Skip to main content

Category / Research news

Congratulations to FHSS orthopaedics academics

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, Research news

j-nurs-ortho-2016Congratulations to James Gavin, Tikki Immins and  Thomas Wainwright on the publication of their systematic review: ‘Stair negotiation as a rehabilitation intervention for enhancing recovery following total hip and knee replacement surgery‘.

Reference:

Gavin, J., Immins, T., Wainwright, T. (2016). Stair negotiation as a rehabilitation intervention for enhancing recovery following total hip and knee replacement surgery. Int J Orthop Trauma Nurs. Available online October 2016

 

Enhanced Rehabilitation Of The Upper Limb Following Stroke By An Adaptive Virtual Reality And FES Approach

BU research, Featured academics, PG research, Research news

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Games and Music Technology Research.presimage

 

Speaker: Nathan Barrett (A Bournemouth University PhD student based at Salisbury NHS).

 

Title:     Enhanced Rehabilitation Of The Upper Limb Following Stroke By An Adaptive Virtual Reality And FES Approach

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 30th November 2016

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Of the approximately 150,000 people a year who suffer a stroke in the UK, 85% of survivors are left with some degree of motor dysfunction in their upper limb. Complete functional recovery has been found to occur in just 5% to 34% of cases. These low rates may be due to rehabilitative interventions that lack the volumes of specific motor practice needed to induce neuroplasticity – a form of cortical rewiring that allows the brain to adapt after damage. Assistive technologies, such as Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and virtual games, can augment such therapy and may be beneficial to a person’s recovery.

FES is a type of electrotherapy which has good clinical evidence for its use. Electrically-stimulated movements, however, often lack combined voluntary effort – a factor necessary to aid effectiveness. Virtual games, on the other hand, often inspire huge amounts of volitional movement, although, particularly with popular commercial devices, this movement isn’t always therapeutic.

Combining the two is therefore an attractive prospect, yet attempts at this have resulted in systems that are costly, immobile and commercially unavailable. There is therefore a need to combine the two within a system that fulfils the criteria for an effective assistive technology. The system, Esmé (the Electrically-Stimulated Movement and game Environment), is currently in development. This seminar provides an overview of the project and discusses next steps.

 

 

We hope to see you there.

Most read article (Early Career Researcher)

BRIAN, BU research, Research news

The first article published by FOM academic Samreen Ashraf has become the ‘Most Read’ article on Research Gate compared to those published by other authors in her department.

The paper focuses on consumer trust in Islamic banks. The authors differentiate between the definitions of trust and confidence in the paper. Specifically, it addressed the questions: to what extent are trust and confidence active influencers in the decision-making process, are they differentiated or are they one of the same? Also how does the Pakistani collective cultural context further complicate the application of these concepts? These questions were addressed by using qualitative methods.
This study provided further insight into consumer behaviour within financial services and specifically Islamic banking and has contributed to the theoretical understanding of the concepts of trust and confidence.

For those interested in reading the paper the full reference is: Ashraf, S., Robson, J. and Sekhon, Y., 2015. Consumer trust and confidence in the compliance of Islamic banks. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 20(2), pp.133-144.

Alternatively, the paper can be accessed via Research Gate!

my-picture-amjulie-picture

Cage4All shortlisted for Pride of Sport Awards

BU research, Research news

Cage4All, a Hampshire-based charity, has been shortlisted for the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Sport Award for their work to make sport more accessible to marginalised groups, including those with dementia.  Researchers from Bournemouth University’s Dementia Institute have been involved in evaluating the effects of Cage4All’s work.

Cage Cricket allows small groups of people to take part in a modern twist on the game of cricket, which sees every player rotate around the pitch to take on the role of batter, bowler, fielders and umpire.  The game takes up much less space than traditional cricket and its structured approach makes it easy to learn.

Bournemouth University’s Dr Rick Fisher and Dr Ben Hicks, Lecturer in Health Psychology, have been working alongside the charity to evaluate their work with people with dementia.

“We were originally approached because of Dr Hick’s PhD project which explored the use of technology clubs for men with dementia in rural areas,” says Dr Fisher, “Dr Hick’s research showed the benefits of both the activity and the social contact.  He discovered that most social clubs tend to be aimed at women, so we were really interested to find out how sporting activities might help men with dementia.”

“We ran a small pilot study with people who had quite advanced dementia, who we initially thought would struggle to get something out of the project because of the difficulties they face,” explains Dr Fisher, “However, we were very quickly proved wrong as the people involved were able to take part in the game and showed signs of enjoying themselves.  We had a lot of positive feedback from carers who could see that it was making a difference.”

