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Finance – London under threat

One of the City of London’s main lobby groups, TheCityUK, has warned that London’s position as a leading global financial centre is under threat without reforms to tax and labour rules. The group has published a new international strategy that seeks to return the UK to being the world’s leading international financial centre within five years.

The strategy underlines the need to strengthen market share in existing areas of advantage, such as FinTech. It also calls for the UK to build its capabilities in future areas of global growth where the UK has a competitive advantage, such as data, global ESG markets and risk management.

It says that delivering the strategy will create more high-skilled, high-value UK jobs, and attract more foreign direct investment into businesses in all sectors across the UK. It will put the UK at the forefront of innovation and position the UK as a leader in financing the green economy.

Recommendations

  • Developing new global markets around key areas of future global demand, including becoming a global hub for data and technology by championing common ground rules for digital trade and seek targeted data transfer agreements.
  • Positioning the UK at the heart of global ESG markets, partnering with other countries to create global ESG disclosure standards and more interoperability of ESG taxonomies.
  • Strengthening the UK’s role as a gateway through which global investors can channel funds to businesses across the UK and growth markets around the world.
  • Helping the UK to become the world leader in risk management and in developing alternative risk transfer instruments.
  • Attracting the world’s talent by making visas cheaper and quicker to process.
  • Strengthening capital markets by adopting the recommendations of Lord Hill’s review.
  • Boosting foreign direct investment by amending the tax regime for the financial services sector.
  • Adopting a more agile and dynamic regulatory approach.
  • Supporting UK law’s effectiveness and competitiveness and positioning the UK as a global centre for commercial legal services.
  • Helping the UK remain at the forefront of financial technology and innovation.
  • Liberalising trade with developed markets and emerging markets, with a focus on agreements that support services.
  • Securing international recognition for UK qualifications and improving labour mobility, strong market access and investment protection provisions.

Miles Celic, CEO of TheCityUK, said: “The UK’s financial and related professional services industry is a strategic national asset which provides millions of high-value jobs right across the country, attracts inward investment, contributes significant tax revenue and generates large export surpluses. Being host to the world’s leading financial centre provides large and widespread economic benefit to the UK – which is why there is no shortage of competitors seeking to grow their own financial centres.

“One of the greatest risks for any successful financial centre is complacency. Europe is littered with cities that were once the leading international centre of their day. The last decade has been one of growth for our industry, yet global competitors have grown faster. However, with the right strategy in place and a clear focus on delivery, the UK can pull away once again from its competitors. It is an ambition that needs industry, government, and regulators to work together. It will take sustained focus, cooperation and determination.”

The full strategy is available here.

This summary was prepared for BU by Dods.

Reminder: Funding Development Briefing Today – Wellcome Trust Spotlight

Funding opportunities

Reminder: The RDS Funding Development Briefing spotlight will be today at 12 noon. The spotlight will be on the Wellcome Trust’s new funding schemes.

We will cover:

  • Overview of the new schemes
  • How to apply
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend, the session will be recorded and shared on Brightspace here.

Invites for these sessions have been disseminated via your Heads of Department.

Postgraduate Research Department Reps

PG research

 

 

 

The application and election process for new PGR Department Reps for 2021-22 will start later this month. If you are a PGR and would like to find out more about being a PGR Rep why not speak to your current department rep.

Details on the application and election process will be circulated later this month, in the meantime you may wish to have a read through the information flyer.

Dr. Ann Luce at Mental Health Academy Suicide Prevention Summit

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, NHS, REF Subjects

Dr. Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication in FMC is keynoting at the Mental Health Academy Suicide Prevention Summit on Saturday, 11th September in honour of World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10th).

In partnership with the British Psychological Society (BPS), the summit aims to equip practicing mental health professionals with the most up-to-date, advanced knowledge and treatment options on suicide prevention.

With suicide rates amongst medical professionals some of the highest in the UK, Dr. Luce will share early findings from her most recent research here in Dorset on how suicide is stigmatised amongst mental health professionals, the attitudes and barriers to seeking help within mental healthcare Trusts and what Trusts need to do to make the workplace safer for mental health staff.

