Category / Communities, Cultures and Conflicts

Socnet Conference at HSC

Erasmus Social Work International Week at the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy, HSC

 The Erasmus SOCNET International Social Work Week, which runs every April from the 15th to the 19th  of the month,  is a multi-site annual event held at host European universities drawn from across the 19 HEI members of the SOCNET network  on a 3-year rota.  This very popular event brings together a diverse range of European academics and students with an interest in social work and welfare to participate in a packed week of educational, cultural and social events.

 This year, and for the first time, it was BU’s turn to host this prestigious event held jointly by HSC staff and students from the BA and MA Social Work programmes and BA Sociology & Social Policy.  HSC welcomed academics and accompanying students from Germany, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands for a very busy educational week, which received highly enthusiastic evaluations from participants.

 The chosen theme of this year’s SOCNET conference at BU was  ‘Diversity and the processes of marginalization and otherness: giving voices to hidden themes’.  The event was opened by Vice Chancellor, Professor John Vinney, followed by a keynote lecture from Professor Jonathan Parker. Professor Gail Thomas, Dean of the School of Health & Social Care, was guest of honour at the lecturers’ Welcome Dinner held at the Print Room Restaurant, Bournemouth – the first of a number of lively social events held that week. Members of the organizing committee on the staff side included Jill Davey, Jonathan Parker, Sara Crabtree, Richard Williams and Chris Willetts, all of whom were also involved in delivery of presentations ranging from problematising anti-oppressive social work practice to a comparative South Africa/UK study of kinship care to Islamophobia in Europe.  HSC PhD student and Associate Lecturer, David Galley, gave an important lecture on the historical context of migration and its influence on welfare. Social Work students Michelle Lillywhite, David Oppong and Ralph Daniel, and Sociology & Social Policy students Abby Jeffery, Heidi Crew, Luana Silliton and Samineh Hall were instrumental in organizing student events, together with delivery of their own student-led thematic workshops. Finally, invaluable administrative management was provided by HSC’s efficient Administrator, Karen Long. 

 Above all, however, the importance of the SOCNET International Week lies in the ability to sustain the continuation and expansion of a dynamic community of international scholars and educators. Drawn from across the interconnecting disciplines of social work, law and social policy these academics are actively committed to promoting a participatory and internationalised student-focused curriculum on the diverse features of European social work and welfare. The peer collegiality of the event embraces an ever-changing body of students as peer-learners and equal participants in developing specific conference themes, and assisting to develop the sustainability of the network. This in turn generates further engagement through student/staff exchanges and research collaboration.

 To further promote these excellent goals, selected chapters generated from the best of the workshops at BU will be developed into an edited volume entitled Diversity and the Processes of Marginalisation: Reflections on Social Work in Europe, under the editorship of Sara (Ashencaen) Crabtree and Jill Davey (Whiting & Birch publishers). This collection follows from last year’s initiative to produce the first SOCNET volume entitled Active Ageing? Perspectives from Europe on a vaunted topic, under editors María Lusia Gómez Jiménez, University of Malaga, and Jonathan Parker, BU.

State of Yawning – Santander Travel Scholarship awarded to Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion

Studying yawning has the potentially benefit of identifying underlying neurological disorders. Strong evidence of a link between yawning and fatigue, and with multiple sclerosis, is known. Mechanisms involved in excessive yawning are not understood and my work has shown a definitive link between yawning and cortisol levels in normal people. However, since people with multiple sclerosis often yawn excessively, it is important to establish whether or not their cortisol levels rise as with normal people since prolonged rises in cortisol levels indicate stress and may also indicate adverse neurological symptomatology. My work has generated a new hypothesis to explain the occurrence of excessive yawning and is complementary to Dr Gallup’s theories on thermoregulation in multiple sclerosis, which is pioneering. I am meeting Dr Gallup (Princeton University) in New York to discuss further studies in order to stay ahead of research progress. This is an excellent opportunity for kudos for Bournemouth University in being the first to carry out such research.