Simon Young, Managing Director of Cage4All noted “To see someone with a severe diagnosis taking the ball between his fingers, to ensure that the seam of the ball is correctly lined up, as he would have been taught sixty years ago, is a quite stunning sight. To see groups having the opportunity to take part in physical recreation within a safe and structured environment has established a ground-breaking community partnership through Cage 4 All which can provide hope and opportunity for communities across the UK.”

The team hope that the ideas they have been able to draw from this pilot project will enable them to carry out further research into the benefits of sport for people with dementia.

“It was very encouraging to see that those involved in the game appeared to be able to learn new rules and skills and seemed to enjoy the role of umpire, where they were able to take charge of other players,” says Dr Fisher, “In future projects, we’d like to be able to see how this kind of activity makes a difference in people with dementia over a longer period.”

The Daily Mirror’s Pride of Sport Awards take place on 7 December.

Science and Technology Committee – Leaving the EU report

EU, Funding opportunities, policy, Research news

The House of Commons Science and Technology committee’s report into leaving the EU has been published.

To quote the main points from the summary:

  • “The Government has provided some helpful and welcome short-term reassurances in relation to underwriting EU funding for research and maintaining access to student loans, but the Government’s strategy for communicating these recent announcements is insufficient.”
  • “we are not convinced that the needs of science and research are at the heart of the Department for Exiting the European Union’s (DExEU) thinking and planning for Brexit. Science should have a strong voice as part of the negotiations. DExEU needs a Chief Scientific Adviser urgently. The Government should also involve the interim Chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)”
  • “the Government should now act to reduce uncertainty by setting out a vision for science. This should include commitments to raise science expenditure as a percentage of GDP (as we have previously urged).  It should also include measures to attract skilled researchers and students, to be taken forward in Brexit negotiations separately from immigration controls more broadly, and should include an immediate commitment to exempt EU researchers already working here from any wider potential immigration controls.”
  • “The Government must also seek to capitalise on the opportunities of Brexit, including in terms of setting regulations to facilitate accessing markets and research collaborations beyond the EU.”

On the EU funding guarantee, the report concludes that this is helpful to provide reassurance but that it doesn’t go very far, because it would be strange if the EU were not required to honour its contractual commitments under awards made before the UK leaves the EU and so it is unlikely that there will ever be a call under the guarantee.  However, given that there was widespread concern – whether justified or not – in the summer, the guarantee has been given in order to encourage people to keep bidding and to provide reassurance of the government’s commitment to mitigating these potential direct negative effects of Brexit.  However, if this is its main purpose, the report notes that it hasn’t really been communicated very well – hence the high level point noted in the report’s summary.

What matters to science and research?  The report highlights 5 main issues:

  • Funding – e.g. on-going participation in H2020 after Brexit or a UK replacement for it
  • People – guarantees for those already here and attracting EU researchers after Brexit, and Erasmus
  • Collaboration – being able to participate in international projects and influence the EU research agenda
  • Regulation – influencing EU regulation which might otherwise stifle innovation
  • Facilities – access for UK researchers to EU facilities

Note on people that the Education Committee are running a separate inquiry into the impact of Brexit on staff and students, and we have just submitted evidence – read it here.  The report notes that it is not clear whether Brexit will mean that EU staff become subject to the same controls as international staff – and of course there is about to be a new consultation on what the controls for international employees are going to be.

The report calls for a specific guarantee for staff already in post.  Note that Jo Johnson made helpful noises about this in the House of Commons this week – he “expects” that this assurance will be given but it depends on reciprocity (so it will come later in the negotitations?).

British Conference of Undergraduate Research – encouraging students to apply

BU research, Research news, Student Engagement, student research

Next spring, Bournemouth University (BU) will be welcoming undergraduates from all over the country to present their research as part of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR).  The prestigious annual conference is a chance to celebrate the valuable contribution of research from undergraduate students across a vast array of disciplines and subject areas.

Undergraduates from all disciplines will be invited to submit papers, posters, workshops and performances as part of the conference.  Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and those accepted will be invited to attend the conference, which is taking place in Bournemouth 25 – 26 April 2017.

Abstract submission is currently open and we’d like to see plenty of entries from BU students – it’s a great opportunity for them to share their work and develop confidence in their presentation skills.  Please do encourage your students to submit an abstract.  The deadline is 10 December.

Guidance about abstract submission can be found here and a drop session will take place in PG30a on Monday 5 December 1pm – 2pm for any students who want to talk through their ideas with someone from BU’s BCUR organising committee.

