BU Research Blog

August 14, 2015

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement bangele

The seal of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

I have reveived funding from the Santander strand of the Fusion Investment Fund to establish working relationships and collaborations with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA a Santander Partner University.

In early 2016, Professor Adrian Staub from UMass, one of the leading experts on eye movements in reading and psycholinguistics, will visit BU order to present a talk here and meet with BU staff and postgraduates. Prof. Staub will also present a short workshop on distributional analysis techniques, which should be of interest to many PGRs and staff. I will make a return visit to UMass in spring. We hope that this exchange will enable us to begin work on a number of collaborations.

UMass Amherst is the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system, which is one of the USA’s leading public university systems. UMass has 28,635 students, 6,383 of them postgraduates. Both the Department of Psychology and the Department of Linguistics at UMass are consistently rated as some of the best departments nationwide.

Bernhard Angele

August 14, 2015

Successful completion: Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visit to the University of Valencia, Spain

BU research, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement bangele

Valencia, near the conference site

Thanks to the Fusion Investment Fund (Santander), I was able to organise two visits between Bournemouth University and the University of Valencia in Spain. The first visit was by Prof. Manuel Perea to BU. Prof. Perea gave a talk at the Psychology Research Seminar which was very well received and attended by staff, postgraduate, and undergraduate students. We also planned a series of collaboratory experiments. Subsequently, I visited UV from July 1st to July 13th 2015. This visit enabled me to attend the 12th International Symposium of Psycholinguistics (organised by Prof. Perea) and present a talk there. Additionally, we presented two posters resulting from collaborations with Prof. Perea and his students and associated staff at the conference. I was able to network with most of the top Spanish researchers in Psychology of Language and Psycholinguistics, many of which are interested in collaborations with BU. For the moment, I will work on expanding the collaboration with the University of Valencia. Ideally, we would like to enable undergraduate and postgraduate students from both universities to be able to visit the other and gain valuable experiences and knowledge.

UV is one of Spain’s leading academic institutions and was founded more than 500 years ago. Its 55,000 students are distributed across three campuses. The Faculty of Psychology is consistently ranked as one of the top three Psychology research centres nationally and one of the top 50 research centres in Europe. UV has a strong international orientation and participates in many international exchange programmes and networks.

Bernhard Angele

Giving a talk at the Psycholinguistics Symposium in Valencia.

August 3, 2015

August 2015 Business Briefing is now live! – Creative, Digital & Design Briefing

Funding opportunities, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team, Knowledge Transfer jcodling

This is a monthly publication that provides a digest of useful information about funding, financing, support and events to assist creative, digital and design businesses with their innovation and growth strategies. A great source of information to keep up to speed with what is happening in this sector.

Creative, Digital & Design Business Briefing – August 2015

Including Virtual & Augmented Reality – £210K IC tomorrow contest

Internet of Things Cites Demonstrator – up to £10m funding

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles – up to £20m funding

July 30, 2015

Small Event Grants – Contemporary European Studies UACES

Funding opportunities jcodling

Are you a member of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies? Successful applicants for Small Event Grants will receive up to £1,000 of funding for one-off events, typically conferences or workshops. Closing date Friday 18th September 2015. Proposals are welcome on any aspect of contemporary European Studies, particularly interdisciplinary proposals which encourage the participation…

Read more →

July 30, 2015

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

jcodling

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art invites applications for its digital project grants. These provide institutions and individuals help to support a curator or research scholar undertaking a digital research project which will lead to a digital or online project. Closing date 30th September 2015. Projects may include: online exhibition or curation…

Read more →

July 16, 2015

Prof. Judy Wajcman LSE speaking this evening in FoL

BU research, Festival of Learning Edwin van Teijlingen

Prof Judy Wajcman will be the second speaker in the Distinguished Social Scientists Public Lectures Series tonight in Festival of Learning. The lecture is based on her new book Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism.

Those who attended Prof. John Holmwood’s presentation on last Monday on ‘The University, Democracy and the Public Interest’ will agree that the Distinguished Social Scientists Public Lectures Series started with a great and challenging presentation.