CEMP Research & Innovation Cluster Bulletin / Agenda

Funding opportunities

The updated cluster bulletin and agenda for the next meeting is here:  CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 18.4.3.13

The reading matter for the ‘think-tank’ discussion is here: Postill-Pink-socialmedia-ethnography

Please note that, due to Easter holidays, the meeting is a week later than usual – taking place now at 9.30am on Thursday 18th April in the CEMP office.

As always, anyone wishing to pursue a funding opportunity in the bulletin, suggest a project relating to pedagogy / innovation or just find out more about the cluster, you are VERY welcome to come to the meeting, just let me (Julian) know in advance. Same applies if you have ideas for collaboration but cannot attend the meeting.

 

 

Realities of fieldwork: Sheetal Sharma, HSC PhD student on fieldwork in rural Nepal.

PG research

(c) Sheetal Sharma

Open air focus group in rural Nepal, (c) Sheetal Sharma 2013.


Roosters crowing, cows mooing, bleating goats, birds chirping, mobile phones ringing, children screaming, laughing and running around while women, breastfeeding, talk over one another excitedly in the sun as they need to leave us soon to drop the children off to school and/or head to the field to cultivate the season’s crop this spring it is wheat, last summer, rice. Women do this work as most of their husbands are away in the capital, Kathmandu or in the Arab Gulf. This is the reality of conducting focus groups in rural Nepal.

Although we, as researchers, spend considerable time to perfect the ideal ‘tool’ of the interview schedule and imagine the transcription clear and the background; a researcher must be prepared for every eventuality. Noise, din and interruptions: Today a dog nibbled on a nearby goat and a few men kept creeping to listen in why was this videshi (foreigner) recording conversations and making notes. The women shooed them away as today was a discussion on contraception; also that the discussion of the focus groups should be in ‘controlled environment’, safe, quiet; and in Nepal where women are not the main decision-maker for their reproductive health, it should mean a lieu women should be able to discuss freely these issues. In this Green Tara’s (www.greentaratrust.com) intervention area, which my PhD, supervised at HSC BU by Catherine Angell, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen and University of Sheffield’s Padam Simkhada, aims to evaluate both quantitatively and qualitatively, shows one the decision-making outcomes improved: increased the use of contraception in the Pharping area from 4.3% (2008) to 24.6% (2012) after 5 years of health promotion conducted by two auxiliary nurse-midwives.
40 minutes later recording (with 2 digital recorders) and once the demographic data and recording is double-checked and any last questions answered we set off walking 2 hours downhill visiting a tea-shop on the way for a cup of chai.

Edwin van Teijlingen and Emma Pitchforth, Qualitative Research: Focus group research in family planning and reproductive health care J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2006;32:1 30-32doi:10.1783/147118906775275299
http://jfprhc.bmj.com/content/32/1/30.citation

CEMP Research & Innovation Bulletin

Funding opportunities

Here is the updated CEMP Research & Innovation bulletin and agenda for the next cluster meeting – CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 28.3.13_KE

The cluster meeting is on Thursday March 28th, 9.30-11.30 in the CEMP office.

Thanks to Kris Erickson for these updates.

The ‘thinktank’ reading for discussion at the meeting is SURRENDERING THE SPACE Convergence culture, Cultural Studies and the curriculum

Thanks to Ashley Woodfall for this.

Expressions of interest in the funding opportunities in the bulletin and / or to confirm meeting attendance, please email julian@cemp.ac.uk.

 

 

 

My Swedish visit

For the past couple of years those of us in the Centre for Media history have been building up our relationship with Lund University where Media History is taught and actively researched.  The connection owes a lot to my colleague, Kristin Skoog, who is Swedish but specialises in BBC radio history.

Although I have visited Lund a number of times I have only now spent a week here and in my role as a Visiting Fellow I was asked to contribute to the teaching and research programme.

So I found myself talking to a group of possibly bemused second year undergraduates about BBC radio broadcasts during the second world war.  Maybe this was a bit reckless because, as you may know, Sweden was officially neutral during the war and I did wonder how they would respond to the rather gung-ho nature of BBC war reporting.  In fact they were very interested and perceptive in their comments.

