The second BU Research Staff Association (RSA) coffee morning took place today in the EBC café. This was a fantastic opportunity for research staff across BU to meet to discuss their work and share ideas for future collaborations. Members of RKEO were also on hand to provide research related advice and support. We will continue to hold the BU RSA coffee mornings in 2016 on the last Wednesday of each month, in the EBC café between 10-11am.

To enable research staff to showcase their work internally and externally, the BU RSA also hopes to participate in a number of BU events in 2016. If any one has any ides or would like to help organise these events then please do get in contact with us.

See you on 27th January at the first coffee morning of 2016!

Kind regards, Michelle and Marcellus
Michelle Heward and Marcellus Mbah (BU RSA)

THE BOX SET MINDSET: THE FORENSICS OF POPULAR CULTURE

A day conference organised by

The International Association of Forensic Psychotherapy

and 

Media and Inner World research network

in association with

Bournemouth University and the University of Roehampton

28 November 2015, 9.30am – 6pm

The Wesley Centre, London, 81-103 Euston Street, London NW1 2EZ

Representations of crime and criminal behaviour have long been central to the history of popular culture and now seem to dominate the landscape of the popular cultural imagination. From Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books through to Hollywood films such as The Silence of the Lambs and television shows such as Law and Order, and The Bridge, the forensic dilemmas underpinning dramatic fiction have regularly fascinated audiences. In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in long-form television series that grapple with forensic dilemmas involving gangster and mafia groups, murderers, drug barons and corrupt political figures and organisations. Our fascination with these shows has been intensified by technological shifts that allow us to ‘binge-watch’ box sets so that aspects of the experience of addiction also arise in us as avid viewers and fans.

This one-day symposium brings together members of IAFP and the Media and the Inner World research network to explore the psycho-cultural appeal of well-known television dramas, in which the forensic themes of murder, violence, and revenge play a key narrative role. Focusing on highly successful television series such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing, Breaking Bad and House of Cards, this event will apply the expertise of eminent forensic psychotherapists and senior academic researchers to discuss why and how audiences relate to such programmes and their dark, compelling themes and characters. The production of such drama is now big business thanks to the box-set mindset it invokes, and it is significant that forensic ideas often lie at the heart of the storylines.

What fantasies are at play when engaging with the psychopathologies of crime on show in such programmes and what makes them such compulsive viewing? What do these forensic themes and their dominance in popular culture tell us about the psychodynamics of contemporary society and the fantasies that circulate within it? How can an understanding of these processes enhance the practice and theories of forensic psychotherapy and also create a dialogue with academic researchers in the field of media and cultural studies? We hope to address these questions throughout the course of the day through an exciting programme of panels and discussion groups.

THE BOX SET MINDSET

THE FORENSICS OF POPULAR CULTURE

Programme and Speakers

9.30 – 10.00                       Registration and coffee

 10.00 -11.00                    The Killing and its Forensic Psychopathologies

• Dr Sandra Grant, OBE (Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist)
• Dr Andrea Esser (Principle Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Roehampton)

 11.00 – 11.15           Refreshments

 11.15 – 12.15                   The Forensic Dilemmas of Breaking Bad

• Dr Estela Welldon (Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust)
• Bradley Hillier (Specialist Registrar in Forensic Psychiatry in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation)

 12.15 – 1.15                      The Forensic Pleasures of House of Cards

• Brett Kahr (Psychotherapist, Broadcaster and MiW Honorary Professor)
• Candida Yates (Professor of Culture and Communication, Bournemouth University)

1.15-2.15                            LUNCH

 2.15. -3.30                          Workshops on The Killing, Breaking Bad and House of Cards

 3.30-3.45                            Refreshments

 3.45-5.00                            Reflecting on the Day: A Group Experience

5.00-6.00                            Drinks Reception

Communicating Research:
FMC Research Seminar Series 2015-16
Time: Wednesday, 25 November, 3-4 pm
Venue: The Screening Room W240, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus.
A Politics and Media Research Centre event:

Katy Parry, University of Leeds

‘Discussing photographs of soldier transgressions in the news with British military, families and veterans’

This presentation draws on a press photo story of alleged soldier transgressions in Afghanistan to explore both the mainstream media presentation of leaked soldier-produced photographs, and the reactions to this photo-story garnered from group interviews with serving media operations personnel, veterans’ groups and forces families. The photographs apparently depict a British RAF serviceman posing next to a ‘dead Taliban fighter’. Primarily concerned with the visual representation of soldiering in the news and what we can learn from the responses of those with direct experience of war and its after-effects, I contend that the news treatment of this snapshot style imagery presents a particularly rich example through which to explore the unsettling relationship that the press and public have with the act of killing in war, and the jarring discomfort experienced when ‘our boys’ are shown to not only take part in seemingly reprehensible activities, but to picture themselves enjoying such acts.

Whilst the larger project that this paper draws upon is concerned with a range of media genres (film, documentary, comedy, social media), this particular case deals with newspaper journalism. I am concerned here with the represented experience of war for the soldier ‘on the ground’ and the responses to such media portrayals. In the age of more personalised media, peer-to-peer sharing, YouTube memes and citizen witnessing, the perceptions of military personnel and emotional connections with civilian audiences are formed through a more varied and unpredictable media ecology and a hybrid set of production and viewing practices. Shifting focus from the traditional institutional relationships (say, between the state and journalism) to mainstream media handling of individual soldiers’ transgressions also acknowledges the attempted media management of more vernacular and affective qualities (i.e. how soldiers appear in the media as individual moral actors and the emotional responses stimulated).