For more information about the conference and details of how to submit abstracts, please visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/bcur17 or email bcur17@bournemouth.ac.uk.

BU academic wins AHRC Research in Film Innovation Award

BU research, Research communication, Research news

AHRC film award

Bournemouth University’s Sue Sudbury has been named a winner at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research in Film Awards.

Sue, a Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Production, received the Innovation Award for her short film Village Tales.

It is a participatory film made by four young women in rural India, who use handheld cameras to film their lives and interview friends and family about child marriage, as well as sharing their own experiences of being beaten by husbands, infant mortality, and harassment inflicted by in-laws.

“The stories and experiences of these women told first hand are shocking. However this film is a film of hope,” said Sue.

Launched in 2015 the Research in Film Awards celebrate short films, up to 30 minutes long, that have been made about the arts and humanities and their influence on our lives.

Entries for the awards this year hit a record high, with hundreds of submissions. The awards ceremony took place at BAFTA, London and the overall winner for each category will receive £2,000 towards their filmmaking.

BU Principal Academic Roman Gerodimos was also shortlisted in the AHRC Research in Film Awards, in the Utopia Award: Imagining our Future category, for his film At the Edge of the Present, which explores urban coexistence.

Jan Dalley, Arts Editor of the Financial Times and Chair of the Judging Panel, said, “The second year of AHRC’s Research in Film Awards has brought a fantastic range of powerful short documentary films of the highest quality and the judges had a really tough job to make their choices.

“Each of the winning films, which tell such amazing stories so well, beautifully illustrate the power of film-making as a medium to capture the importance and impact of research.”

Watch Sue Sudbury’s winning film Village Tales 

FMC Associate Professor delivers plenary at Style and Response Conference

BU research, conferences, Research news

It was my great pleasure to take part last week in a conference organised by the Stylistics Research Group at Sheffield Hallam Style and Response. My paper reported on the activities of our two BU based AHRC funded projects, and on the ethical and methodological challenges of researching readers and reading online.  The conference was an important opportunity to disseminate the work of the existing projects and to further extend our network of scholars researching reading in the digital age. It was also an opportunity to discuss what will hopefully be the next stage of this research, as our application for Follow on Funding to the AHRC is currently being finalised….

 

The first day included a fascinating panel on Digital Fiction, particularly focusing on immersion and showcasing different methodologies including the Think Aloud protocol and participant interviews. The case studies discussed in this session included Dreaming Methods’ Wallpaper (Alice Bell), videogame Zero Time Dilemma (Jess Norledge and Richard Finn) and The Princess Murderer (Isabelle Van der Bom). After lunch, I switched between panels to catch Sam Browse’s entertaining paper presenting an ethnographic study of a group of local Labour party activists, followed by Lyle Skains’ paper reporting on how her creative writing students responded to reading digital or ‘ergodic’ fiction, and how they felt this influenced their own creative practice.

 

It was great to see diversity throughout the programme both in terms of methods and case studies.  One of the takeaways from day one was a strong preference for mixed methods, and there was a very lively discussion following the closing plenary (presented in absentia by Ranjana Das) about the extent to which exploring new approaches and methods from different disciplines can be managed without diluting or compromising the skills and expertise that we have as researchers primarily trained in critical analysis and close reading.

 

I delivered the opening plenary on day 2, followed by a fascinating panel on Attention, with an insightful paper on cognitive approaches to re-reading from Chloe Harrison and Louise Nuttall, and a very informative and interesting paper on eyetracking and onomatopoeia in manga from Olivia Dohan.

img_0040

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The afternoon sessions provided further innovative approaches to media and new media texts and cultures.  Isabelle van der Bom and Laura Paterson reported on a corpus linguistic study of live tweeting of Benefits Street, which provided depressing but fascinating evidence of the ways in which the ‘echo chamber’ of social media is nevertheless shaped in interaction with other media (tv, the tabloid press).  It also raised questions about the extent to which empirical and particularly quantitative approaches can tell the ‘whole story’ when it comes to a discourse where there may be just as many silent witnesses as participants.

sheff

Alison Gibbons’ paper on JJ Abrams’ S offered a fascinating account of the novel as part of a transmedia universe, and reported on her attempts to get ‘real readers’ to create and insert their own marginalia alongside that provided by the novel’s creators.  The closing plenary was an energetic and engaging discussion of persuasion and transportation by Melanie Green.  As well as transporting us to another world by reading us a story, Melanie’s paper left us with some important insights into the power of stories to change minds for good and ill.