Launched | Doctoral College Researcher Development Programme

PG research, Student Engagement, Training


I am delighted to share with you all that sessions as part of the 2021-22 Doctoral College Researcher Development Programme for Postgraduate Researchers are now available to book.

PGRs can book onto sessions via the Doctoral College Researcher Development Programme on Brightspace. All sessions between October-December are delivered online.

If you are a PGR or PGR Supervisor and unable to access the Researcher Development Programme on Brightspace, please let us know and we will get you added.

Email Natalie and Debbie at: pgrskillsdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk.

 

NERC standard grants NEW internal competition launched

Funding opportunities

NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures available here: I:\RDS\Public\NERC Demand Management.

As at January 2021, BU has been capped at one application per standard grant round. The measures only apply to NERC standard grants (including new investigators). An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.

BU process

BU has a new and improved process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Standard Grant round. This takes the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available standard grant round is January 2022. The deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 24 September 2021.  The EoI form, BU policy for NERC Demand Management Measures and process for selecting an application can be found here: I:\RDS\Public\NERC Demand Management.

Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RDS, and will work closely with Research Facilitators and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Access to external bid writers will also be available.

RDS Contacts

Please contact Ehren Milner, RDS Research Facilitator – emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.

BU hosting Free Webinar on VR Games for Stroke Rehabilitation

As a part of EU Interreg Project AiBle, Bournemouth University is running this workshop webinar on VR Games for Stroke Rehabilitation on Thursday 16th September 2021 from 1-4.30 pm, see further details below:

https://www.euaible.com/event/vr-games-for-stroke-rehabilitation-workshop-webinar/

The workshop objective is to create a discussion platform on intersections between the fields of rehabilitation, robotics, and human-computer/robot interaction. We have host of international experts as speakers for this event. Please register for this Webinar at the link below if you are interested to attend.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/eu-interreg-aible-vr-games-for-stroke-rehabilitation-workshop-webinar-registration-163487905727

Discovery of the minesweeper HMS MERCURY

A shipwreck in the middle of the Southern Irish Sea, previously thought to be that of a submarine, has now been identified as the minesweeper, HMS Mercury.

The discovery has been made as part of a joint project between Maritime Archaeologists at Bournemouth University and scientists at Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences, who have been combining marine archives with high-resolution multibeam sonar data to try and identify many of the unknown wreck sites located off our coast.

Originally built as a Clyde-based ferry, HMS Mercury was requisitioned by the Admiralty in 1939 to serve as minesweeper. It sank in 1940 after being damaged by a mine that it was attempting to clear and was reported lost off Southern Ireland.

As part of the ongoing research programme Dr Innes McCartney of Bournemouth University has been compiling detailed lists of all ships lost in the Irish Sea:

“The wreck site was assumed to be the final resting place of a submarine. Once the sonar data had been processed, the wreck resembled a paddle wheeled vessel with its paddles boxed into the vessel’s superstructure, rather than the characteristic tube-like profile associated with submarine wrecks. Within our database of shipping losses there was only one possible candidate which featured boxed in paddle wheels; the minesweeper HMS Mercury”

Originally named Mercury II the ship was built in 1934 for the London Midland Scottish Railway and was an excursion passenger steamer which primarily worked the Greenock, Gourock and Wemyss Bay route. The ship was a 223ft long paddle steamer and recognisable by having newer innovations such as its boxed in paddles and a cruiser stern, with its sister Caledonia II, it gave good service up 1939, when it was subsequently requisitioned for war service as a minesweeper.

The official list of losses of naval vessels in WW2 states that HMS Mercury was “sunk after damage by own mine south of Ireland”. In fact, research at the National Archives revealed that the incident initially occurred off the Saltee Islands, Southern Ireland when at 4.30 in the afternoon on Christmas Day 1940, HMS Mercury was sweeping up an older British minefield. Initially unknown to Mercury, a mine was snagged in its sweeping gear and whilst trying to clear it, the mine was drawn too close to the ship, where it exploded under the stern. Still afloat and with hopes high of saving the ship, HMS Mercury was then towed towards Milford Haven but unfortunately after around 2 hours, the cable parted under the strain of the slowly flooding ship. Despite the determined efforts of the crew to save her, the vessel sank vertically, stern first at around 8.30 in the evening, thankfully the entire crew were subsequently rescued.