Katy Parry lectures in Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Her work focuses on visual politics and how ‘frames of war’ circulate in public culture. She is a co-author of Pockets of Resistance: British News Media, War and Theory in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (with Piers Robinson, Peter Goddard, Craig Murray and Philip Taylor, Manchester University Press, 2010), and Political Culture and Media Genre: Beyond the News (with Kay Richardson and John Corner, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies.  The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

Contributions include speakers on behalf of 

The Centre for Politics and Media Research

The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community

Narrative Research Group

Journalism Research Group

Advances in Media Management Research Group

Emerging Consumer Cultures Research Group

Public Relations Research Group

The second Research Staff Association (RSA) coffee morning will be taking place on Wednesday the 25th November, in the café area of the EBC (Lansdowne Campus) from 10 to 11am. This is an informal opportunity to meet other research staff over coffee and cake, discuss your work and share ideas for future collaborations. It will also provide an opportunity to make suggestions toward a planned RSA seminar series that will act as a conduit for researchers of the University to showcase their work.

For catering purposes please email mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk to confirm your attendance.

We look forward to seeing you there!
Kind regards, Michelle Heward and Marcellus Mbah (RSA Staff Representatives)

Staff in Additional Learning Support (ALS) were especially proud to receive a grant from FAAMG as opportunities for professional and support staff to undertake academic research are not readily available. Anecdotal evidence gained in tutorials suggested that students with dyslexia and dyspraxia were not disclosing their learning differences before or during work placements. Often, this led to a poor experience for both employer and undergraduate. Our research confirmed that students feared stigmatisation while many employers had little awareness of learning differences and minimal knowledge of the types of reasonable adjustments that can be easily implemented. Findings have been disseminated nationally in conference and an academic paper written by Alison Green is published in the current edition of The Journal of Inclusive Practice in Further and Higher Education. ALS manager, Chris Scholes, has produced new guidelines for employers and two self-help handbooks for students. ALS staff are currently working with colleagues from Careers and Placement Development Advisors to improve the placement experience for all students with dyspraxia and dyslexia.

‘Communicating Research’:  FMC Departmental Seminar Series 2015-16

Time: Wednesdays, 3-5 pm

Venue: The Screening Room: W240, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University.

Wednesday 18 October, 3-4pm

A Politics & Media Research Centre event

Speaker: Orlanda Ward

‘Signs of progress? The 2010 General Election and Newspaper Coverage of BAME
Women as Parliamentary Candidates’

2010 was a breakthrough year for BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) women
in parliament. Although only three had previously been elected to the House of
Commons, a further seven joined their ranks that year. While British gender and
politics research has begun to focus increasingly on news coverage of female
politicians, it has not yet considered the intersection of race and gender in
this context. I employ quantitative and qualitative content analysis to
investigate intersectional racial and gendered differences in the quantity,
quality and content of national newspaper coverage garnered by BAME female
candidates compared to white women and men and BAME men. The results show that
BAME women are more visible than their white female counterparts, but their
coverage is more likely to be negative, and more likely to explicitly foreground
gender. BAME women are also framed alternately as signs of progress, co-opted
tokens, embodied ideologies and substantive representatives.

Orlanda Ward is Teaching Fellow in Qualitative Methods and an ESRC-funded
Political Science PhD candidate at UCL’s School of Public Policy. She has
previously served as a Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Methods.
Her research interests span many aspects of gender and politics, particularly
women’s political representation, intersectionality, and the nexus of gender,
media and politics. Her thesis considers the effects of ethnicity and gender on
the quality and quantity of campaign coverage received by political candidates
in the US and UK.
She has recently served as a Research Assistant to LSE’s Gender and Power
Commission, worked with Dr Heather Savigny on gender and coverage of the 2015
general election, and been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University
and the Center for American Women and Politics. Prior to commencing her PhD, Orlanda completed an MA in Gender Studies (UCL) and worked for a number of
gender-focused NGOs and a frontbench female politician.

Wednesday 18 October, 4-5pm, W240

 A BU Journalism Research Group event

 Speaker: Dr Scott Eldridge II, University of Sheffield

‘Iconoclasts and Irritants: WikiLeaks and Journalism’s Troublesome Actors’

From WikiLeaks and Julian Assange to the NSA leaks and Edward Snowden, prominent news stories of late have been notable for the role digital leaks and ‘hacks’ have played in coverage. Centring these stories, key actors working primarily online have also found themselves in the middle of debates of and around journalism as they argue the Fourth Estate is enhanced by their contributions, in some cases asserting their own place alongside journalists and within the journalistic field.

Beyond famous exposés, less prominent but no less provocative ‘hacktivist’ leaks have driven journalistic coverage around secreted-away corporate files, exposures of failures of justice, and celebrity gossip and scandals. This paper argues we can learn from the activities of these actors, including WikiLeaks and others who operate outside journalistic norms and traditional understandings of the journalistic field.

For challenging journalistic norms and confronting boundaries of the journalistic field, this paper sees provocative digital actors as providing opportunities to better understand journalism in a digital age. Situating the journalistic claims and endeavours of these actors within a broader discussion of journalistic identity, ideal-typical, and normative definitions of journalism, it critiques the way traditional definitions of journalism exclude such actors outright, thereby ignoring evaluations of their possibly journalistic acts. Building on previous studies (Eldridge 2013, 2014), this paper argues against privileging narrow views of journalism and offers theoretical insights to take stock of an expanding range of journalistic actors.

 About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies.  The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

Contributions include speakers on behalf of 

The Centre for Politics and Media Research

The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community

Narrative Research Group

Journalism Research Group

Advances in Media Management Research Group

Emerging Consumer Cultures Research Group

Public Relations Research Group