Category / writing

Fifteen years at BU

Fifteen years ago I started as a professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences.  I have had three different job titles without moving jobs, starting in 2009 with ‘Professor of Maternal & Perinatal Health Research’, which, after a few years, changed to ‘Professor of Reproductive Health Research,’ and again then a few years later dropping the ‘Research’ to my current title of ‘Professor of Reproductive Health’.  During these 15 years there have been major changes especially in terms of research in our Faculty.  There has been a growth in quantity as well as quality as reflected in our REF scores in 2014 and 2021!  We also have a much higher proportion of staff with a PhD then when I started.  Currently, I am the Research Culture Champion for our Faculty, tasked with a small team to strengthen our research culture and profile even further.

At a personal level, I have supervised 17 PhD students to completion at BU in the past 15 years, plus an additional nine students registered elsewhere.  The latter were mainly PhD students from the University of Aberdeen whom I continued to supervise.  Interestingly, two of these Aberdeen PhD students ended up working for BU.  I counted 42 PhD viva as external examiner in this period as well as five as internal BU examiner.  Some of my experiences at BU were captured last year when I was interviewed by the editors of a sociology journal based in Nepal. [1]

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMWH (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health)

 

References:

  1. Subedi, M., & Khattri, M. B. (2023). Interview with Professor Edwin van Teijlingen. Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology17(01), 79–88. https://doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v17i01.61149

RKEDF: ECRN – The Conversation Media Training

 

 

 

Are you an academic, researcher or PhD candidate who would like to build a media profile and take your research to a global public audience by writing for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists. It is an open access, independent media charity funded by more than 80 UK and European universities.

In this interactive session we’ll take you through what The Conversation is – our origins and aims; what we do and why.

We’ll look at why you should communicate your research to the public and take you through The Conversation’s unique, collaborative editorial process.

We’ll give you tips on style, tone and structure (with examples), look at how to pitch (with examples) and look at different approaches and article types.

You will have the opportunity to discuss your research with a Conversation editor and pitch potential story ideas.

*Note the session takes place on Zoom and we expect you to turn your camera on.

Benefits of attending

  • Find out how to join a community of academic authors taking their expertise outside the institution
  • Understand what makes a good story and the types of articles your expertise could generate
  • Learn the skills of journalistic writing and how to make your writing accessible and engaging to a diverse general audience
  • Meet one of The Conversation’s editors and learn how we commission articles

To get the most out of your time with the editor, come prepared:

  • Read some articles on The Conversation to get a sense of what we publish
  • Think about the sort of pieces you might potentially write, what aspects of your research might interest people, and come armed with ideas.

Book your place here 

There are a limited number of places for this session. If you sign up and then are no longer able to attend, please cancel your registration so that your place can be re-allocated to a colleague on the waiting list.

Congratulation on new interdisciplinary publication

Congratulation to Dr. Orlanda Harvey (Social Work), Dr. Terri Cole (Psychology) and Dr. Jane Healy (Criminology) who in collaboration with Jade Levell, a colleague at the University of Bristol, had their article ‘Explorations of attitudes towards accessibility and accessing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) perpetrator support programmes by victim-survivors and perpetrators across five European countries’ accepted by the journal Abuse: An International Impact Journal [1].  This paper reports on an international mixed-methods study exploring victim-survivors and perpetrators’ attitudes towards perpetrator support programmes. The study includes a questionnaire survey of victim-survivors and interviews with male perpetrators conducted in five European countries.

Results showed that of the 93 victim-survivors of domestic violence and abuse, half stated they would have stayed in their relationship with perpetrators if the abuse had stopped, and a similar number reported that they believed their relationships would have been different had there been help for the perpetrator. Analysis of perpetrator interviews showed that they faced barriers to obtaining support, such as being labelled a ‘perpetrator’ which, had they been addressed, may have enhanced their engagement with services. Whilst acknowledging the need for safeguarding and justice, this paper demonstrates the importance of reflecting both victim-survivor and perpetrator needs in order for perpetrators to fully engage with support services. Moreover, it highlighted the need to address the underlying societal issues related to hegemonic masculinity, which can lead to the abuse of women being normalised and the vulnerability of men being stigmatised, through education for young people around healthy relationships.