Temporary Lieutenant Bertrand Palmer who was in command of HMS Mercury was eventually reprimanded after a court martial which found that he had acted contrary to standing orders in stopping the ship and not immediately making headway once the mine had been sighted.

Mercury’s sister ship Caledonia II served throughout WW2 as HMS Goatfell, after which it returned to service. When sold in 1971, it was bought by the Bass Charrington Group and served as a popular floating pub on the river Thames before suffering a fire in 1980.

HMS Mercury is just one of over 300 shipwrecks in the Irish Sea which have been surveyed by Bangor University’s research vessel Prince Madog using their state-of-the-art mutibeam sonar system and through this unique collaboration with Bournemouth University, the identification of each site and subsequent link to a specific historic event continues to evolve and will be published when complete as Dr McCartney’s Leverhulme Trust funded fellowship “Echoes from the Deep: Modern Reflections on our Maritime Past”.

Dr Innes McCartney: ‘This highly innovative research project has resulted in many new discoveries dating from both world wars, of which HMS Mercury is just one example. This new collaboration with Bangor University demonstrates the substantial benefits that can be obtained through combining scientific survey with maritime archives and illustrates how this can be used as a powerful and effective research tool that can significantly enhance our understanding of the historic maritime environment by allowing us to identify unknown wrecks, refine existing attributes and confirm vessel identities.’

Dr Michael Roberts from Bangor University who led the multibeam surveys: ‘Having access to our research vessel Prince Madog and use of one of the most advanced multibeam sonar systems available has enabled us to very efficiently and accurately survey almost every wreck site in the central Irish Sea. Obtaining high-resolution sonar data from all these sites has been crucial to the research process and we hope this work and collaboration with Bournemouth demonstrates the importance of having these valuable assets available to us here at Bangor. These sunken vessels represent the sacrifices and efforts of citizens who were the ‘key’ and ‘essential’ workers of their time and it’s important that the final resting place of the vessels they were associated with are identified before it’s too late.  We hope to secure additional funding to expand on this work and examine wrecks in other UK coastal regions before their remnants become unidentifiable due to degradation through natural marine processes.’

For more information about archaeology at Bournemouth University, visit the course pages of the BU website. 

Funding Development Briefing – Spotlight on the new Wellcome Trust funding programmes

Funding opportunities

The RDS Funding Development Briefings occur weekly, on a Wednesday at 12 noon.

Each session covers the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Some sessions also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU.

Wednesday 8th September 2021, there will be a spotlight on Wellcome Trust’s new funding schemes.

We will cover:

  • Overview of the new schemes
  • How to apply
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend, the session will be recorded and shared on Brightspace here.

Invites for these sessions have been disseminated via your Heads of Department.

Funding Development Briefings are back!

Funding opportunities

Funding Development Briefings are back from 8th September 2021.

What are Funding Development Briefings?

Each session will cover the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Sessions will also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU. The timetable for the next eleven weeks is below.
Date Spotlight Funding Opportunity
08/09/21 Wellcome Trust
15/09/21 ERC Starting Grants
22/09/21 Innovate UK SMART Grants
29/09/21 BA Small Grants
06/10/21 NERC Knowledge Exchanged Fellowships (subject to change)
13/10/21 NIHR RfPB
20/10/21 Ideas session
27/10/21 UKRO (tentative option)
03/11/21 BA Newton Advanced Fellowships
10/11/21 NIHR Fellowships
17/11/21 UKRO (tentative option)

Sessions will be recorded and made available after the session for those who cannot attend.

Dr. Ann Luce to present at Public Health/NHS South West Regional Summit

conferences, Knowledge Exchange, NHS

Dr. Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication in FMC will present at the Public Health England and NHS England South West Regional Suicide Prevention Summit tomorrow, 3rd September in honour of World Suicide Prevention Day which is on 10th September.