Tonight’s session is free and will be in the Barnes Lecture theatre at Talbot Campus starting at 18.00.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

July 15, 2015

From Stour Valley to Silicon Valley-Dr. Dinusha Mendis on Research Leave in Stanford University California

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Featured academics, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, PG research, Post-award, Public engagement, Research news cippm

In January 2015, Dr. Dinusha Mendis, Associate Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) in the Faculty of Media and Communications was awarded a period of research leave funded by the Fusion Investment Fund which commenced on 1 January 2015. The study leave was granted to further Dr. Mendis’ research into the digital aspects of Copyright Law and the Intellectual Property (IP) Implications of 3D Printing.

Since 1 January 2015, Dr. Mendis has held appointments as Visiting Fellow at University of Bocconi in Italy and as Lord Provost Fellow at University of Tasmania in Australia. For further information about the collaborative work carried out by Dr. Mendis during this time, please see here (BU Research Blog post dated 13 March 2015).

Dr. Mendis will complete her research leave in July 2015 having spent two months as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School, Stanford University California.

During her time as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Dr. Mendis was involved in working with Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School, to further her research into the intellectual property implications of 3D printing. Sponsored by Professor Lemley, Dr. Mendis utilised the time at Stanford to complete two research papers (to be published in Autumn 2015) and collaborate with IP experts from University of California, Berkeley; Emory University; Georgia Tech University and Indiana University in taking forward a project in the area of 3D printing and intellectual property implications.

The Research Leave was made possible by the generous support of Bournemouth University’s Fusion Investment Fund which in turn led to the Visiting appointments for which Dr. Mendis is very grateful.

The appointments have all proved to be very productive and rewarding in taking forward the research on the IP implications of 3D printing. The final appointment, which involved being a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School was a very positive experience – and will be an unforgettable one.

July 6, 2015

Workshop Metastable Dynamics of Neural Ensembles Underlying Cognition

BU research, Research communication, Research news ebballester

Is the traditional view on cortical activity dynamics, in which the cognitive flow of information wanders through multiple attractor states driven by task-dependent inputs, still a valid model? This picture has been recently challenged both empirically and from the modelling perspective.

The interpretation of the collective dynamics of neuronal assemblies underlying perception and cognitive processing is a very active debate, touching the essence of our understanding of neural computation, and hence one of the most exciting topics in neuroscience. This workshop will address a range of modelling and data analysis approaches which focus on metastable nonlinear dynamics underlying perceptual and cognitive functions in cortex.

The workshop will take Place in Prague, on the 23^rd of July of 2015 in the context of the 23^rd Computational Neuroscience Meeting; and will have the participation of some of the world-leading scientists in the area. Please find more information in the following link: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/2015/03/metastable-dynamics-of-neural-ensembles-underlying-cognition-workshop/

June 16, 2015

FIF Erasmus – Teaching and archive research at Leipzig University

EU, Fusion Investment Fund, Global engagement, Research themes, Uncategorized Tom Watson

Professor Tom Watson of the Faculty of Media & Communication visited the University of Leipzig in Germany from June 7 to 12 on a FIF Erasmus visit.

In addition to a seminar on the history of public relations to students on the university’s highly-rated Master of Communication Management programme and workshops on academic writing and Delphi method to doctoral research students, he spent time in the university’s archive.

There he investigated the files of the German PR pioneer Dr Albert Oeckl, looking especially at Oeckl’s involvement with the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) whose archive is held at BU.

He was presented with a trolley containing 14 box files of material ranging from the late 1950s to the early 1990s (see Photo). In these, he found numerous papers and references to IPRA’s early work on the development of international curricula for university-level PR education.

“The Archive’s staff was very welcoming and so helpful in identifying relevant material. Selected documents will used in future research on the formation of public relations studies around the world,” Professor Watson said.

“Material from our IPRA archive has already shaped research papers from authors in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece and the UK. This link with the Leipzig Archive adds more detail to IPRA initiatives and policy statements that were already known about.”

Professor Watson said that archive research was already influencing a major revision of the history of public relations that will become evident in the teaching of courses. In his Masters seminar, he presented outcomes of recent multi-nation research that challenges many existing texts about PR’s historical evolution.

“I hope that BU can develop an archive similar to Leipzig University’s, although it has a head-start from its beginnings in 1409”, he said. “It’s a resource that aids the Fusion concept.”