My next task was to interview two media history PhD students with their supervisors present.  Despite not really knowing much about their subjects the conversation seemed to be productive and I certainly learned a lot (about the history of A4 (!) and ‘balloonings’ in Stockholm).

My main challenge was to address the impressive media history research seminar and this time I was prepared with my latest, not entirely legally obtained, audio from the BBC sound archive on the Suez crisis of 1956. Surprisingly I saw in the audience Bente Larsen, a leading figure in Danish radio archives who had popped over ‘the bridge’ (yes, that bridge) to listen.  I followed the very impressive and calm young Danish academic, Heidi Svømmekjær, and all went well.

I should add that I do not speak a word of Swedish and so could not use the library.  But everyone in Sweden seems to speak very good English.

It has been an extremely stimulating and valuable experience and I would be happy to talk to anyone out there who is interested in building Swedish links.

One final comment; as a guest I was given my own profile page on the Lund University website  http://www.kom.lu.se/en/research/mediehistoria/guest-researcher/  What a shame we at Bournemouth are not able to design web profiles of this standard!

 

Hugh Chignell, Professor of Media History, The Media School.  15.3.2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squeezing the pips from a conference with social media

Please forgive the self-publicity, but I would like to share my recent use of social media to promote BU, research, a conference and papers.

Last week, I attended the annual International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) in the US, where I presented three papers, one with a US co-author. It’s the largest conference in the field, drawing 101 papers over three days and attendance in the order of 150-175 academics, graduates and some practitioners.

To broadcast involvement in the conference, I used my personal blog to present a daily summary of interesting papers:  http://fiftyonezeroone.blogspot.co.uk/. The blog posts have had over 210 visits so far and were also circulated on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. There have been many re-tweets (RTs), plus appreciative emails and direct messages via Twitter.

A short summary of “top 10 research tips” was written for the prmoment.com website which has around 30,000 users, worldwide. It was posted on the site’s blog and is included in this week’s publication: http://blog.prmoment.com/ten-pr-research-tips-from-bournemouth-universitys-professor-tom-watson/

The outcomes of this type of activity will be long-term and hard to measure, but as I was the only UK delegate at IPRRC this year, it has given BU, our research and industry knowledge an international platform of expertise and insight to present ourselves. The capital cost was almost nil, as I used my own netbook, Wi-Fi was free and the time component was less than an hour a day. Try this approach at your next conference or internal event.

Tom Watson presenting at IPRRC 2013

CEMP Research & Innovation Bulletin 14.3.13

Funding opportunities

The CEMP Research & Innovation Cluster bulletin for the meeting on 14.3.13 is here: Cluster bulletin and agenda 14.3.13.

The focus of the cluster is pedagogic research and innovation. Any colleagues interested in collaborating with CEMP to pursue any of the funding opportunities in the bulletin – please email Julian McDougall.

Cluster meetings take place every other Thursday. In the Thursdays in between, the bulletin will be posted here.

Media School team wins US grant for CSR research

Awarded & submitted bids, REF Subjects, Research themes

A three-member Media School research team has been awarded a grant for research into Corporate Social Responsibility communication amongst employees.

Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson (L-R) gained the grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication, a research center at the Penn State College of Communications.

They will be conducting a study in the UK and Romania to link with a previous study undertaken in Greece by Dr Theofilou. The study supports travel and the employment of research assistants for research in summer this year. Prof Watson, the project PI, has been named as a Page Legacy Scholar for 2013.

“Within the Media School’s Public Relations Research Group (the PRRes Gang), there is considerable expertise in CSR,” said Prof Watson.

“Dr Grigore is an organiser of an international CSR conference to be held at BU in the autumn, whilst Dr Theofilou is pioneering research into harnessing ‘scepticism’ as a factor in developing effective CSR communication within corporate organisations.

“This grant is very positive recognition of BU’s standing internationally within public relations and corporate communications research.”

# Arthur W. Page was a highly respected pioneer of public relations and corporate communications in the US from the late 1920s to the late 1940s at the telecoms giant, AT&T.

