Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
If you have been following my previous posts then you will know that today is the final Cyber Security Seminar for this semester. We hope you have found the seminar series interesting so far.
We are currently planning the seminars for next semester. Please get in touch if you have suggestions for potential speakers, or topics you would like to hear more about. Although the budget we have available is modest, we will do our best to accommodate your suggestions.
Our final Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Seminar this semester will take place on Tuesday, 10th December at 5pm. The seminar will take place in EB202 in the Executive Business Centre, and will be free and open to all. If you would like to attend, please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/interdisciplinary-seminar-in-cyber-security-tickets-9688353125
Our speaker will be Dr. Simon Parkin from UCL. Simon is a Senior Research Associate in the Information Security group at University College London, contributing to the Productive Security project within the Research Institute in the Science of Cyber Security (RISCS). He was previously a member of the Innovation Team at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security Services (HP ESS) until mid-2012. From 2007 to 2011, Simon was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University, where he also obtained his PhD. His research interests include: IT-security policy management metrics, models and tools; holistic IT-security management principles, and; IT-security risk management approaches and knowledge formalisation.
Abstract: Individuals working within organisations must complete their tasks, and are often expected to do so using secured IT systems. There can be times when the expectations for productivity and security are in competition, and so how would an organisation measure the outcomes in practice? We will review a series of interdisciplinary research efforts that characterise the human factor in IT-security within large organisations, as part of a holistic view of security. There are furthermore a variety of modelling approaches and frameworks that have emerged and informed this view. We will consider the challenges that remain in affording measurement of the human factor in IT-security within organisations, and some of the changes that are required for such activities to be sustainable and effective.
The Centre for Entrepreneurship is delighted to invite you to a presentation by Dr John Oliver from the Media School on 20 January 2014 at the Executive Business Centre. Arrival from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.
Dr John Oliver is Deputy President of the European Media Management Association along with being Programme Director for the Professional Directorate in the Creative Industries at Bournemouth University. Dr John Oliver has delivered executive education to clients including Virgin Media and BskyB.
Businesses increasingly find themselves competing in highly changeable and dynamic markets. Visibility is limited, and the strategic way forward is ambiguous to say the least. Dr John Oliver will present and discuss the latest findings on how UK media firms are managing media innovation over the short and long-term.
Please join us for this free event. Local businesses and students will also be attending so it is a great opportunity for networking / public engagment!
Refreshments will be provided, to find out more or to book your place please visit http://bucfe.com/events/managing-media-innovation/
Dr Julian McDougall from BU’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) will make recommendations on UK media education at a conference in Paris later this month.
The conference brings together comparative analyses on media and information education from EU member states and Dr McDougall will present the UK report alongside his London School of economics (LSE) research collaborators.
Dr McDougall said: “In the UK report, we have mapped media education provision in the UK against the various EC and EU frameworks and draw a clear conclusion, that the UK is rich with expertise, energy and leadership for media and information education, and to a significant extent is the envy of other European nations in this respect, but deeply entrenched prejudice against ‘media studies’ means that promoting media literacy through schools is continually undermined.”
The report examines the progression of media education through three key phases:
When examining the current ‘state of play’ in UK media literacy education, Dr McDougall and his colleagues looked at four areas: the study of media in formal secondary and higher education through curriculum subjects such as Media Studies, Film Studies and Media/non-literary textual analysis in English as well as vocational courses; broader, less formal examples of media literacy across the UK curriculum and extra-curricular activities such as literacy education in primary schools and related subjects like Citizenship, Sociology and History; e-safety policies in the school system; and media & information literacy outside of formal education.
Having examined the current scope and provision of UK media education and media literacy, the report identifies a scarcity of funding and training and a contradiction between support for creative industry employability, digital literacy and e-safety and derision towards, neglect of and undermining (through UCAS tariff distinctions, for example) media education where it already exists for thousands of young people.
