Category / Research news

BU Research Blog Exclusive: Design & Look of eBU leaked

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Research themes

The first screenshot of the eBU interface has been exclusively leaked to the BU Research Blog, and is expected to go viral across the BU community over the next week.

eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025.

How is NERC changing its peer review processes?

Guidance, Research news

NERC is making changes to its peer review processes to strengthen and streamline the assessment of responsive mode grants.   NERC  has agreed a series of reforms to improve the consistency, quality and transparency of peer review that identifies the very best research proposals to fund.

The following changes will apply to responsive mode research grant and fellowship calls with closing dates on or after 1 October 2013.

Consistency of review number and expertise – For each scheme minimum and optimal number of peer review reports required have been agreed; these are detailed in the assessment process. Decisions will only be made based on lower or higher number of reviews in exceptional circumstances.

The reviews will be provided by a combination of NERC College members and internationally-recognised experts, depending on where the most appropriate expertise exists. Reviewers who consider they have low expertise will no longer be asked to contribute.

Standard grant process – There will no longer be a ‘sift’ to reject uncompetitive proposals during the review process. All proposals will reach the stage where there is an opportunity to respond to review comments. Proposals, reviews and responses will then be assessed by two panel members who will assign a ‘pre-score’ for excellence. The Chair will then prioritise the proposals to discuss at the moderating panel. NERC will aim to provide decisions on the majority of Standard Grant proposals within 20 weeks of the closing date.

Moderating panels – Half of the membership of any panel will regularly attend as ‘Core Panel Members’ and there will be an identified Chair. Flexibility to select members from the College according to the particular proposals being considered will remain. For schemes where multiple panels meet (ie Standard Grants and Fellowships), business will be divided between panels with stable remits. A preliminary panel structure will be announced in June 2013. Applicants will select the panel to consider their proposal during submission.

Feedback – Panel members will be responsible for the content of feedback from panels to applicants. For any proposal discussed, moderating panel feedback will automatically be provided.

Peer Review College – Changes to the NERC Peer Review College from January 2014 are also planned, and its performance will be more actively managed. A membership review and recruitment initiative (call opening June 2013) will take place, to continue to increase the number of established academics and grant holders involved as College members and Chairs. Members will have a lead responsibility for either reviewing or moderating panel activities. Core Panel Members will be identified to work within the new moderating panels.

When will these changes happen? 

From January 2014. The PRC year will start from January rather than July from that point onwards. In the meantime there will be a call for new membership in June 2013.

Fusion Investment Fund – 2013/14 round one now open to applications!

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Research news

 


 

The Pro Vice-Chancellor is delighted to invite you to apply for this round of the Fusion Investment Fund. It provides fantastic opportunities for you to grow as a researcher, an educator and practitioner and there are a range of options for you to choose from, depending on your needs. Three funding strands are available for staff at BU:

Co-Creation and Co-production strand (CCCP)

Study Leave strand (SL) – There are three elements of this: Academic Study Leave, Internal Secondments and Industrial Staff Placements.

Staff Mobility and Networking strand (SMN) – There are also three elements to this strand: Standard, Erasmus, Santander

Successful bids will need to have benefits to the student experience at the core and be able to demonstrate how this will occur, so hitting the Education point in the BU Fusion triangle is important. For all the updated strand and policy documents, Fund FAQs and information about applying, please visit the FIF intranet pages.

The Fusion Investement Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and is administered by Natalie Baines. Please direct all intial enquiries to Natalie Baines.

 

 

 

BU English Lecturer Gives Keynote Address at Paris Conference

Research news

Dr Hywel Dix was invited to give the keynote address to a conference held by the Société d’Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines, Paris Diderot University in February. The conference was about British literature and culture of the last four years and Dix was selected as the keynote speaker following the successful critical reception of his recent monographs After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain and Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain.

His keynote paper was entitled ‘The Retrospective Stage: late career fiction and autobiography.’ In it, he opened up the concept of ‘contemporaneity’ in literary and cultural studies to critical interrogation, arguing that many of the most canonical figures in contemporary cultural production are chiefly associated with work produced years, or even decades, earlier. The effect of this is a recurring pattern whereby cultural figures often receive less critical acclaim for work produced late in their career than earlier on. Perhaps this is by definition true: we are prone to think of contemporary culture as something current rather than something coming to an end.