(L-R) Dr Tasos Theofilou, Dr Georgiana Grigore and Prof Tom Watson

 

Euro PR history network backed by Fusion

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion

IHPRC at EBC - Scene for first EPRHN meeting

A proposal to develop an innovative Europe-wide network of researchers in the history of public relations field has been supported by the Fusion Investment Fund (FIF).

The European Public Relations History Network (EPRHN) was formed in mid-2012 by Prof Tom Watson and backed by EUPRERA (European Public Relations Education & Research Association) as a priority project for the next three years. It was set up to identify archives and resources, undertake collaborative research, and prepare bids to European research bodies and PR industry organisations.

The field of public relations history has been developed at BU over the past four years, mainly through the establishment of the International History of Public Relations Conference (IHPRC).

Prof Watson said: “there has been increasing interest in the conference and PR historical research in Europe over the past 3-4 years but it has largely focused on national histories, personalities or phenomena. Collaborative research, across national boundaries, has yet to emerge. There is little shared knowledge of archival resources, where they exist or can be created.”

So far, 35 academics and practitioners from 12 countries have shown their interest in EPRHN. Its first publication, a catalogue of archives and resources in seven countries has just been published.  A EPRHN planning meeting will be held at BU after IHPRC in June.

Within The Media School, the network will also help develop European aspects of the Centre for Media History (CMH). CMH is already developing relationships with universities in Sweden and northern Germany. CMH and EPRHN will, it is hoped, foster the recruitment of PGR students interested in media and communication historical research.

The Fusion funding will allow EPRHN to hold a planning event at BU after IHPRC in late June and for Prof Watson and Dr Tasos Theofilou, who is working with him on both PR history projects, to attend EUPRERA’s annual conference in Barcelona in October. At EUPRERA, they will hold the network’s first formal meeting and workshop. [Photos by Minna-Liisa Nurmilaasko, PROCOM Finland].

IHPRC 2012

Fusion supports new PR research collaboration in Asia

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, REF Subjects, Research themes

Prof Tom Watson teaching at Chulalongkorn University

For several years, the Media School (TMS) has been developing a relationship with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Chula, as it is known, is rated as the No.1 university in the kingdom.

The SMN award allows the development of a collaborative project between TMS and the Faculty of Communication Arts at Chula to organise an academic conference on public relations in Asia in Bangkok on November 18-19.
The conference will provide a platform for academic research on public relations history, current theory and practice, and future trends. In particular, it will investigate Asian (i.e. non Anglo-American) perspectives of public relations and will be the first dedicated conference to do so.

Prof Tom Watson, who is a co-chair of the conference, says the SMN funding “will lead to the development of a sustainable academic and research partnership between the two universities. It will enable BU staff participation in cross-cultural research with Thai colleagues. The conference will also place BU in a leadership role on research into cross-cultural communications and international public relations.”

Dr Ana Adi is working with Prof Watson on the project. She taught at Chula in mid-2012 on a staff exchange. She and at least one other TMS academic will be attending the conference and presenting papers.

The conference collaboration started with attendance by Chula’s Dr Napawan Tantivejakul at the International History of Public Relations Conference 2011 at BU, which began a dialogue about a joint conference with an Asian focus. This was cemented when Prof Watson visited Chula in November last year as a visiting professor and negotiated the arrangements. It is hoped that there will be 16 speakers, plus two keynotes, and 50 delegates at the November event.

Developing a working paper at BU

Fusion, PG research, Publishing, Research themes

I would like to make you aware of an exciting development at BU.

A multi-disciplinary group of BU academics has been meeting over the last 6 months in order to design a online journal that is capable of acting as a central focus for the dissemination of the high quality research and scholarly outputs from UG and PG dissertations, post graduate researchers, early career researchers and established academic staff. The group has designed a developmental working paper online journal that will support ‘would be’ authors and their potential publications. Although particular emphasis has been given to maximising high quality outputs of UG and PG students and early career academics, this online journal will be capable of supporting the potential of all those engaged in research and scholarship at BU.

Below are a series of Q & As:

 

What’s the name of the working paper?

The provisional title is eBU: Working Papers Online

 

How is the working paper structured?