At the same time, the recent Next Gen Report, well received by policy-makers, fails to locate media education as a context for teaching digital programming and coding. The UK report predicts that the combined effect of proposed secondary curriculum reform and this response to the Next Gen report will place UK media education in further ‘limbo’ between the cultural value afforded to English Literature and Art as academic /creative disciplines for their own sake and the vocational importance of strong media and technological literacy, such as those assumed for games and effects education within the STEM subject cluster, in today’s modern media-saturated tech-savvy workplace.
Three clear and compelling recommendations are presented from the UK report’s findings:
The conference is hosted by the French National Research Agency project TRANSLIT (convergence between computer, media and information literacies), in association with the European network COST “Transforming Audiences/Transforming Societies.” It takes place on 13-14 December at the Grand Amphi of Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris.
Dr McDougall was lead author on the report, entitled Media and Information Education in the UK, alongside his LSE collaborators Professor Sonia Livingstone (Leader of the TRANSLIT/COST Media Literacy Task Force) and Dr Julian Sefton-Green.
Here is the updated CEMP bulletin for December 2013.
Please contact Julian McDougall to follow up any of these opportunities or to share other ideas for pedagogy/ practitioner research.
Speakers and delegates from 10 mainly Asian countries voted the 1st International Corporate and Marketing Communication in Asia Conference, held in Bangkok on November 18-19, “a big success”
The FIF-supported conference went so well that planning is already under way for the 2014 conference, also to be held at Chulalongkorn University in the Thai capital.
Representing BU at the conference were Prof Tom Watson, a co-organiser, and Dr Ana Adi, both of the Media School. Tom was a second day keynote speaker while Ana presented the outcome of research by her and Nathaniel Hobby on social media monitoring in higher education.
The conference, held at the Faculty of Communication Arts, was opened by the host’s Vice-President, Assoc Prof Dr Sittichai Tudsri. Including the Thai and UK organisers, 30 papers were presented by academics from Australia, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
“The conference especially sought Asian perspectives: alternatives to Anglo-American models of theory, practice and education. In this aspect it succeeded to everyone’s satisfaction,” Prof Watson said. “I believe that several international joint research projects will develop from the 2013 conference, which is also a major step forward.”
He said that delegates had welcomed the conference as filling a major gap in corporate and marketing communication academic discourse in Asia. “This reflected well on BU and I’m grateful for the FIF support that helped us devise and develop the conference. It’s an investment that has long term reputational and research value.”
Already, a Media School team researching CSR has linked with colleagues at Chulalongkorn University and a further connection with an Indonesian researcher may follow soon. The BU-Chula link was confirmed at the conference.
(L-R) Conference organisers Prof Tom Watson and Assoc Prof Jirayudh Sinthuphan with keynote speaker Prof Dr Ansgar Zerfas (Leipzig University)
Our next Creative Technology Research Centre Research Seminar will be presented by Jessika Weber.
Title: Augmented Reality Gaming: A New Paradigm for Tourist Experience?”
Date: Wednesday 4th December 2013
Time: 2 – 3PM
Venue: P302 LT
Abstract: Location-based Augmented Reality (AR) Games are an innovative way to attract tourists into challenges and interactive gameplay while they are exploring an urban destination or cultural heritage site. The aim of AR games is to create a deeper level of engagement with the destination by adding a game experience that educates through fun using location-based storytelling, personalised features, and social interaction. The player location and the context of playing are important dimensions in location-based AR Gameplay. However, little is known by game designers on how to design location-based Augmented Reality Games in the context of tourism. This study uses the construct of presence throughout AR gameplay using historical facts and information about a destination and combining them into an interactive engaging gaming experience for tourists.
On Monday many of you will have seen Rebecca Edwards’ blog post giving more information about the new research website. It explains why BU is developing it, when the site will be live, how it will work and addresses some frequently asked questions that have cropped up in discussions.
If you missed this post you can view it here.
The new website will have a host of additional features, making it easier for you to update and add your own content. It provides a considerably improved platform for integrating a wider variety of content, such as image galleries and videos.
Training sessions are taking place over the next two months. You can book a session online or contact Rebecca Edwards for more information.
