injuries

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 18th November 2015

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract:

TetraGrip is a four channel upper limb FES device for restoring the hand and arm functions on people with C5-C7 tetraplegia. This device uses an inertial measurement sensor (IMU) for detecting the shoulder elevation/depression. The signal from the IMU is used for controlling the functions of the stimulator and for adjusting the grasp strength.

 

The stimulator is programmed to operate in the following modes: exercise, key grip and palmar grasp. Key grip mode (fig 1) is used to grasp smaller objects like a pen or a fork, whereas the palmar grasp (fig 2) is used to grasp larger objects like a glass. The exercise mode is used to strengthen the forearm muscles.

Grip_Grasp

 The system will be clinically tried on ten able bodied volunteers to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility. If the results from this study are found to be satisfactory, then the device will be clinically tried on tetraplegic volunteers for answering the following questions:

  • Is possible for a person with tetraplegia to generate the desired input signal to control the operation of the device?
  • Does the system improve the hand and arm functions of the user?
  • Is the system easy to use for people with tetraplegia?

 

We hope to see you there.