The working paper will not be limited to any one discipline or allied to any one particular methodology, but will aim to publish articles driven by the key BU Research Themes: (Creative and Digital Economies, Culture and Society, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth, Environmental Change and Biodiversity, Green Economy and Sustainability, Health, Wellbeing and Ageing, Leisure and Recreation, Technology and Design). Apart from the build-up to launch, the working paper will have no deadlines or specific calls for papers. Instead, the working paper will work on a rolling submission process.

A set of author guidelines and details about formats are currently being considered and written. However, the guidelines are likely to accommodate a wide range of formats.

 

What are the submission processes for staff and students?

It is envisaged that staff will act as gatekeepers and encourage undergraduate and master’s students to submit high quality work into a format this is publishable. Post-graduate researchers and academic members of staff will be able to submit papers on their own accord.

After a short review from the editorial board, two designated BU academics will provide an initial quality check. The paper will then be uploaded to the internal intranet working paper site. This will allow any member of staff or student to read and offer feedback. However, within a few weeks the two designed reviewers will then provide a more comprehensive and detailed critical review. All reviews will take place in a safe, secure and INTERNAL environment. After a detailed review, students will then be encouraged to make any recommended changes and submit to external publication/or make their work available to be published on external working paper website.

This working paper is set to go live in March.

 

Further information

If anyone is interested in becoming involved in helping to create this online journal, and/or at an editorial level please get in touch with Andrew Harding (aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk), Andrew Adams (aadams@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Fiona Knight (fknight@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Are we born to yawn?

Fusion, R & KE Operations, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research Integritiy, Research themes

Yawning consistently poses a conundrum to neurologists and neuroscientists. Increasingly, evidence is found to link neurological disorders through the commonality of yawning episodes and contagious yawning. Despite discrete incidences (such as parakinesia brachialis oscitans) in brain stem ischaemic stroke patients, there is considerable debate over the reasons for yawning, with the mechanism of yawning still not fully understood. Cortisol is implicated in the stress response and fatigue; repetitive yawning may be the link between neurological disorders and with a strong correlation between yawning and a rise in cortisol levels. Evidence has now been found in support of the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis that proposes cortisol levels are elevated during yawning [1]. Additional data is in press, and further research is planned with longitudinal consideration to neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and stroke. Funding for such initiatives is currently being sought.

[1] Thompson, S.B.N., & Bishop, P., 2012. Born to yawn? Understanding yawning as a warning of the rise in cortisol levels: randomized trial. Interactive Journal of Medical Research, 1(5), e4:1-9. Doi: i-www.jmr.org/2012/e4/

How Web 2.0 might revolutionise our research

Many of you will be familiar with the revolution that the internet is undergoing, with its growth of social networking, web applications, blogs and wikis. What I had not appreciated, until very recently, is what the full implications are for how we go about our research. I am sure that colleagues in DEC and the MediaSchoolare well ahead of the curve on this, but for the rest of us, the penny is perhaps only just beginning to drop. I recently attended a fascinating conference hosted by the European Social Simulation Association in Salzburg. This is a group of researchers united by a common interest in using computer programs to simulate human behaviour, and its implications for human society. This was very much a new arena for me; I was really attending to learn something about the agent-based modelling approaches that are the flavour of the month in these circles. But what most impressed me was the way researchers are now using web technologies to access data to explore in their models. For example, although I’d heard of “crowdsourcing” before, I’d never really seen it in practice, and what it can deliver. I was most impressed by groups using tools such as Twitter, together with mapping applications such as Google maps, to produce highly informative maps showing the movements and wellbeing of large numbers of people. A great example is what the LSE is doing to map happiness – yes, really – http://www.mappiness.org.uk/. Another example, from the University of Leeds, has been using Twitter to map the movements of commuters in and out of the city. What is perhaps most astonishing is that large numbers of people seem keen to participate in these research projects. Potentially useful tools being used by this research community include open source mapping initiatives such as Open Street Map http://www.openstreetmap.org/ and Maptube http://www.maptube.org/, as well as Survey mapper http://www.surveymapper.com/current.aspx. You might find this reference useful if you’re interested in learning more – http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/27/4/524