Using the website is surprisingly easy and in the sessions you’ll learn how to upload, edit and tag content. Rather than carrying out training sessions with ‘dummy’ test material, we would like to use the time for you to upload relevant content to your research theme.
We’d be grateful if you could please have something available that you can upload during the training session. Examples could include:
– New or recent images
– Videos
– Details of a new research project
– Details of successful grant applications
– A profile of a post graduate researcher
– Information about planned or recent public engagement activity
Rebecca Edwards or I will be happy to answer any questions in the meantime, so do get in touch. We look forward to seeing you at one of the training sessions.
The Doctor, his TARDIS-driven adventures, along with companions and iconic monsters, are all over the TV and newspapers. The Inner World of Doctor Who is a new book, just out. Written by Prof Mike Rustin (UEL, Tavsitock Clinic) and Prof. Iain MacRury in the Media School here at BU. This publication offers an accessible account of Doctor Who. It focusses just on the most recent television output – 2005 to 2013 – and examines why the show continues to fascinate us.
The Doctor’s relationships with his companions are to the fore. Various chapters also consider the dramatic meanings of monsters and time travel – linking the show back to ideas about audience experience – and what we might ‘learn’ from Doctor Who. It looks at the complexity of the new Doctor Who in its depictions of the suffering of the Doctor, as well that of his at times vulnerable and dependent companions. A connection is made between TV content and some (but not all) elements in the experience of psychotherapy.
We propose that one way of thinking about the Doctor is to see him as a kind of inadvertent ‘therapist’ – with the TV dramas on screen rendering troubled states of mind and society within a rich cultural frame. Doctor Who extends a fairy-tale and children’s fictional tradition across its contemporary media platforms. As we argue: In Doctor Who everyday life is often revealed to be “Bigger on the inside.”
The 50th anniversary won’t come again and it provided a chastening deadline we’re glad to have met it! The book was inspired by the startling success of the show in recent years. Why does it attract such attention and affection? While thinking about it I got further daily encouragement from the TARDIS that sits on the ground floor of Weymouth House, courtesy of our former Media School colleague, Dr Andrew Ireland.
The Inner World of Doctor Who is published with Karnac books. It should be of interest to diehard fans. But it is written, too, for people who probably wouldn’t claim the title ‘fan’ but for whom all the fuss about Time Lords and Tardises just now (The Doctor is even on postage stamps!) is provoking the thought: “What’s this all about!?” The Inner World of Doctor Who offers some answers.
– Written with a colleague, Prof. Mike Rustin, from UEL and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust the book emerges from an enriching collaboration that began in some teaching sessions at the Tavistock clinic on their MA in Psychoanalytic Studies. It has now developed into this book. The book came together quite quickly and has been usefully supported by an AHRC funded network called “Media and the Inner World”. The book is published as part of their new series with Karnac called Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture.
If you are interested the book can be found at http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=34857 or as an e-book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-World-Doctor-Psychoanalytic-Psychoanalysis/dp/1782200835
Our next Creative Technology Research Centre Research Seminar will be presented by Owen O’Neil.
Title: A Review of Gaming Technologies for Stroke Patients
Date: Wednesday 13th November 2013
Time: 2 – 3PM
Venue: P302 LT
Abstract: Stroke is a global pandemic and the largest cause of severe adult disability in the world. Incidence rates in the UK suggest that over 150,000 suffer a first time stroke, and over 80% of survivors will suffer some form of motor disability. Rehabilitation typically consists of high volumes of motor practice to engage the mechanism of neural plasticity, a form of cortical rewiring that allows the brain to adapt after damage. Meeting the rehabilitation needs for this population through one-to-one physiotherapy care is currently not possible. There is a growing impetus on research institutions to explore cost-effective methods for increasing access to rehabilitation that may promote improved functional recovery for patients at home and in the clinic. Recent approaches include the use of video game technology as a method of increasing patient engagement and upkeep to rehabilitation programs. Of particular interest is the emergence of low cost commercial off-the-shelf devices such as the Nintendo Wii and Xbox Kinect. In this presentation we introduce the state-of-the art application of video game technology as a modality of upper limb motor practice. We translate current approaches and technology in the literature that show particular promise to meet the needs of this population.