Trolley of PR archives

June 10, 2015

The virtual and the field: enhancing visualisation in archaeology using serious game technologies

BU research, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund djohn

The FIF funded collaborative project between the Creative Technology and Archaeology Frameworks has produced another output.

A visualisation of the Iron Age banjo enclosure discovered in the Bournemouth University Durotriges Big Dig at Winterborne Kingston has been produced using Unreal Engine 4. The system allows users to explore the environment as it may have appeared in the Iron Age at a human scale.

This was a pilot study that was produced as part of a Fusion Investment Fund project at Bournemouth University in collaboration between staff and students on the Archaeology and Games Technology courses. It is anticipated that the environment will be further developed by Games Technology students as part of their final year project studies with enhancements made to the existing environment and with the addition of visualisations of the same site at different historical periods of habitation.

A fly through of the Iron Age environment can be seen at:

For more information about the visualisation please contact djohn@bournemouth.ac.uk.

June 9, 2015

It’s time to fuel your creative vision

Business Engagement, Knowledge Exchange loringe

Creative Britain 2015: Access to finance and skills, takes place for the first time at EventCity, Manchester on 17th September.

This event will connect 100 companies and several hundred delegates from the creative industries with over 1,200 Angel investors, Crowdfunder and professional VCT and EIS companies that can make their projects a reality.

Delegates from creative companies will learn about support in terms of skill development along with the solutions and infrastructure available to help turn concepts into reality and protect the value of their work. For Investors in the creative industries, the show will be a chance to view demonstrations and meet with some of the most exciting prospects in Film, TV, Digital, Gaming, Technology and Publishing.

Confirmed speakers include Innovate UK, TIGA and Creative Industries Arts Council England.

Click here for more information http://creativebritain.today/

June 8, 2015

BFX 2015 ACADEMIC CONFERENCE

BU research, Uncategorized jcodling

Following from last years successful academic conference (forming part of the BFX Festival) will be running for the second time between the 26th-27th September at Bournemouth University’s Executive Business Centre.

This year’s theme is ANALOGUE TO POST-DIGITAL. The BFX Conference is underpinned by a strong belief in the benefits interdisciplinary discourse, and aims to create a platform for these exchanges to take place around the field of digital moving images and related technologies. Contemporary still and moving images and their related practices sit in the interstices of the analogue and digital. The BFX conference invites participants to consider the trajectories of these movements as we engage in a discourse of the ‘post-digital’ in still and moving image.

Embedded within these fields are a range of themes such as: memory and the archive, media archaeology, hybridity, intermedia practices, folksonomies and virtual curatorships, the network, new pedagogues and education design. The conference welcomes approaches that consider the continuities and breaks in technologies and practices, as well as the range of possibilities that may be inspired by thinking about the post-digital.

The conference will also focus upon both academic discourse and artistic practice, and has included artist roundtables as part of their programme.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Charlie Gere, from the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts and author of Digital Culture(2002), Art, Time and Technology (2006), Non-relational Aesthetics, with Michael Corris (2009), and Community without Community in Digital Culture (2012)as well as co-editor of White Heat Cold Technology (2009), and Art Practice in a Digital Culture (2010), and many papers on questions of technology, media and art.

Dr. David M. Berry, Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab and author of Critical Theory and the Digital, The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age,Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source,the editor of Understanding Digital Humanities and co-editor ofPostdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design

Prof. Wolfgang Ernst. Professor for Media Theory at the Institut für Musik und Medienwissenschaft at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he co-runs the Media Archaeological Fundus. He is also author of Digital Memory and the Archive (2012), and a compilation of other literature including“Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media”, and From Media History to Zeitkritik (2013).

CALL FOR PAPERS AND SUBMISSIONS

You can submit your proposals by using this link, and this year you will notice that we have included the 3 new submission options, as an individual paper, as a constituted panel, and as an artist roundtable.

June 5, 2015

Facebook User Interface to suit Saudi Arabian culture

BU research, PG research, Research news djohn

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

Speaker: Hana Almakky

Title: Facebook User Interface to suit Saudi Arabian culture

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 10^th June 2015

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

Abstract: Social media has continued growing in Saudi Arabia. Millions of businesses and trades are now using social media for entertainment, advertisement and promoting themselves internationally.

Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc., have gained huge popularity at personal as well as professional scale. Therefore, work is being done to evolve the modes of communication over these platforms, extensively.

My research explores the effect of Saudi cultures on the design of social media site of Facebook. This talk presents the updated results of the research and proposes a theoretical framework that guides the design of a user interface for Facebook to meet the Saudi’s expectations.

We hope to see you there.

June 5, 2015

WAN speaker event: ‘Inspiring our futures: High profile women at BU’

Featured academics, Research themes, Women's Academic Network Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

A lunchtime Women’s Academic Network (WAN) event on the 4th June to participate in a panel composed of three senior, high profile BU women proved to be one of our most popular WAN events. This drew in a wide audience of female academics of all ranks from across all the Faculties of the University. We were additionally honoured to have in the audience our VC, Professor John Vinney and the PVC for Global Engagement, Dr Sonal Minocha.

The panel included Sue Sutherland (OBE) Chair of the University Board, Professor Gail Thomas, Dean of the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences and Head of Centre Excellence Learning and Professor Christine Maggs, Dean of the Faculty of Science & Technology. The seminar topic focused on an interactive discussion of career progression, achievements and dealing with potholes, cul-de-sacs, obstacles and speeding highways along the way from the personal and professional perspectives of our three eminent speakers.

Professor Sara Ashencaen Crabtree opened by the event by welcoming the audience, introducing the speakers and warmly acknowledging all the support provided by panel members and her fellow co-convenors, Associate Professor Dr Heather Savigny and Professor Chris Shiel– not forgetting every member of the WAN community, whose numbers across BU grow weekly. This has helped to make WAN a powerful and exhilarating vehicle for achieving equality in diversity at BU.

The honesty, humour, courage and grit of the speakers in talking so candidly about their road to success was a revelation to the audience who were both moved and liberated to engage fully in discussions with the panel, plying them with questions, comments and sharing their own stories. This was the opportunity to demonstrate that strength in leadership lies in being able to reveal human vulnerabilities and aspirations – a lesson that was deeply inspirational to everyone in the room.

The VC closed the event with his own account – personal, unembellished and moving, staying on to discuss with WAN members his own vision for the future in respect of our shared aims. We, co-convenors, were delighted that the success of this event as another step towards assisting our fellow female colleagues on their paths to progress where the superb examples offered by our outstanding panel received a myriad of compliments from our enthralled WAN participants.

Reminder: Next WAN event Chaired by VC Professor John Vinney, 7^th July, 5pm TAG02, Tolpuddle Annexe, Talbot Campus.

Topic: Getting to the top: A grand plan or serendipity?

Speaker: Professor Judith Petts, CBE, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research & Enterprise, University of Southampton

Please note: this is an Open WAN Seminar – all academics, irrespective of gender, are warmly invited to attend. For full details of, and registration for Event: Prof Judith Petts, PVC Southampton, please see https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/getting-to-the-top-a-grand-plan-or-serendipity-tickets-17003423698

Professor Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Dr Heather Savigny & Professor Chris Shiel,

WAN Co-convenors

June 2, 2015

Joint GeoNet/Datalabs seminar on digital storytelling

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, Public engagement pgillingham

On the 14^th May we were joined by Malachy Browne from the social media news service Reported.ly. Their role is to encourage social media users to report on humanitarian crises and disasters to get a fuller picture of events and involve people on the ground in journalism. This means that stories from ordinary citizens are represented, rather than the educated elite who tend to be over-represented in traditional journalism. Malachy and his team make good use of geocoded photos from the web taken by citizens on the ground at these crises. I was particularly impressed to learn about googles reverse image search, which allows the team to verify whether a photograph they want to use as a source is likely to be genuine or whether it has been used elsewhere on the web as evidence in other situations – sort of like a turnitin for images.