 

Congratulations

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Reference:

Harvey H.,  Cole T., Levell, J., Healy J. (2024) ‘Explorations of attitudes towards accessibility and accessing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) perpetrator support programmes by victim-survivors and perpetrators across five European countries’Abuse: An International Impact Journal 5(1): 26-45    https://doi.org/10.37576/abuse.2024.055

RKEDF: Writing Academy 18th/19th/20th June 2024

Day 1 – Writing for Publication Workshop – 18 June 2024, 10am-4pm

This workshop covers a range of strategies: targeting a journal, writing to prompts, types of prompt for academic writing, ‘snack’ writing, goal-setting for writing, freewriting, generative writing, analysing academic writing in your field, criteria, writing an abstract, using prompts in series, outlining, dealing with reviewers’ feedback, writing groups, micro-groups and retreats. Many of these can be used to prepare for a concentrated spell of writing at a writing retreat – which follows tomorrow. This is a practical workshop. The aim of the writing activities in this workshop is to let you try these strategies and consider how/if/where/when they could fit into your writing practice. You can use these to write for your article during the workshop, and you have a day’s writing to develop it tomorrow.

Day 2 – Writing Retreat – 19 June, 9am-4pm

Aims – To provide dedicated writing time and develop productive writing practices.

Format

This structured retreat uses the ‘typing pool’ model. We all write at the same time, for fixed time slots, using goal-setting and peer and self-monitoring for our individual writing projects. Because we all write together, we can discuss our goals at the start and end of the day (10-15 minutes). Almost all the retreat time is writing time, with regular breaks.

Learning objectives

1. Understand the Structured Writing Retreat model.

2. Structure a writing day.

3. Maintain well-being during intensive periods of writing.

Day 3 – Free Writing Day

An in-person writing day. Lunch will be provided.

 

Book your place here under ‘Writing Academy’ – 18/06/2024 to 20/06/2024’ in the drop-down menu.

For any queries regarding this workshop, please contact RKE Development Framework

 

Editorial accepted by Frontiers in Public Health

As part of the special issue in Frontiers in Public Health on ‘Evidence-based approaches in Aging and Public Health’ the guest editors included 15 academic papers.  These 15 contributions to the Special Issue were introduced in placed in perspective in our editorial ‘Editorial: Evidence-based approaches in Aging and Public Health[1] which was accepted for publication two days ago.   The guest editors included two Visiting Faculty to FHSS: Prof. Padam Simkhada and Dr. Brijesh Sathian.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)

Reference:

  1. Sathian, B., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Kabir, R., Al Hamad, H. (2024) Editorial: Evidence-based approaches in Aging and Public Health, Frontier in Public Health 12 2024 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1391432

It’s only a name…

Yesterday my co-author Dr. Orlanda Harvey received an email from a sociology journal informing her that “The below co-author name is not matching with the separate title page provided and in the submission. If Van is the middle name please update the name in the author’s account.  Name in separate title page appears as Prof Edwin van Teijlingen….Name in site appears as vanTeijlingen, EdwinPlease address the above issue before resubmitting the manuscript.”

If you have an odd name in English you will have to get used to this kind of misunderstanding.  This is the second time this is happening when submitting a paper this month!   Interestingly with a different variant of my name.  A migration and health journal  argued to me co-author that my name on ORCID was ‘Edwin van Teijlingen’ but on Scopus ‘van Teijlingen, Edwin Roland’.  the journal then asked that we change it.

To add more example on the inflexibility of online systems, my greatest surprise a few years ago was that I could not add my Dutch family name ‘van Teijlingen’ with a small ‘v’ on the online booking web pages of the Dutch airline KLM.

What’s In A Name? A name is but a name, and to quote Shakespeare: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

 

New article by BU Social Work academics

Congratulations to Drs. Louise Oliver and Orlanda Harvey  who had their latest article published in the British Association of Social Workers magazine. The article is titled: The seven-eyed social worker: a tool for critical self-reflection”. This article is about how a supervision model, developed by Hawkins and Shohet, which focuses upon the relationship between the service user/client and the social worker. The two BU academics noted that “This model supports critical reflection, delving into the use of self when working with others. It promotes professional curiosity, which is at the heart of critical reflection”. This gives an alternative lens and approach to social work practice.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Congratulations to Prof. Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Congratulations to Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Professor of Social and Cultural Diversity, on the publication of her latest book An Historiography of Women’s Missionary Nursing Through the Lives of Two Sisters: Doing the Lord’s work in Kenya and South India (published by Routledge).