The Corporate & Marketing Communications academic group the Media School is celebrating two successful research bids within 24 hours. The first is that Prof Tom Watson was successful in gaining a British Council Researcher Links Workshop award for a project to be conducted with Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.
The bid was chosen in competition with 400 submissions. The national coordinator in Thailand is Assoc Prof Jirayudh Sinthuphan of the Faculty of Communication Arts and the workshop will be held in Bangkok in February next year.
Both national coordinators will have early career researchers as deputy coordinators: Dr Ana Adi at BU and Dr Phansasiri Kularb at Chulalongkorn. Others involved in the project include Dr Dan Jackson, Prof Iain MacRury, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Dr Tasos Theofilou. The team may be expanded to include other colleagues and PGRs.
The second “good research news” is that Dr Grigore, Dr Theofilou and Prof Watson gained another grant for CSR research from the Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State University in the US. They won a similar grant in mid-year.
For 2013/14 funding, reports Marcia DiStaso, senior research fellow at the Page Center, a record number of proposals was received, but only 13 out of 43 were awarded grants. This is a very competitive process and it is unusual to win two-in-a-row. Dr Grigore wrote the bid document with contributions from her co-researchers.
Sascha-Dominik Bachmann, Associate Professor, Dep Law, as part of an ongoing research collaboration on Hybrid Threats and Cyber Terrorism with the Swedisch National Defence College and BU will visit Stockholm and give a lecture on the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) by Terrorist Groups and the legal ramifications for Nation State Combatants.
Besides his role as an Associate Professor in International Law Sascha holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the German Army and served as a peacekeeper in the Balkans (Kosovo) on three occasions while completing his LL.D with the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Trained as a Mountain Warfare Officer he had the privilege to be seconded to the 23rd Marines as an exchange officer as part of the official US-German Reserve Officers Foreign Exchange Officer Program.
His lecture focuses on the use of IEDs by terrorist non state actors when engaging with conventional forces and touches upon questions of criminal responsibility, countermeasures, deterrence, reciprocity, targeting practices and policy issues.
As part of his ongoing research collaboration with the SNDC
he argues that an unconvential approach to such assymetric
threats is needed.
The next of our research seminars will take on Monday, the 11th of November, PG16 at 15:00.
Our distinguished guest is Professor Ben Azvine, the Global Head of Security Research and Innovation at BT; invited by our colleague Prof. Bogdan Gabrys.
Professor Azvine holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, an MSc in Control Engineering, a PhD in Intelligent Control Systems all from Manchester University and an MBA from Imperial College, London. Having held research fellowship and lectureship posts in several universities, he joined British Telecom Research in 1995 and set up a research programme to develop and exploit intelligent systems technologies within BT.
Since then he has held senior, principal and chief research scientist as well as head of research centre posts at Adastral Park, the head quarter of BT R&D. Ben has edited several books and published more than 100 scientific articles. He is an inventor on 50 patents, has won two BCS gold medals, and the IET award for innovation in IT, holds visiting professorships at Universities of Bristol, Cranfield and Bournemouth in the UK.
The title of his exciting talk will be “Industrial applications of novel Intelligent Systems”. Intelligent systems play an important role in industry for managing customer relationship, providing business intelligence, helping organisations analyse their data and protecting organisations against Cyber-attacks. In this talk I’ll present a number of case studies within BT where we have used intelligent system originating from within our research organisation and successfully downstreamed them into our operations.
I strongly encourage academics and PhD students not to miss the opportunity to attend to the seminar and to discuss potential collaborations.
Emili
Spatial disorientation is among the earliest indicators of dementia, an increasingly common condition in our ageing society that currently costs the UK £23 billion annually. With support of the Fusion-CCCP strand we have created ViRtUOS (Virtual Reality User Orientation System), a state-of-the-art eye-tracking and virtual environments research platform which will facilitate the study of factors that affect spatial disorientation in people with dementia. Data gathered using ViRtUOS will be used to formulate design principles for dementia-friendly care homes, reducing care costs, and leading to new knowledge with significance and reach.
To develop ViRtUOS we have brought together undergraduate RAs from Computing, Creative Technology and Computer Animation to work co-operatively and as part of a high-level, well-resourced multi-disciplinary team.
This video demonstrates the results of their excellent work:
CLICK HERE TO VIEW; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1oo6JXWNuY
So far, this FIF project has been a great success and feedback from the students RAs suggests that they have enjoyed this unique student experience and that working in an inter-disciplinary team has helped them improve their skills.
Excerpts from students’ feedback:
“I enjoyed working on a project which is not exactly ordinary in my field, and working with people who come from different professional backgrounds. It was interesting to see how contrasting subjects tie into the same workflow to try and produce a coherent product. Personally, I am glad to take away new knowledge about my own study subject and the ones of my fellow colleagues; most of that knowledge I will surely apply in my last year of study.” Jurate Pozeraite (Computer Animation, Media School)
“I’ve learnt a lot in my time here, which will be invaluable for both my final year project and my future career. I’ve learnt not only about software development, but about modelling, developing reliable systems, working as a team to produce a joint system and error handling and bug fixing. I feel that working with other students, in a similar position to myself, really helped me in this project. They made me feel at ease and they helped me learn about their roles in developing this system, which otherwise I would have completely ignored. Overall I feel that for me personally this was a very worthwhile project, for expanding my experience and learning something new. I would love to continue my work with this project for as long as possible.” William Chappell (Computing, DEC)
“During the full length of the project I had learnt more and more, I think that this was the best opportunity I have had in a long time. This job gave me lots of experience with people from different schools, which have completely different perspectives. They are both brilliant in their profession and I have learned a lot from them. Also I hope they have learned some things from me. Generally, I have gained new skills including working with ‘Vizard 4.0’ software and ‘3DsMax’. In fact, the project was really interesting and I was glad to not only earn experience from it but also produce a good quality product at the end. Overall I am very happy that I get a chance to work with such a wonderful team. It was a great experience that improves my skills for future projects. If I had a chance to go back in time and redo this project again I will definitely do it.” Arkadiusz Szerszmidt (Creative Technology, DEC)
We believe that ViRtUOS has great potential to also foster other inter-disciplinary collaborations within BU and we would like to invite academics and students from across BU to get in contact with us, visit the laboratory and explore its potential for their research interests.
The further development of ViRtUOS will be driven by two PhD projects that started in October this year and we are planning to run first experiments investigating spatial orientation in people with dementia soon.
The team, from left to right: Arkadiusz Szerszmidt (undergraduate RA, Creative Technology), William Chappell (undergraduate RA Computing), Mary O’Malley (PhD student, Psychology & BUDI), Mariela Gaete-Reyes (BUDI), Jurate Pozeraite (undergraduate RA, Computer Animation), Chris Ramsey (PhD student, CDE), Jan Wiener (Psychology & BUDI)
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO !!!
By Mariela Gaete-Reyes & Jan Wiener
Join us on Tuesday 12 November 2013 for the latest in our series of events held by the CIM Dorset branch.
Richard Calvert from Bright Blue Day is joining us to tell us about Brand Purpose. As marketers we’re finding new ways to integrate Social, Local and Mobile communications into our customers day-to-day lives – invariably introducing complexity and unnecessary hassle into our lives.
There has been an explosion in the tools, techniques, strategies and tactics available to the SO LO MO marketer – each promising to deliver just the right message at the right time in the right place to the right person. How do we apply SO LO MO thinking to deliver real value to customers, prospects and to our businesses?
How do we deliver real brand purpose and cut through everything that we can do in order to deliver just what we should?
Arrival from 6pm for a 6:30pm start. Networking from 6pm until the event start. To book please visit http://bit.ly/1idcvi5
The Public Relations Research Group welcomed the leading Canadian practitioner, Fraser Likely, on Wednesday when he presented a lecture on communicating the value of PR departments to top management. It was attended by regional practitioners, students, academics, and Marketing & Communication staff.
Mr Likely, who is an adviser to Canadian banks, corporations and governmental bodies, emphasised the need for senior communication staff to understand their organisation fully, identify the elements of their department’s work that create value and operate in an entrepreneurial manner.
“This presentation was the first of several events in which academic research and practice issues are discussed with practitioners, students and fellow academics”, said Prof Tom Watson of The Media School. “On Wednesday, our speaker was an internationally highly-regarded practitioner and researcher. In others, BU academics will take recent research to practitioners at events in London and locally.”
The Public Relations Research Group is planning short seminars with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in London and Wessex, as well as with Ketchum, a leading international PR consultancy group.
Simultaneously, the US-based Institute for Public Relations posted Fraser Likely and Tom Watson’s latest Research Conversations blog post on future trends in PR measurement and evaluation. It is based on a recent book chapter in a festschrift to the leading PR theorist, James E. Grunig: http://www.instituteforpr.org/2013/10/future-trends-in-measurement-and-evaluation/
Prof Tom Watson (l) and Canadian speaker Fraser Likely (r)
We are delighted to launch the first edition of the Journal of Promotional Communication, an open-access; peer-reviewed, online journal edited by Corporate and Marketing Communications (CMC) academic group in the Media School, which publishes original research produced by undergraduate and postgraduate students. We welcome you to read the six papers selected for publication in the inaugural issue after a rigorous review process, and share them with your students, academic colleagues and practitioner contacts.
http://promotionalcommunications.org/index.php/pc/issue/view/3
Manuscripts published in Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal of Promotional Communication broadly speak to the theme of ‘People and Promotional Communication’, including an exciting mix of methodological and conceptual approaches which bring to the fore the humanness and everydayness in the production and consumption of promotional communications.
Our aim with this journal is to provide a platform for students from BU and other universities to publish work that demonstrates a critical understanding of their subject, whilst being creative, imaginative and interesting to read for academic and practitioner audiences alike. We are looking for examples of work which has the potential to challenge existing ideas and practices and seeks to inspire new ways of understanding and practising promotional communications.
The Journal of Promotional Communications is published two times per year (April, October) and the call is now open for papers for the next issue – deadline Friday March 7th, 2014. Submissions should be made online via http://promotionalcommunications.org/index.php/pc/about/submissions, where full ‘Author Instructions’ can also be found. If you have recently supervised work that you think should be considered for publication in the journal, why not encourage your students (UG, PG or PhD) to submit a manuscript for review? Diverse perspectives and approaches to the study of promotional communication are welcomed. Papers published in the Journal of Promotional Communication will draw on a variety of disciplinary areas covering, but not exclusive to, Marketing, Advertising and PR theory as well as Consumer Culture and Behaviour, Political Communications, Media Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Management. From within BU, students submitting papers might come from a broad range of Academic Schools and subject areas; the Journal of Promotional Communication is not Media School exclusive!
We look forward to receiving submissions.
Dr Janice Denegri-Knott
Dr Carrie Hodges
Dr Dan Jackson
Dr Richard Scullion
Here is the latest CEMP Research & Innovation bulletin. CEMP bulletin 10.10.13
New for this year:
(1) A more targeted approach to identifying funding opportunities;
(2) Funding calls aligned to research themes;
(3) If you would like to come and chat about anything in this bulletin, your own research or other projects / ideas that CEMP can help with, our monthly ‘CEMP Coffee Morning’ is at 9.30-10.30 on Thursday October 17th in the new CEMP office (CAG02).
BU staff can login below:
New weight change BU paper
One week to go! | The 16th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference
Geography and Environmental Studies academics – would you like to get more involved in preparing our next REF submission?
Congratulations to three former BU staff
MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline
Applications are now open for 2025 ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships!
Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars
MaGMap: Mass Grave Mapping
ERC grants – series of webinars Last reminder – MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 internal deadline next week
Research Information Network