In addition Jonathan also published a new edition of his popular textbook Introducing Social Work SECOND EDITION. This edited volume included chapters by BU academics Dr. Orlanda Harvey (Chapter 26) and Dr. Sally Lee (Chapter 22) as well as an array of internationally renowned social work academics.
Category / Uncategorized
New publication Abier Hamadi, PhD student in FHSS
Congratulations to Abier Hamidi on the acceptance of her Ph.D. paper ‘Facilitators and barriers to condom use in Middle East and North Africa: a systematic review’. [1] This review has been registered on PROSPERO. [2] The Journal of Public Health is part of BU’s publishing deal with Springer, hence it will free open access when published.
Abier is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health and the Global Engagement Lead in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH). Earlier Abier published ‘HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps’ in 2021. [3]
References:
- Hamidi, A., Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2023) Facilitators and barriers to condom use in Middle East and North Africa: a systematic review, Journal of Public Health, (accepted)
- Hamidi, A., van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P. (2021) Facilitators and barriers to condom use in Middle East and North Africa: a systematic review. PROSPERO CRD42021297160
- Hamidi, A., Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps, Journal of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, 20 :1-5 https://doi.org/10.1177/23259582211053964 .
Post-Doctoral Researchers, Research Assistants, ECR’s, Research Fellows.
It’s the last few days of the CEDARS survey and not many of you have completed the survey. We would particularly love to hear your thoughts/feedback.
Don’t miss the chance to influence policies and initiatives relating to research at BU. Please complete the BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023 (Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research survey)* today. The survey closes this Friday 21st April.
This is an important survey as it benchmarks BU against the rest of the sector. It will, therefore, help us to identify where we are excelling and where there is room for improvement.
Participating in this study will also influence policy. Your input will help us to understand where to focus our efforts and resources – it will give us the data to make the argument for you. (The results of the previous PIRLS and CROS surveys that CEDARS has replaced were used to develop new policies and initiatives, as well as training and development opportunities).
Please complete the CEDARS survey if you are research-active (whether on a full-time, part-time or part-time hourly paid contract). This includes researchers at all stages in your career, those who manage researchers, or are Principal Investigators, or contribute to research by providing professional services for researchers, (i.e. researcher developers, research officers or technical staff).
Your responses will be anonymous; you will not be identified or identifiable in any published results. It will take approximately 20 minutes to complete the survey. BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023
If you have any questions regarding the survey, please email Rachel Arnold: rarnold@bournemouth.ac.uk
Thank you, the Research Development and Support Team
*CEDARS is a national survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting researchers across the UK. It is based on the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, which aims to create the best culture for researchers to thrive. This survey replaces the previous CROS and PIRLS surveys.
Please find more information here on the ‘Concordat to Support the Careers of Researchers’ and what BU is doing to support researchers.
Sonamoni (golden pearl) research project
Today we decided on the name of our interdisciplinary research project on ‘Drowning Prevention for newly mobile infants under two’s in Bangladesh’. We were looking for one or two words in Bangla (or Bengali) that also sounded good in English and which was not already used for another research project in Bangladesh. A team from BU and CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) using Human-Centred Design (HCD) tools came up with the name. The wider research team, after some debate and and checking for its current use in the research field, settled for the word Sonamoni (golden pearl).
BU is leading on a new interdisciplinary study of nearly £1.7 million funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Sonamoni aims to reduce the deaths of newly-mobile toddlers from drowning in rural Bangladesh. This multidisciplinary project is a collaboration of BU’s Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH), BU’s Department in Accounting, Finance & Economics and Department of Design & Engineering, and external partners, namely the University of the West of England, the University of Southampton, the Poole-based Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the already mentioned CIPRB.
The Sonamoni project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website.
In Bangladesh, drowning is the leading cause of death in children between one and two years old. This low-income country has one of the highest rates of drowning, especially among children in the world. This four-year project will be working with communities to apply human-centred design techniques in Bangladesh. Together they will identify and prioritise potential solutions, develop prototype interventions, and assess the acceptability and usability of proposed interventions.
Edwin van Teijlingen & Mavis Bengtsson
CMWH
Launch of Global Hospitality Research Alliance (GHRA)
The 41st International Labour Process Conference (ILPC), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow,12-14 April 2023
Launch of Global Hospitality Research Alliance (GHRA)
At a special session during the ILPC conference, the GHRA was launched. This was a timely event, given the theme of the conference ‘Fair and Decent work in a Global Economy?’
The GHRA brings over 20 researchers from 11 institutions representing eleven countries. While certain GHRA members have been researching hospitality work and workplace issues for several decades, there has been a drive since 2020 for members to work more closely together to explore common themes with respect to the work experiences of hospitality workers. Our growing evidence base is increasingly being used to further our academic understanding of the issues involved, inform policy, and motivate societal change towards improving hospitality through critical research.
Several frameworks are employed in our research, including the Oxfordian fair work principles (Fairwork, 2022) of fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and fair representation. We also address several of the United Nation(’s Sustainable Development Goals, such as SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well -being), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).
In our work, we discuss practical implications to inform policymakers and management teams within the hospitality and tourism sector in dealing with endemic phenomena such as abuse and harassment of hospitality employees.
The launch of the alliance offers an exciting opportunity for existing and new members to work together more closely to further intellectual activism and explore paths to change in policy and practice for better hospitality/service work and workplaces.
With research expertise in tourism work and employment, including employee wellbeing, Professor Adele Ladkin says “this is a wonderful initiative, and over the duration of the conference we had an opportunity to listen, learn, and devise an action plan for our next steps. It was a privilege to spend time with a group of collegiate and like-minded researchers who are driven by our common cause.”
Join us!
For any further information, contact aladkin@bournemouth.ac.uk or take a look at our LinkedIn page: GHRA https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9311179/
Successful event with senior policymakers in Nepal
Today, the last day of the Nepalese year 2079, we held a well attended event to discuss the preliminary findings of the interdisciplinary study of the impact of federalisation on health system in the country. We invited policymakers and politicians from all three levels of government in the country to help the research team to analyse the large amount of high-quality data. This meeting helped to validate the study results and guide our future capacity building as part of this project. We were pleasantly surprised by the number who turned up and with their active engagement!
One of the interesting comments made by the participants was that this was the first time that they had met with staff from differ levels to discuss the working of the system. In fact, participants expressed that they wanted more opportunities to have this kind of discussions across all three levels of government. The researchers reported both positive and negative developments in the decentralized health system of Nepal. Positive aspects included, for example, improvements in the availability of resources for health, the construction of new health posts and hospitals, better availability of essential medicines in many places. We also commented on the positive management of COVID-19, compared to other many countries. The policymakers from local, provincial and national level largely agreed with our findings and analyses.
This stakeholders’ event is part of the Nepal Federal Health System Project, our major collaborative project examining the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure in 2015. This is a joint project (2020-2024) led by colleagues the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) Bournemouth University, the University of Huddersfield, with two partners in Nepal, namely Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) and PHASE Nepal. This longitudinal interdisciplinary study is funded by the UK Health Systems Research Initiative [Grant ref. MR/T023554/1].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Dementia research in Nepal
This qualitative study comprising four face-to-face interviews and four focus groups with carers, health workers and other stakeholders. The two key conclusion she presented are:
- Stigma and stereotyping around dementia needs addressing. Nepal needs better policies, guidelines and service provision for people living with dementia and their carers.
- There is need for inclusion of Dementia/Alzheimer education in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula of nurses, doctors and allied health professionals in Nepal.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
BU researchers: We need your help!
Please help to develop BU policies and initiatives relating to research at BU by completing the BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023 (Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research survey)*.
This is an important survey as it benchmarks BU against the rest of the sector. It will, therefore, help us to identify where we are excelling and where there is room for improvement.
Participating in this study will also influence policy. Your input will help us to understand where to focus our efforts and resources – it will give us the data to make the argument for you. (The results of the previous PIRLS and CROS surveys that CEDARS has replaced were used to develop new policies and initiatives, as well as training and development opportunities).
Please complete the CEDARS survey if you are research-active (whether on a full-time, part-time or part-time hourly paid contract). This includes researchers at all stages in your career, those who manage researchers, or are Principal Investigators, or contribute to research by providing professional services for researchers, (i.e. researcher developers, research officers or technical staff).
The survey is running from 20th March to 21st April. Your responses will be anonymous; you will not be identified or identifiable in any published results. It will take approximately 20 minutes to complete the survey. BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023
If you have any questions regarding the survey, please email Rachel Arnold: rarnold@bournemouth.ac.uk
Thank you, the Research Development and Support Team
*CEDARS is a national survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting researchers across the UK. It is based on the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, which aims to create the best culture for researchers to thrive. This survey replaces the previous CROS and PIRLS surveys.
Please find more information here on the ‘Concordat to Support the Careers of Researchers’ and what BU is doing to support researchers.
Conference presence in Nepal
Our study on the impact of federalism on the health system in Nepal got great coverage at the ‘Ninth National Summit of Health and Population Scientists in Nepal’ on Tuesday 11th April. This annual conference in Kathmandu is organised by the NHRC (Nepal Health Research Council).
In the morning Prof. Sujan Marahatta (who is Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University) and Prof. Simon Rushton from the University of Sheffield presented in the plenary session. They jointly outlined the preliminary study findings. In the afternoon, our collaborator Dr. Jiban Karki (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) presented more detailed findings on ‘Human resource management at local level in Nepal’s federalised health system’ from the same study.
During the whole day we also had a poster presentation on display under the title ‘COVID-19 as a challenge to Nepal’s newly-federalised health system: Capacities, responsibilities, and mindsets’.
All dissemination was part of the Nepal Federal Health System Project, our major collaborative project examining the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure in 2015. This is a joint project (2020-2024) led by the University of Sheffield and collaborating with Bournemouth University, the University of Huddersfield, Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) and PHASE Nepal. This longitudinal interdisciplinary study is funded by the UK Health Systems Research Initiative [Grant ref. MR/T023554/1].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
Speaking at this week’s Nepal Health Research Council conference
There are many types of outputs that use evidence synthesis, such as policy briefs, systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines and so on. Finally, establishing a National Evidence Synthesis Centre would be very timely to help develop mechanisms of evidence synthesis as well as improve research communication. The first step could be the planning of a national workshop to identifying evidence gaps, next independent research teams can be formed for evidence synthesis while experts from institutions in the global north can provide mentoring support for capacity building and help ensure the centre’s sustainability.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen is currently in Kathmandu as through Bournemouth University’s Erasmus+ exchange with Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal. As part of his teaching commitments at MMIHS he will conducted workshop sessions on academic writing and publishing based on the textbook Academic Writing and Publishing in Health & Social Sciences [2], which was published by Social Science Baha in Kathmandu in 2022.
References:
- Simkhada P, Dhimal, M, van Teijlingen E, Gyanwali P (2022) Nepal Urgently Needs a National Evidence Synthesis Centre, J Nepal Health Res Council, 20(3): i-ii.
- Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P.P., Hundley, V. with Shreesh, K. (Eds.) (2022) Academic Writing and Publishing in Health & Social Sciences, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Erasmus+ exchange visit to Nepal by Dr. Rebecca Neal
BU is currently in the process of renewing its MoA with MMIHS, to continue working together after the completion of the Erasmus+ programme. We aim to to maintain the partnership, as the BU-MMIHS collaboration includes various funded and unfunded research projects apart from the Erasmus+ programme.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Future of Complex Innovative Trial Design
The latest Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) publication on the last day of March is an editorial in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology. This editorial ‘The Promising Future for Complex Innovative Trial Design in Clinical Research’ has as its lead author, FHSS’s Visiting Faculty Dr. Brijesh Sathian.
Reference:
- Sathian, B., van Teijlingen, E., Banerjee, I., Asim, M., Kabir, R. (2023) The Promising Future for Complex Innovative Trial Design in Clinical Research. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, 13(1):1256-1257.
International Leisure Conference to be hosted at Bournemouth
The Department of Sport and Event Management and the Sport and Physical Activity Research Centre (SPARC) are hosting the Leisure Studies Association (LSA) Annual Conference between the 11th and 13th of July.
The conference, titled “Re-creating Leisure”, follows on from the successful 2015 LSA conference held at Bournemouth. Since then, global events have further and dramatically highlighted the significance of making sense of leisure in times of planetary upheaval. The conference will bring together an interdisciplinary field of researchers, educators, students, practitioners, and policymakers to share visions, expertise, and experiences to critically examine how leisure practices, spaces, and domains are theorised, researched, and experienced within this context.
The LSA conference plenary session topics will include Sustainability, Methodological Innovations, Health and Well-being, Placemaking, Leisure and Planetary Upheaval, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation.
The conference is being held at the Executive Business Centre, and will begin at 10 am on Tuesday 11 July and will consist of two and half days of conference programming with a closing lunch on Thursday 13 July. There will also be a comprehensive social programme.
The final call for papers will close on Friday 7 April – Further details can be found here
Book now – BU Research Conference 2023: Embracing Failure, Building Success
We all shy away from using the ‘F’ word – failure. But whether it’s a funding bid not being successful, a journal article being rejected, or findings not being as hoped, problems and setbacks are a normal part of the research journey. Understanding how to overcome and learn from these moments of ‘failure’ is key to a successful academic career.
The BU Research Conference is back for 2023 and this year’s event will explore the concept of failure in academia and building the resilience to learn from setbacks and overcome obstacles that may be in your path.
The conference will take place in the Fusion Building (Talbot Campus) on Wednesday 14 June, with a mix of inspirational speakers and practical workshops.
The day will run from 10am – 4.30pm, with lunch and refreshments included. It will be followed by a drinks reception to network with colleagues and chat to your peers about your own experiences.
We’re finalising the schedule but already have an exciting mix of internal and external speakers confirmed.
Our first keynote speaker for the conference will be Dr Jan Peters MBE. Jan is an engineer, consultant and campaigner for diversity and inclusion in STEM. A former president of the Women’s Engineering Society, her background is in materials research and hi-tech manufacturing, before helping academics build relationships with industry partners. In 2017 she was awarded an MBE for services to women and engineering and an honorary doctorate from Bournemouth University.
Jan’s talk, Embracing failure my way, will explore the impact of failure and how we each respond differently. And how, by knowing what drives us, we can harness our energy to bounce forwards.
BU’s very own Professor Ann Hemingway and Professor Sam Goodman will give the second conference keynote, Reckoning with Reviewer 2: Experiencing (and overcoming) Academic Rejection.
Closing the day will be Robert Seaborne, who founded Inside Academia – an online platform dedicated to positively changing the culture of mental health, wellbeing and mindset within academia.
Robert is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Copenhagen whose own experiences struggling with pressures and stressors during his PhD and early post-doc years had a big impact on his wellbeing.
Robert’s talk will delve into his personal reflections, the mental health landscape in academia and what tools and strategies could help equip us to navigate this journey more positively.
We’ll also have a range of practical workshops, covering topics including building resilience, repurposing failed funding applications, and improving writing practices.
We’ll be sharing more details over the coming weeks and months but you can book your place for the conference now via Eventbrite to be kept up-to-date with all the latest information.
Book your place
Anthropology Meets Criminology – special international guest lecture
The Centre for Seldom Heard Voices – Marginalisation and Societal Integration at FHSS will be hosting a special, international guest lecture by Professor Thomas Bierschenk of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany), titled Anthropology Meets Criminology: Policing as Practice of Categorization on Thursday, 23rd March, 15:00 to 17:00 at Lansdowne Campus. To register, please drop me a mail at sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk.
This talk will present selected results from research on how police officers and migrants, in a German context, translate between different languages and, further, between different normative ideas in these everyday interactions. By the act of translation, actors verbalize, negotiate, validate, and question such ideas and beliefs. While actors and media often understand ‘culture’ in these interactions as a pre-existing framework that determines or shapes interactional outcomes, the project asks how cultural difference in everyday police work is repeatedly produced, but also sometimes dissolved. Cultural difference is thus not examined as a determining factor of interaction, but as a possible, dynamic result of these interactions, alternatively to other categories of differentiation like gender and class. The focus is on innovative methodological approaches we used – role play, video recordings and team ethnography. The presentation will also briefly refer to the conflicts around a urban hot-spot which during summer 2021 was heavily frequented by young people, provoking neighbours to frequently call the police. It will end by pointing to a recent book publication (Policing race, ethnicity and culture. Perspectives across Europe, MUP 2023) which deals with these issues in more depth and breath.
Thomas Bierschenk is professor emeritus at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at the Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He has widely published on development, the state and bureaucracy in French-Speaking West Africa, and more recently on bureaucracy and policing in Germany. His many publications include, most prominently, the co-edited book States at Work. Dynamics of African Bureaucracies (2014) and the co-authored article How to study bureaucracies ethnographically (2019; see also video presentation). The co-edited book Policing Race, Ethnicity and Culture. Ethnographic Perspectives across Europe (Manchester University Press 2023) is just off the press.
Looking forward to seeing interested colleagues and PGR students there,
Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
(Associate Professor in Applied Anthropology)
sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk
A global health journal with a diverse editorial board
A recent study of 43 journals in the global health field found that PLOS Global Public Health has the joint highest diversity index, whilst also recording the maximum geographic diversity score! [1] The paper by a team from Pakistan and Canada addressed the question: “What is the current state of ethics of diversity and representation in global health publications?” In order to be able to answer this question they developed their own Journal Diversity Index (JDI) to measure three parameters of diversity and representation, namely gender, geographic & socioeconomic status.
The fact that PLOS Global Public Health came out top is good news for the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) as we published a paper in this journal last month. [2] Our qualitative paper ‘Perceptions around COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: A qualitative study in Kaski district, Western Nepal’ comprises 19 interviews in the city of Pokhara and its surrounding rural areas.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References:
- Manan, M.R., Nawaz, I., Rahman, S. et al. (2023). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on Editorial Boards of Global Health Journals. Asian Bioethics Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41649-023-00243-8
- Mahato P., Adhikari B., Marahatta S.B., Bhusal S., Kunwar K., Yadav R.K., Baral, S., Adhikari, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2023). Perceptions around COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: A qualitative study in Kaski district, Western Nepal. PLOS Global Public Health 3(2): e0000564. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000564
Establishing an evidence-based centre in Nepal
A team of Nepal and UK-based researchers are in the process of setting up a National Evidence Synthesis Centre under supervision of the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC). Recently, we published a paper [1] setting out our arguments on why such a centre is important for a low-income country like Nepal. This centre needs to be responsible for synthesizing evidence specifically relevant to Nepal, as well as producing actionable messages for evidence-informed decision-making.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (CMMPH)
&
Prof. Padam Simkhada, University of Huddersfield and Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University
References:
-
Simkhada, P., Dhimal, M., van Teijlingen, E., Gyanwali, P. (2022) Nepal Urgently Needs a National Evidence Synthesis Centre, Journal of Nepal Health Research Council, 20 (3): i-ii.
Applying FUSION in Bangladesh
Late in 2022 we started a new interdisciplinary study funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The research aims to reduce the deaths of newly-mobile toddlers from drowning in rural Bangladesh. This project called Sonamoni is being co-ordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Poole-based Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB).
In Bangladesh, drowning is the leading cause of death in children between one and two years old. This low-income country has one of the highest rates of drowning, especially among children in the world. The risk of drowning in rural areas is twice that in cities, because there are significant numbers of ponds and ditches, creating natural drowning hazards for very young children. CIPRB has implemented several effective drowning prevention solutions focused on children over the past 15 years, including a successful daycare model to keep young children safely away from water. However, enrollment and attendance rates for children under two years (those at the highest risk of accidental drowning) have been low.
The team will be working with communities to apply human-centred design techniques in Bangladesh. Together they will identify and prioritise potential solutions, develop prototype interventions, and assess the acceptability and usability of proposed interventions.
This research is an excellent example of BU’s FUSION. BU endeavours to bring together Research, Education and Practice to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. FUSION is central to our Bangladesh project, the Research is focusing on social sciences and public health, the Education is around health education of people in rural communities as well as training of the research team members, whilst Practice will be the outcome of the human-centred design approach, when we test the best interventions.
The £1.6m project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the NIHR through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website. NIHR uses aid from the UK government to support global health research.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)