This book employs both ethnographic and secondary, archival data, drawing on a rich, fascinating trove of original material from the pre-1940s to the present day.  It offers a unique historiographic study of twentieth century Methodist missionary work and women’s active expression of faith, practised at the critical confluence of historical and global changes. The study focuses on two English Methodist missionary nursing Sisters and siblings, Audrey and Muriel Chalkely, whose words and experiences are captured in detail, foregrounding tumultuous socio-political changes of the end of Empire and post-Independence in twentieth century Kenya and South India.

This work presents a timely revision to prevailing postcolonial critiques in placing the fundamental importance of human relationships centre stage. Offering a detailed (auto)biographical and reflective narrative, this ‘herstory’ pivots on three main thematic strands relating to peopleplace and passion, where socio-cultural details are vividly explored. 

This book pays tribute to our former colleague, Professor Fran Biley.  As part of a wider oral history project entitled “Memories of Nursing” Fran Biley interviewed two British sisters who had retired to the South of England.  The two sisters, Muriel and Audrey, followed very similar missionary career paths in two different former British colonies.  Two sisters spent a total of 54 years working as Methodist missionaries in India and Kenya, one as a nurse, the other as a midwife.  Fran collected over 10 hours of interview data, as well as old videos, a suitcase of 35mm slides, albums full of old photographs, letters and personal papers from the two sisters.   Unfortunately, Fran died far too young in November 2012, before the rich data could be analysed.  Sara conducted further extensive interviews with Muriel and others who knew them, as well as undertaking a huge detective hunt to find a considerable amount of secondary data pertaining to the sisters and other Methodist missionaries across UK archives.  I am glad to be able to report that  Dr Muriel Chalkley, whose life is portrayed in the book, received an Honorary Doctorate from Bournemouth University in recognition of her services to nursing.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’ Health (CMWH)

 

Writing some blurb

Publisher Routledge announced the forthcoming edited volume Menstruation in Nepal: Dignity Without Danger, which is edited by Sara ParkerMadhusudan Subedi and Kay Standing. This book examines the complexities of menstrual beliefs and practices in Nepal. Taking an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach, it explores and promotes the rights of women, girls and people who menstruate, to a dignified and healthy menstruation.  I had the honour of being asked to write some of the blurb for this exciting book.  Partly, because of our wide-range of health services and health promotion research in the country and partly because of our previous paper on reusable sanitary towels in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal [1].

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

Reference:

  1. Budhathoki, S.S., Bhattachan, M., Pokharel, P.K., Bhadra, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Reusable sanitary towels: Promoting menstrual hygiene in post-earthquake Nepal. Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 43(2): 157-159.

Collaborative midwifery paper cited 40 times

Two days ago ResearchGate informed us that that the paper ‘Midwifery-led antenatal care models: mapping a systematic review to an evidence-based quality framework to identify key components and characteristics of care‘ has reached 40 citations.  This paper, co-authored by Bournemouth University’s Professors Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen, was originally published in 2016 in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth [1]. Both Vanora and Edwin are based in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH) in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences.

The same team wrote a separate paper the following year on ‘Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review and taxonomy development of care models’ [2].  Interestingly, ResearchGate tells us this paper has been read fewer times and cited ‘only’ 21 times to date.

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:

  1. Symon, A., Pringle, J, Cheyne, H, Downe, S., Hundley, V, Lee, E, Lynn, F., McFadden, A, McNeill, J., Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H, Alderdice, F. (2016) Midwifery-led antenatal care models: Mapping a systematic review to evidence-based quality framework to identify key components & characteristics of care, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16:168 http://rdcu.be/uifu
  2. Symon, A., Pringle, J., Downe, S, Hundley, V., Lee, E., Lynn, F, McFadden, A, McNeill, J, Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H., Alderdice, F. (2017) Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review & taxonomy development of care models BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 17:8 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-1186-3