Category / writing

BU academic listed on Research.com

Research.com, a leading academic platform for researchers, has just released its 2024 Edition of the Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities.  BU is listed as 509th globally.Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH), is the BU social scientist listed in this year’s ranking.  The full UK ranking is available here: research.com/scientists-rankings/social-sciences-and-humanities/gb and the full world ranking is available here: research.com/scientists-rankings/social-sciences-and-humanities

 

Congratulations to Social Workers Drs. Oliver & Harvey

Congratulations to Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Dr. Louise Oliver on the publication of their latest article ‘The use of poetry in form of haikus as a tool for critical reflection’ [1].  This latest academic publication has been published in Social Work Education The International Journal.  This interesting article focuses on critical reflection is an integral part of social work education and practice, yet it is widely understood to be hard to learn, teach, and assess. The authors introduced the use of poetry in the form of haikus to three different qualifying social work student groups to trial a creative way of getting students to engage in critical reflection. Ninety-six students took part in the reflection activity and 23 of the students agreed to take part in the research element, which used a mixed-methods approach to explore the value of haikus in critical reflection. Following the thematic network analysis process, we identified one global theme: that haikus were a useful tool for developing critical reflection. There were three organizing themes identified: the need to create a safe learning environment to support engagement; that taking part provoked reactions; and the activity held important elements that aided the development of critical reflection.

 

Well done !

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

Paper with 160,000 reads

Occasionally we have the pleasure to announce that one of our papers has been read 300 times or 2,000 times or has been cited 40 times.  However, some papers are in a different category.  Today ResearchGate informed us  that our 2002 paper ‘The Importance of Pilot Studies’ [1] has been read 160,000 times.  This paper was written over two decades ago and submitted to the Nursing Standard when we were both still at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

 

Profs. Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)

 

Reference:

  1. van Teijlingen, E, Hundley, V (2002) The Importance of Pilot Studies, Nursing Standard, 16(40):33-6

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