Category / Women’s Academic Network

Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering (WICGE) Network

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Panel discussion, launch of the WICGE network on 8 Mar 2016 (Sydney, Australia). From left to right: Professor Robin Davidson-Arnott (University of Guelph, Canada), Dr Luciana S. Esteves (Bournemouth University, UK), Dr Shari Gallop (Macquarie University, Australia) and Professor Julie Cairney (School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney).

I am very proud of being one of the founding members of the Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering (WICGE) network, officially launched on 8 March 2016 during the 14th International Coastal Symposium in Sydney, Australia. The idea to create WICGE was led by Dr Shari Gallop (Macquarie University, Australia) and Dr Ana Vila-Concejo (University of Sydney), who was also the first women to chair the International Coastal Symposium (the largest conference focused on coastal science). To join WICGE or just to find out more, please click here.

The event was attended by about 70 conference attendees (male and female as you can see in the photo) and it created an opportunity for the keynote (Prof Julie Cairney), the members of the discussion panel (named in the photo caption)  and attendees to shared their experiences. It was interesting to learn that members of the panel, including myself, expressed that they were not aware of gender inequalities and/or discrimination in their work environment at first. The reasons for this late realisation were varied, including a common feeling of ‘I thought I was the problem‘ or the simple acceptance that certain attitude towards woman was just ‘as always is‘. As Shari Gallop indicates in this blog about the WICGE launch, another contributing factor may be the fact that, in the academic environment, the imbalance greatly increases towards the more senior positions and is not as evident at early career stages.

Another common theme in the discussion was that we (men and women) are guilty of unconscious bias, a prejudice deep-rooted in long-established social behaviours, which are now increasingly questioned, but changing incredibly slowly.  Most people (and therefore our society) are stubbornly averse to change. Where and when change is required, it does not come easy; it takes huge effort and time to get the message across. Even when we understand the need for change, it may take a while until we are able to embed in our lives new ways of doing (or being). It becomes evident then the importance played by continuing and widening the open debate about diversity, equality and fairness to raise awareness and educating us all, especially about the little things we can do to make the big changes we need. And this is why we need WAN, WICGE , the Aurora Programme, Athena Swan and the growing number of initiatives aiming to promote equal opportunities and a fairer working environment for all of us.

Luciana S. Esteves, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Life & Environmental Sciences

NETNEP 6th International Nurse Education Conference, Brisbane

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Four academics, Dr Susan Way, Dr Vanessa Heaslip, Ashley Spriggs and Dr Dawn Morley, from FHSS are presenting papers at the Nurse Education Today / Nurse Education in Practice Conference this week, 3rd – 6th April, in Brisbane. The conference is recognised as a leading nurse education event where cutting edge research and innovation ideas from across the world are disseminated. This year the conference has been expanded for the first time to include Midwifery Education.

The title of Dr Susan Way’s presentation is, ‘Leading with a SMiLE: Exploring a student-led clinic, practice education model for educational impact and service improvement’. The Student Midwives integrated Learning Environment (SMiLE) offers an alternative, reliable and collaborative student-led clinic practice education model for equipping midwives of the future with the knowledge, skills and competencies they will need to provide safe and effective postnatal care, to mothers, babies and their families. Early service evaluation of the clinic suggests that students found it benefitted their learning, built their confidence and gave them opportunities to develop their postnatal skills. Peer learning and teamworking relationships were also improved.

Dr Vanessa Heaslip and Ashley Spriggs present their collaborative study entitled “humanising the interview process”; an evaluation of service user/carers contribution to value based recruitment in a pre-registration adult nursing programme. The mixed-method evaluation analysed the perspectives of differing stakeholders (Candidates, SU/Carers, Academics and Practice Partners) regarding the role SU/Carer engagement in Adult Nursing Pre-registration interviews. Early findings from candidates have highlighted they value the involvement of SU/Carers in the interview process, SU/Carers add a “human dimension” ensuring a focus on the heart of nursing and its value base rather than the role of nursing and associated nursing tasks.

Dr Dawn Morley’s presentation focuses on the ‘ebb and flow model of mentoring students in practice’. Twenty one first year student nurses interviewed were insightful as to how their practice learning experience could be improved on their first placement.

The findings of her research highlighted the importance of consistently working with an expert who could encapsulate the “whole” of professional practice but who could also question and coach students through their learning experiences. The research suggested that this was best achieved through an “ebb and flow” model of mentorship where student and mentor were constantly negotiating short term learning goals and opportunities together that accommodated the challenge of workforce demands. By working and learning in this organic manner students were party to the professional decision making and observation of qualified nurses and were educated to a critical decision making level from the earliest opportunity in their clinical practice.

Professor Steve Tees, Executive Dean of the Faculty was also at the Conference in his capacity as one of the Editors of Nurse Education Today journal.

GenPort – Gender issues in EU funding

Magnifying-GlassSerendipity can be a wonderful thing. 

Some months ago, I signed up for all the Horizon 2020-related groups that I could find on LinkedIn. Most of the time, the notifications I receive are of passing interest or not directly relevant but one received this week took my attention – it was notifying group members of an upcoming e-discussion of gender in climate actions within Horizon 2020 funding. One thing lead to another and, within a few clicks, I was signing up to join GenPort (which is funded by the European Union FP7-SCIENCE-IN-SOCIETY-2012-1 programme):

GenPORT is a community sourced internet portal for sharing knowledge and inspiring collaborative action on gender and science.GenPort

A developing online community of practitioners, policy-makers and researchers is served by the GenPORT portal, and made up of organisations and individuals working across the globe for gender equality and excellence in science, technology and innovation. This covers all sciences – natural and social sciences, and humanities.

The GenPORT community and internet portal provide an arena for organisations and individuals to showcase and act as a gateway to a wealth of research resources, policy information, practical materials, and much more. Constantly evolving online information and services are shaped by the activities and contributions of community members. The portal aims to facilitate the exchange of experiences and to foster collaboration, and so to support continuing policy and practical interventions in pursuit of gender equality.

GenPORT offers…

  • Searchable resources and online documents on the topics of gender, science, technology and innovation
  • Information and support in the development of gender-sensitive research design, and gender-equal research structures and processes
  • Links to relevant institutions, resource centres, large-scale databases, projects, and networks
  • Additional services to support diverse activities on gender and science – news and announcements, events calendars, reviews, discussion groups, and more.

It is important when bidding for European Commission funding to consider their cross-cutting issues – one of which is gender. GenPort has  over 700 items in their Resources section, which includes a link to the 2011 Toolkit Gender in EU-funded research. Although this guide was written for FP7, the examples of how you can embed this particular theme into your proposal are still relevant. Bringing this up to date for Horizon 2020, the paper For a better integration of the gender dimension in Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2016-2017 indicates how gender can be included to the enhancement of the research proposal.

The GenPort also contains links to further relevant groups, including the GENDER NET Net ERA-NET.

If you want to ensure that gender is addressed creatively within your EU proposal, GenPort appears to be a good place to start this journey and link with other like-minded researchers.

International Women’s Day

Please see below a programme of activity to mark International Women’s Day. The events are being undertaken in partnership with the Women’s Academic Network at BU.

Friday 4 March

lauraserrantTitle: Standing on the shoulders of giants: A career and life in health Speaker: Professor Laura Serrant PhD MA BA RGN PGCE QN Venue: BG10, Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus Time: 13:00-14:00

Tuesday 8 March

Title: Rising to the top: the reflections of a female chief constable Speaker: Chief Constable Debbie Simpson, Dorset Police Venue: Lees Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus Time: 11:30-12:30 debbie simpson

All events will be held at the Talbot and Lansdowne Campuses and are open to BU students, staff and the wider community.

‘Vulnerable Warriors: Counter-terrorism and the rise of Militarised Policing’ seminar by Dr Anna Feigenbaum and Daniel Weissman,

Dr Anna Feigenbaum

Daniel Weissman

2nd December 2015, Royal London House, R303, 1-1:50 pm

All staff and students welcome to the last Social Science seminar in 2015.

Abstract:

This paper seeks to better understand the cultural and material processes of police militarization and its relationship to security infrastructures and geo-political practices of social control. In this paper we trace the rise the ‘Warrior Cop’ through an analysis of changes in the circulation of advertisements of policing and policing products at security expose between the late 1990s and the present, taking our analysis up through the recent Paris attacks and the Milipol Security expo held days after.

This analysis is framed against the backdrop of existing research on the shift in the post-Cold War period from a security focus on the threat of the nation-state to the threat of insurgency and non-state actors. This period was characterized by national and transnational changes to policing: intelligence gathering and information sharing, as well as equipment supply and transfer and knowledge exchange around training and operations.

We begin this paper with an overview of the key shifts in the military and policing sectors that gave rise to the phenomenon of ‘Warrior Cops’. In contrast to dominant narratives of police militarisation that see power and tactics shift directly from the military to the police, we outline what we refer to as the militarization of security, a process through which not only the police, but also judicial and emergency response services, infrastructures, feelings and attitudes become transformed in ways that position the need for warriors against the threat of risky spaces and vulnerable bodies.