Using the examples of A.S. Byatt’s Children’s Book and Graham Swift’s Wish You Were Here Dix used the keynote to argue that a number of prominent contemporary British writers have reached a kind of retrospective stage in their careers, symbolically returning to the styles, themes, and techniques of their earlier work. He further argued that the process of having earlier become identified with particular characteristics gives rise to a conflict between originality and habit beyond which the individual writer or cultural producer cannot travel. As a result of this conflict, the kind of fiction produced at the late career stage becomes profoundly meta-fictive and self-referential so that in effect throughout this stage the writers are always returning to and remaking the same work for which they had become celebrated at the earlier stages as if for the first time.

It is anticipated that this paper will be the start of a broader project on the idea of lateness, the belated and contemporaneity in contemporary cultural studies.

eBU: Online Journal

BU research, Fusion, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Research themes

Following on from my last post ‘Developing a Working Paper at BU’ in January of this year, we are now within sight of having an exciting new online journal at BU. eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

 

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

It is anticipated that author guidelines will be circulated in the coming weeks, and staff and students alike should begin to think about how they could submit to eBU.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025

Call for papers and special BU staff rate: 2nd International Conference on Social Responsibility, Ethics and Sustainable Business

Research news, Training

You are invited to attend the 2nd International Conference on Social Responsibility, Ethics and Sustainable Business to be held at Bournemouth University, UK, on September 5-6, 2013. The purpose of the conference is to create a networking opportunity for both researchers and practitioners to discuss recent insights on socially responsible practices in the non- and for-profit sector.

Although academic in nature, representatives in the business environment will deliver case studies on sustainability practices and will reflect on the challenges and opportunities that corporate social responsibility brings to different industries. The main topics of the conference, but not limited to these, are: CSR and Sustainability, CSR and Business Ethics, CSR and Social Media, CSR and Education, Communicating CSR, CSR initiatives/strategies, Corporate Governance, NGO Marketing.

Keynote speakers

David Crowther, Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Head of the Centre for Research into Organisational Governance at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is a qualified accountant with many years business experience. His research is into corporate social responsibility with a particular emphasis on the relationship between social, environmental and financial performance. David has published over 30 books and has also contributed to more than 350 articles to academic, business and professional journals and to edited book collections. He has also spoken widely at conferences and seminars and acted as a consultant to a wide range of government, professional and commercial organisations.  He is a member of a number of international advisory boards and is also founding chair of the Social Responsibility Research Network: series editor of the Gower Applied Research in Responsibility Journal and convenor of the International Conference Series on Corporate Social Responsibility.

 Wim J.L. Elving, (PhD U of Twente, 1999) finished an MA in Social and Organizational Psychology (U of Groningen, 1993). His PhD was on the care of cancer patients, and especially the constraints in cooperation and communication of health care professionals. In 2000 he started working as assistant professor at the Department of Communication, Amsterdam School of Communications Research at the U of Amsterdam. His research shifted from organizational and or internal communication (Communicating Organizational Change) to Corporate Communications in general. In the last years he did several studies in Branding, use of Social Networking Sites, and CSR Communications. As visiting professor he taught students at reputable institutions in Finland, Denmark, the UK, Slovenia, Italy and Spain. Since 2006 he is editor in chief of Corporate Communications, an International Journal, member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Brand Management and the Dutch Journal in Communication Science. He has co-authored almost 100 different articles in Communication Journals and 4 books.

Please send an abstract of 300 words in a Word document format via email to icsr2013@bournemouth.ac.uk by May 20, 2013 (extended). No more than two papers will be accepted from any author. The deadline for the full paper is August 1, 2013. The abstracts of the papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings and the intention is to publish selected papers in an edited collection.

Abstract Submission Deadline: May 20, 2013 (extended)

Acceptance Notification: May 25, 2013

Registration Deadline: July 10, 2013

Full Papers Deadline: August 1, 2013

Conference: September 5-6, 2013

Conference Fee: £200 academic/practitioner; £150 PhD student **BU staff rate £60*

Website: http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/icsr2013/about-2/

Organizing Committee

Dr Georgiana F. Grigore, The Media School, Bournemouth University

Dr Anastasios Theofilou, The Media School, Bournemouth University

Dr Dan Jackson, The Media School, Bournemouth University

Dr Alin Stancu, Faculty of Marketing, Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Cristian Ducu, Centre for Advanced Research in Management and Applied Sciences

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) Annual Report

BU research, Research news

At the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) we think it is important to review our activities on a regular basis, to document our achievements and to outline our plans for the future. We have decided that the best way to do this is to prepare an Annual Report. It was completed some months ago and now we would like to share it more widely with our colleagues in the University. It can be found on our microsite at http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/bucru/news/ we hope it is of interest.