They also do some really interesting work matching up topographical references in videos (tops of buildings, stand out features) with geocoded photos on google earth to check that the videos are genuine. One very practical use of geographic information was for citizens on the ground to use a compass app on their phone to determine the direction that rockets were coming from during an attack. This was then used externally to work out where the rockets came from and work out a route to get people to safety. He also mentioned a field called forensic architecture, where the viewsheds of soldiers (the parts of a landscape each soldier can see from a set position) were mapped to determine which soldier shot a protester during a rally. Finally, and on to political corruption, he has tied instagram photos posted by politicians during their holidays to flight ownership by political donors, showing an inappropriate use of expenses. In this way he can develop new stories, given context to events as they are happening and provide real time support to those on the ground.

This was a really interesting talk which highlighted the extent to which social media and the internet can contribute geographic information at the short time scales needed to deal with such crises. You can follow @reportedly and @MalachyBrowne on twitter for more information.

Our next GeoNet event is from 12-2 in CG21 this Thursday the 4^th June.

A GEONET & BU DATALABS EVENT

Lunchtime Chat and Skill-share: Mapping for Social Change with Dr. Stephen McFarland

June 4th 2015 – 12:00-14:00

Talbot Campus, CG21

Dr. Stephen McFarland joins us from the University of Tampa to share insights and techniques for using QGIS and CartoDB in mapping projects. Drawing from his extensive work mapping labour and housing struggles, Dr. McFarland will explain how maps can tell stories for social change, make issues more visible, and be used to engage policy-makers and the public.

Lunch will be provided to those participating in the full session, places are strictly limited so please email pgillingham@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

May 20, 2015

An Overview on the Design and Analysis of Collaborative Decision Making Games

BU research, Featured academics, Research news djohn

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

Speaker: Dr Aida Azadegan

Title: An Overview on the Design and Analysis of Collaborative Decision Making Games

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 27^th May 2015

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

Abstract: Collaborative games require players to work together on shared activities to achieve a common goal. These games received widespread interest in the past decade, yet little is known on how to design them successfully, as well as how to evaluate or analyse them.

This talk will describe a research project that aims to deliver a better understanding of collaborative processes designed in the mechanics of Collaborative Decision Making Games (CDMGs) in which collaboration takes place during the game play process at conscious cognitive level. To follow the aim, Collaboration Engineering (CE), a discipline that has studied collaboration for decades is used as a theoretical guideline to analyse and design CDMGs. At the analysis stage of this research, the primary focus is on understanding how CE is used in the design of the mechanics of CDMGs and within the design stage the goal is to demonstrate a pattern-based approach, developed using CE principles, which is then applied to the design of these games.

Potential insights from this research make clear in what contexts CE is relevant and what kind of role it can play both in terms of analysis and the design of CDMGs.

We hope to see you there.

May 11, 2015

Seminar on political violence today

BU research brichards

The Politics and Media Research Group in FMC has a very stimulating guest speaker lined up for this afternoon (Monday). Dr. Jeffrey Murer is Lecturer on Collective Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in the School of International Relations. He is unusual for an IR specialist in that he draws deeply on ideas from psychoanalysis in his studies of violent political conflict. The title of his talk is “The Politics of Splitting: Anxiety, Loss and the Anti-Semitic, Anti-Roma Violence of Contemporary Hungary”. While focussing on the situation in Hungary, his talk will illustrate how an interdisciplinary, psycho-social approach can be applied to generate insights into violence in many other contexts.

The talk will be in P406. It will start at 5.00 and be followed, until 6.30, by questions and discussion.

All staff and students are welcome.

May 10, 2015

Paper by BU academics used as example in Dutch university newsletter

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, Research communication, Research Integritiy, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

The March 2015 newsletter of the Dutch University of Groningen’s School for Behavioural & Cognitive Neurosciences dedicated two pages to the question: ‘How to pick the right journal?’ The author of the English-language newsletter contribution, Liwen Zhang, offer its readers a brief introduction on journal selection for a scientific manuscript. The newsletter piece is based on two papers which both share their submission stories and suggestions of journal selection. We were pleased to see that one of these two papers is by two Bournemouth University professors: Hundley and van Teijlingen. Their paper which gives advice on one specific aspect of academic publishing is called ‘Getting your paper to the right journal: a case study of an academic paper’ [1]. It was published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing in 2002.

Reference:

vanTeijlingen, E., Hundley, V. (2002) Getting your paper to the right journal: a case study of an academic paper, Journal of Advanced Nursing 37(6): 506-511.

Category / Creative, Digital & Cognitive Science