For any enquiries regarding the Social Science seminar series please contact Dr Mastoureh Fathi: mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

Talk by Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers cancelled

Unfortunately we are cancelling the talk: Ethnographies of Memory – the cultural reproduction of militancy in Kosovo by Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. We apologise for the late notice. This is because the Women Academic Network talk has been rescheduled this morning for the same time slot (see below). Dr Schwandner-Sievers will give her talk at a later date to avoid some people having to make a choice.

Polly Trenow (Fawcett Society)
‘Feminism in practice – does activism really work?’
Wednesday 18th November
TAG22
2-4pm (with networking 3-4pm)

For any questions, please get in touch with Dr Masi Fathi (mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Successful ESRC Festival of Social Sciences in EBC today

Slide1Slide2This afternoon Prof. Jonathan Parker introduced the final of three session in the Executive Business Centre under the title ‘Enhancing social life through global social research: Part 3. Social science research in diverse communities’.  This session was well attended and coveredwas a wide-range of interesting social science research topics.

Professor of Sociology Ann Brooks started off the session with her presentation on ‘Emotional labour and social change.’   She was followed by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen who gave an overview of research in Nepal.  FHSS PhD student Andy Harding introduced his thesis research into ‘Information provision and housing choices for older people.’  At this point Prof. Brooks gave her second talk on ‘Risk and the crisis of authenticity in cities’. Social Anthropologist Dr. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers spoke about her research on ‘Reconciliation and engaged ethnography in the Balkans.’  Dr. Hyun-Joo Lim highlighted her study on ‘North Korean defectors in the UK’ and the session was completed by Dr. Mastoureh Fathi who presented her analysis of parenting books for Muslim parents in the UK.

ESRC banner (2)

This was the last day of the ESRC Festival of Social Science at which Bournemouth University was extremely well presented!

 

Thank you to my colleagues for organising this and the ESRC for funding the events!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

(medical sociologist)

Inge Award 2015 received by Julia Round (CsJCC)

In March 2015 I received QR funding to attend the Popular Culture Association conference in New Orleans with colleagues from the CsJCC. This was a fantastic experience due to the scale and scope of this international conference. It is split into a number of strands and I found many that informed my research (Adaptation, Gothic, Children’s Literature – and, of course, Comics and Sequential Art).

I presented a paper on ‘Revenant Landscapes in The Walking Dead’ as part of the Comics and Sequential Art strand. This argued against the perception that comics can be treated as ‘storyboards’ for adaptations, and offered a deeper analysis of the way space works on the page and screen. I was delighted to hear last month that it was awarded the 2015 Inge Award for Comics Scholarship, given to the best paper in this strand. This award is judged anonymously and has been given to a number of extremely influential scholars in the past (including Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg, Jr, Amy Kiste Nyberg and Mel Gibson), so I am extremely happy and grateful for the support I have received from the CsJCC and BU, without which this would not have been possible.

Full paper available at www.academia.edu and via BRIAN

Full paper available at www.academia.edu and via BRIAN

 

Congratulations to Prof. Brooks

BU Professor Ann Brooks has been made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).

  Ann Brooks

Ann Brooks is Professor of Sociology at Bournemouth University since January 2015. Ann has held senior positions in universities in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand and has held visiting fellowships and scholarships in Singapore and the USA. She was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Health and Community at Plymouth University in 2014 and was previously a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Academic Women (Open University Press, 1997); Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (Routledge, 1997); Gender and the Restructured University (Open University Press, 2001); Gendered Work in Asian Cities: The New Economy and Changing Labour Markets (Ashgate, 2006); Social Theory in Contemporary Asia (Routledge, 2010); Gender, Emotions and Labour Markets: Asian and Western Perspectives (Routledge, 2011) and Emotions in Transmigration: Transformation, Movement and Identity (Palgrave 2012) (with Ruth Simpson). Recent books include: Consumption, Cities and States: Comparing Singapore with Cities in Asia and the West (Anthem Press, 2014) (with Lionel Wee); Popular Culture, Global Intercultural Perspectives (Palgrave, 2014); and Emotions and Social Change: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, New York, 2014) (edited with David Lemmings). Her latest book is: Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies and Desire: Theories of Changes in Emotional Regimes from Medieval Society to Late Modernity (2016 Routledge, New York).

Further information on this year’s new Fellows can be found here!

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

American Sociological Association Annual Conference in Chicago, Puts Romance, Internet Dating and Relationships Center-Stage

By Professor Ann Brooks

The American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Conference in August, set against the stunning backdrop of the city of Chicago and Lake Ontario, and the socio-cultural earthquakes of Ashley Madison and the political challenges of Donald Trump proved to be even more dynamic than usual. The theme this year was Sexualities in the Social World and attracted hundreds of iconic figures from the sociological world and global sociologists more generally. Iconic figures such as Sasskia Sassen, Sylvia Walby, Anne Swidler, Eva Illouz, Judy Wajcman, Eric Kleinenberg, Robert Sampson, Lynne Jamieson and many many more ….. a veritable whos who in the contemporary world of sociology, presented and contributed enormously to this major conference in sociology.

sexualities in the social world

Plenary sessions included: The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage: Public Opinion and the Courts; Modern Romance: Dating, Mating and Marriage; The Rise of Nonmarital Births; Internet Dating; Abortion in America; and in addition a huge range of Presidental (ASA) Panels included : Birth Control in America; Women on the Battlefield: Integrating Women into the U.S. Military; Aging and Sexuality; Cohabitation; and many many more.

I chose sessions to reinforce the new undergraduate course I am offering in Sem 2, 2015-6 entitled Love and Intimacy in Contemporary Society and these major Plenary sessions did not disappoint. In fact they turned out to be real highpoints of the conference. A packed Saturday evening Plenary Panel entitled Romance Matters included Eric Kleinenberg (NYU), Azis Ansari (Comedian, Author, and TV Presenter), Helen Fisher (Rutgers, psychotherapist and Consultant to match.com), Christain Rudder (Ok Cupid) and Eli Finkel (Northwestern) enthralled the audience with serious and amusing presentations. This was followed by the signing of the Anzari and Kleinenberg new book …Romance Matters. I have to say the students will really enjoy this bringing together of research and teaching.

ASA Eric Kleinenberg       ASA Keynote Modern Romanceaziz

 

I convened a session on Gender, Sexuality and Work with 5 excellent papers, many of which are being published within books or journals.

The Presidential address by Paula England looked at the Changing Nature of Sexuality and and a further Presidential Panel looked at the advantages and disadvantages of Internet Dating also as an evening Keynote panel.

ASA Presidential addressASA Internet Dating

A truly inspiring conference with significant relevance for my new BU course. Thank you BU and HSS for supporting this.

Professor Ann Brooks September 7, 2015

Women Innovators – EU Prize

Are you or do you know a Woman Innovator?

innovation_591With the EU Prize for Women Innovators, the European Commission wants to give public recognition to outstanding women entrepreneurs who brought their innovative ideas to the market. The aim is to inspire other women to follow in their footsteps.

After two successful editions in 2011 and 2014, the European Commission has launched the third edition of the prize.

Three prizes will be awarded in Spring 2016:

  • 1st prize: €100 000
  • 2nd prize: €50 000
  • 3rd prize: €30 000

Contestants will be able to submit their entries until 20 October 2015 (12:00 – Brussels time).

An independent panel of judges from business and academia will select the three winners who will be announced in 2016.

Who can participate in the contest?

The contest is open to all women who have founded or co-founded their company and who have at some point of their careers benefitted from the EU’s research framework programmes, the EURATOM Framework Programme, the Competitiveness and Innovation framework programme (CIP) or actions relating to research and innovation under the European Structural and Investment Funds (known as the Structural Funds prior to 2014).

The contestant must reside in an EU Member State or a country associated to Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation programme.

The company must have been registered before 1 January 2013 and have had an annual turnover of at least EUR 100 000 in 2013 or 2014.

Apply via the website

The Midwifery quilt online- URA scheme funded project

As part of my EdD thesis on ‘The essence of the art of a midwife..’ http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16560/    I created a reflexive textile quilt, with each of the squares representing an entry in my research diary. Whenever I have been to conferences with my quilt the question has always been asked ‘what do the squares mean’? Though I anticipate that anyone looking at it will gather their own interpretation of the squares my stories behind them are now accessible online. In the spring of this year I applied, and was pleased to receive, funding from the BU Undergraduate research assistantship scheme in order to create a web site for the quilt. For the past six weeks George Upson undergraduate student from the BA (Hons) Media Production course has been active in designing and creating the web site with me and learning about the world of academia in a small way. I am indebted to him for his creative abilities and to Garratt Lynch and Richard Wallis for their early support in the process, and also for the URA scheme!

The Midwifery quilt maybe accessed here http://www.midwiferyquilt.co.uk/

Dr Jenny Hall