Many congratulations to the organisers of this event for producing such a stimulating couple of days. It was wonderful to see that the study of readers and reading is attracting some innovative work from within the field of stylistics, drawing on a long tradition of focusing on the empirical, but also demonstrating breadth of engagement with terms and methods from multiple disciplines.

Faculty of Management academics are keynote speakers at MEAconf

conferences, Events, Featured academics, international, Research news, Uncategorized

Two Faculty of Management academics, Dr Mohamed Haffar and Dr Elvira Bolat, are selected as keynote speakers for the 6th International Conference on Modern Research in Management, Economics and Accounting, which is held on 15th November at London South Bank University.

Dr Haffar from the Department of Leadership, Strategy and Organisational Behaviour is presenting on the following topic, ‘Guidelines for organisational sustainability in an era of radical change: The vital role of employees readiness and commitment to change’. Dr Bolat from the Department of Marketing is talking about ‘Digital transformation and its implications for academia and practice’.

screen-shot-2016-11-15-at-06-26-53

The MEAConference aims to pave an international way for leading academics, active researchers, experts, industry leaders and interested scholars to communicate and exchange their viewpoints on latest scientific findings and practical experiences in the fields of Management, Economics and Accounting. Besides, the Conference attempts to examine the scientific and practical challenges in their application process across all geographical regions as well as at diverse local, national, regional and international levels.

 

BU’s Clinical Academic Doctorates; an example of good practice in new official guidance

BU research, Impact, Research news

The Association of UK University Hospitals (AUKUH) has today released new guidance, Transforming healthcare through clinical academic roles in nursing, midwifery and allied health professions: A practical resource for healthcare provider organisations

The guide is aimed at NHS organisational leads with the responsibility for developing and embedding clinical academic roles for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. Clinical academics serve as a crucial connection between the NHS and universities, working to train future generations of healthcare workers while engaging in research which can improve outcomes for patients and help increase efficiency.

The guide contains practical information, case studies and templates. One of the case studies highlighted is BU’s innovative clinical academic doctorates. The pragmatic four-year clinical doctorate model enables midwives and nurses to remain in practice while conducting a piece of research to meet clinical priorities. The four-year clinical doctorate is a joint development involving academics at Bournemouth University and clinical colleagues at NHS trusts. The doctorate is structured to enable students to spend two days a week in clinical practice and three days conducting research. All research projects are jointly developed to meet an identified clinical need.

The model originated for midwives in Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, where we have eight fellows, and has now been adopted by the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Poole Hospitals NHS Trust and Dorset County Hospitals NHS Trust (Way et al., 2016). The model is also being extended to other disciplines, with our first nurse fellow at Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Trust.

 

Professor Debbie Carrick-Sen, Co-Chair of the group which produced the guidance, says:

‘Creating this resource has required a significant amount of collaboration from colleagues across healthcare and we are truly grateful to them. The energy that has gone into it is a huge credit to the professions involved. Through this guidance they have the means to share their immense successes, learn from each other and ultimately work to the benefit of patient care.

‘The guidance will be the starting point. We have established a network of organisational leads with the responsibility for its development and for using it to implement clinical academic roles across the UK. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to begin a nationwide dialogue and to transform health and social care in the UK.’

 

Way S, van Teijlingen E, HundleyV, Westwood G, Walton G, Wiggins D, Colbourne D, Richardson C, Wixted D, Mylod D (2016) Dr Know. Midwives, 19, 66-67.

Midwifery Graduation: Honours & Awards

BU research, Events, Featured, international, PG research, Research news, student research, Uncategorized

alison-sheenaAlongside Bournemouth University’s midwifery and other health and social care students who graduated in last Friday’s ceremony, BU honoured prominent midwife Sheena Byrom OBE with an Honorary Doctorate for her services to the profession. Sheena Byrom gave an inspiring speech at Friday’s Graduation.  Sheena said, “If they can keep in their hearts the passion and the drive they had when they first came to the university, it will help them to be more resilient and keep them motivated towards what they want to do. Healthcare is a blend between love and science and both are equally important. In practice, it is key that they have the skills, but the things that makes the difference are love and compassion.”

rachelalisonedwinAlongside Sheena two students from the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health(CMMPH) graduated with a PhD in Midwifery.  Dr. Alison Taylor received her PhD for her qualitative research on breastfeeding. Her thesis is entitled ‘It’s a relief to talk ….’: Mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding recorded on video diaries.  Dr. Rachel Arnold was awarded her PhD for her research Afghan women and the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital.

Congratulations to all BU undergraduates and Rachel, Alison and Sheena!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH