Category / Women’s Academic Network

Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering (WICGE) Network

international, Women's Academic 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

international, student research, Women's Academic Network

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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.

‘Voices of the Secret State’: Seminar presentation by Dr Hyun Joo Lim, 16th March, Studeland House, Room S206, 13:00-13:50

Awarded & submitted bids, BRIAN, BU Challenges, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Coffee Morning, conferences, Funding opportunities, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Grants Academy, Knowledge Transfer, Publishing, R & KE Operations, Research assessment, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Research themes, Women's Academic Network

All staff and students welcome. Please feel free to bring your lunch.

 

Voices of the Secret State: Human Rights Activism among North Korean

Defectors in the UK

 

Abstract: My paper aims to highlight the lived experiences and identity formation of North Korean defectors settled in the UK who are involved in human rights activism. Whilst violations of human rights in North Korea are well documented, human rights activism by its defectors is less well known. Since 2004, approximately 600 North Koreans have settled in the UK. Free NK, a human rights organisation born out of this settlement, has been active in illuminating the reality of North Korea whilst also working towards subverting the regime by informing its fellow remainders about the outside world through the distribution of newspapers. This paper is drawn from ongoing research on North Korean defectors living in the UK. The data is collected using life history interviews to capture their lived experiences and to identify a range of factors which have influenced their involvement in the activism whilst also seeking to find better ways of improving the wellbeing and quality of life for those activists. The presentation will focus on the in-depth story of a North Korean defector who has founded Free NK. Themes that will be addressed in this story include the reason why he has fled North Korea; the processes of getting to the UK; challenges he has faced in his human rights activism.
Dr Hyun-Joo Lim is a lecturer in Sociology and the programme leader for BA Sociology and Social Policy at BU. She is originally from South Korea and has been engaged in various research projects that explore issues around migration, ‘race’/ethnicity, gender and identity. Her previous research examined East Asian mothers in Britain.

For more information about Social Science seminar series please get in touch with Dr Mastoureh Fathi (mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

GenPort – Gender issues in EU funding

BU Challenges, Women's Academic Network

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

Women's Academic Network

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,

conferences, Fusion, Knowledge Exchange, student research, Women's Academic Network

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

conferences, Fusion, PG research, Research Ethics, Women's Academic Network

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

Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, PG research, student research, Women's Academic Network

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)

Women's Academic Network

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

Women's Academic Network

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