The support and collaborations we offer are available to staff within the University, and to staff in the NHS. In the next year we will be particularly trying to develop new collaborations between University and health service staff that will lead to high quality grant applications.

If you would like further information please contact Louise Ward (wardl@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: 01202 961939)

http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/bucru/ 

WISERD 2013 Annual Conference: 25th – 26th June 2013 – register by 10th May for Early Bird discount

Research news

WISERD (Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods) Annual Conference

Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th June 2013

University of South Wales

Bookings are now open for Wales’ largest social science conference! The WISERD Annual Conference 2013 will take place on 25th and 26th June at the University of South Wales.

The WISERD Annual Conference showcases a broad range of research relevant to Wales, and includes presentations from researchers from across the policy, public, private and third sectors.

 

Early Bird Rate

Register by Friday 10th May to receive the EARLY BIRD RATE of £70 PER DAY!

Click HERE to book

Keynote Speakers include:

Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Educational Policy in the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, has served on the ESRC Research Resources Board (2003-7), and has been commissioned to provide policy advice to the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee and to the Scottish Government.

Laura McAllister, Professor of Governance at the University of Liverpool’s School of Management and political analyst for BBC Wales and regular commentator on Welsh and British politics and elections.

David Martin, Professor of Geography at the University of Southampton and co-director of both the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods and UK Data Service.

 

Yawning in France

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Post-award, Research news, Uncategorized

My recent visit to Paris via the Erasmus Teaching Mobility scheme has been most useful, not only as it continues to strengthen the links I have made with like-minded researchers and clinicians, but also because it exposes you to raw student talent. This is important to help you keep up to date with current views and research with the assistance of an eager and interrogative French audience! Such visits are quite intellectually challenging, partly because my level of French is constantly under scrutiny! The collaborative research links I have made are invaluable and I hope to submit some reasrch bids in the area of Multiple Sclerosis and yawning soon.

Presentation from Paula Kersten ‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’

BU research, Research news

You are cordially invited to a lunchtime presentation being delivered by Paula Kersten the Associate Professor of Rehabilitation at Auckland University of Technology and Visiting Professor with HSC. This is an hour long presentation entitled ‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’.  This talk would be of interest to health professionals working in health and rehabilitation.  We very much hope you will be able to attend this informative presentation.

For Paula Kersten’s Biography, please follow link below:

http://www.aut.ac.nz/profiles/paula-kersten

Thursday 16th May 2013

‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’

Presentation by Paula Kersten, Associate Professor Rehabilitation, Auckland University of Technology

12.00-1.00pm

BG11, Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus, BH1 3LH

 

Hosted by Clinical Research Unit

European Science Foundation and Global Changes in the Marine Environment

BU research, EU, Featured, Featured academics, Funding opportunities, R & KE Operations, Research news, Uncategorized

I was very proud to have been invited by the Institute of Marine Sciences – National Research Council (ISMAR-CNR) in Venice who developed on the European Science Foundation Platform, the Exploratory Workshop:  Marine woodborers: New Frontiers for European Waters. And I have to say that that was one of the most exciting research opportunities I have taken part of in the recent past.

The European Science Foundation (ESF) was established in 1974 to provide a common platform for its Member Organisations to advance European research collaboration and explore new directions for research. Currently it is an independent organisation, owned by 67 Member Organisations, which are research funding organisations, research performing organisations and academies from 29 countries.

The focus of the Exploratory Workshops scheme is on workshops aiming to explore an emerging and/or innovative field of research or research infrastructure, also of interdisciplinary character. Workshops are expected to open up new directions in research or new domains. It is expected that a workshop shall conclude with plans for follow-up research activities and/or collaborative actions or other specific outputs at international level.

The organisers, namely Davide Tagliapietra, Erica Keppel and Marco Sigovini – all from the ISMAR-CNR- did an amazing job in organising this much needed research group and by planning an excellent working programme.

The topic, centred on Marine woodborers is of utmost important as these organisms are a threat to maritime structure and archaeological heritage. Recently, an increase in attack and a northward spread has been reported. Despite the ecological, economical and cultural importance, research on this subject is carried out by few scientists scattered across Europe. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to reach a synthesis of knowledge and a deeper understanding of the causal factors. The main outcome of the workshop is the establishment of a research network aiming to coordinate scientists with an European perspective and a global view. Through the establishment of such a network, new theoretical and technical developments could be achieved.

The agenda of the workshop was to focus on:

1) bringing together experts in complementary fields that have hitherto not collaborated as a group;

2) identifying additional research competences that are not covered within the group of participants;

3) identifying, exchanging and sharing research interests for future joint leading research projects and developing an application strategies;

4) the establishment of an international network on marine woodborers.

Despite the subject ([wood-]‘boring’ organisms), there wasn’t a single dull moment. It was very exciting to spent a considerable amount of time with international peers coming from as far as Colombia and discussing the problems surrounding these particular organisms.

All sessions were extremely interesting and productive and I totally enjoyed chairing one of them in the Knowledge Café, with my hat of maritime archaeologist whose research interest based also based on marine organisms and global changes, but I am also one of few who combines degradation and protection of the cultural heritage and marine science. The Knowledge Café focussed on Systematics and biogeography, Marine woodborer-microorganism interactions, Protection of shipwrecks and maritime structures. Each group discussed weaknesses: Problems, constrains and bottlenecks, Strengths: Opportunities, synergies, and Perspectives: Solutions, actions and recommendations.

19 international peers attended, which was by invitation only, this amazing opportunity, some of which were old friends and some of which have become reference points for my current and future research on wood borers.

All with the amazing architectural beauties of a tiny Venetian island just in front of one of the world most famous squares: San Marco square!

Paola Palma 

Fusion Investment Fund application deadlines

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Research news

Application deadlines for the Fusion Investment Fund have been confirmed as 1 July and 1 December. The next call for applications will soon be launched. It provides fantastic opportunities for you to grow as a researcher, an educator and practitioner and there are many options for you to choose from, depending on your needs. Please keep checking the blog for details.

 

How’s our Slovene?

BU research, EU, Research news

BU’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health was well represented at a recent conference run by the Midwifery Association of Slovenia in Čateẑ.  Professor Vanora Hundley and Luisa Cescutti Butler were invited by the President Anita Prelec to speak to midwives, nurses and students at their bi-annual conference: Skrb Za Dravje Žensk In Otrok.

I was asked to speak on the issue of intervention in early labour, something that is causing concern in many European countries, and whether midwives should be encouraging women to stay at home for longer. I started my session with a tentative “Dober dan” (Good morning) – my pronunciation must have been acceptable as I received a round of applause! However, the rest of my presentation was thankfully in English. The presentation was well received and clearly generated a lot of interest with discussion continuing over lunch.

Luisa, a senior lecturer in midwifery, spoke about the examination of the newborn baby and who should be involved – the midwife or the doctor. This was a question that we had discussed the previous day at a round table event with key stakeholders in Slovenia. Her presentation also gave us the opportunity to ask midwives what they thought. Participants were asked to complete a short questionnaire before the presentation and a second brief questionnaire afterwards. We are looking forward to seeing their responses – although we will rely heavily on colleagues from the University of Ljubljana to translate them!

Funding for our Slovenian trip was through networking grants – an EUNF award for Vanora to discuss research collaboration and an ERASMUS Preparatory Visit award for Luisa to explore the possibility of a staff mobility exchange. We both achieved these aims (more on that in our next blog), but this additional opportunity was too good to miss.

SOCIAD Project gains an FP7 Marie Curie CIG Award

Awarded & submitted bids, Funding opportunities, Research news, Uncategorized

We have been recently awarded an EC FP7 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG) for a project entitled Social Adaptation: When Software Gives Users a Voice (SOCIAD). The project will provide engineering framework to develop software which will get users’ feedback at run-time and then use this feedback to adapt services and improve quality.

The total contribution of the EC is 100K Euros and the duration of the project is 4 years. Marie Curie CIG is a competitive grant. 912 proposals were submitted in our call which had the deadline of 18 September 2012 (read more..). Only 22% of the evaluated proposals have been selected for funding under this call.

The project team includes Dr. Raian Ali, Professor Keith Phalp, Associate Professor Jacqui Taylor and 3 existing PhD students and 2 new PhD students, the latter to start and be funded partially by this grant. The application for the first position is now open so please help us and circulate details of the post, so that we can attract excellent candidates:  http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AGH143/phd-studentship/

CIG could be particularly useful funding mechanism for researchers / lecturers who recently joined BU. The next deadline is 18 September 2013 (read more..). CIG applicants must be experienced researchers from any country in the world, with at least 4 years’ full-time research experience or a doctoral degree. CIG is meant to encourage Experienced Researchers to settle in / return to Europe. To apply, you must have been actively engaged in research, but you cannot have carried out your work in the country of your host organisation for more than twelve months over the last three years. Finally, you must have never benefitted from a European or an International Reintegration Grant (ERG or IRG) nor from a Career Integration Grant.

If you are interested in applying to this grant and / or would like to know more please let us know and we will be happy to share our experience with you.