Dr. Luce will be presenting with Kirsty Hillier, Head of Communications for Dorset’s Integrated Care System on the communication and media strategy she created for the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group, Public Health Dorset and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council to de-escalate a cluster of suicides at a local railway station in Bournemouth in 2019-2020.

The paper, “Online and Social Media: supporting communities to respond to suspected clusters” will cover how the strategy contributed to the saving of 20 lives between October and December 2019, led to the creation of five active working groups within the multi-agency partnership: 1. Real Time Surveillance and Suicide Attempts group, 2. Communication and Media group, 3. Suicide Bereavement group, 4. High Intensity Presenters group and 5. Training group, and also de-escalated the cluster by June 2020. The paper will also discuss the importance of educating and training local MPs, Councillors, Media and Community on the responsible way to discuss suicide in face-to-face conversations as well as online.

The work is being hailed as best practice by Public Health England and NHS England and is being disseminated across the country via Integrated Care Systems and the regional summits.

Final call for participants: Leverhulme Trust face recognition study

In the first week of the March 2019 COVID-19 lockdown, I found out that I had been awarded a Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust. The core research project on the grant seeks to understand how humans learn facial identities over time, and why some people (who have a condition known as “face blindness” or “prosopagnosia”) struggle with this task.

The project is particularly novel and ambitious because it seeks to emulate real-world face learning, which occurs during multiple social interactions with a person, extended over time. In contrast, most work to date has looked at face learning during a single session. Further, our methodology is necessarily laboratory-based, using eye-movement technology to track the progression of learning over time. Both repeat-testing and face-to-face testing are by no means conducive to the onset of a pandemic!

After several obvious delays to the project, we finally began testing at the beginning of July this year. With some novel obstacles to overcome amid the new COVID-19 risk assessments, it has nevertheless been an absolute pleasure to be back in the labs, meeting and testing participants. In fact, the new regulations pushed me back into the lab and the more hands-on aspects of research – not only have I enjoyed every minute of it but it has also made me reflect on the benefits of being more involved in this phase of the research cycle.

Because the project requires participants to visit the lab on five consecutive days (for approximately 50 minutes per day), there were moments where I thought the ambition in this project was too great for the current climate. We have certainly been interrupted by COVID and test and trace on several occasions! But thanks to the generosity and resilience of our participants and two exceptional student research assistants, we are coming close to our target sample size. This is in no small part thanks to the BU community, where we sourced the vast majority of our participants, and to whom we are extremely grateful.

We are now entering our last few weeks of data collection, before it is time to analyse the data and deliver the project outcomes to the Leverhulme Trust. If you can help us achieve this goal and are happy to take part in the study we would be delighted to hear from you. We are seeking Caucasian participants aged 30-59 years who can visit us on five consecutive days (evenings and weekends are available) in Poole House (Talbot Campus). We also award a £50 Amazon voucher to thank you for your time! We would be delighted to hear from anyone regardless of their face recognition ability – we still need a few more control participants, those with face blindness, and super-recognisers! You can contact me by email (sbate@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you are willing to take part, and please do feel free to share the opportunity both within and outside of BU.

Many thanks for reading this post, and I look forward to reporting the findings of the study in due course.

NIHR Research Design Service – Starting Research Workshop

Guidance, NHS, Training

Please see below for the following training opportunity:

Date: 15 September 2021
Time: 09:15-13:30
Location: Online

Funded and hosted by the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) South Central, discover how to move from thinking about doing research to taking your first steps in the getting support, dedicated time and funding to actually do it. Sign up to the workshop on Eventbrite.

Health Research Authority’s new student research eligibility criteria – live from today

Guidance, NHS, Research Ethics, student research

New eligibility criteria for standalone student research go live today (1 September 2021). These changes are designed to ensure that students’ experience of research reflects how modern health and social care research is conducted.

This new criteria encourages innovative approaches to student research like group research, mock Research Ethics Committees (REC) or shadowing a range of people in an existing project.

The changes mean some master’s students will now be eligible to apply for approval to carry out their research.

To help students plan their research we have created a new student research toolkit. The toolkit has been designed to pull together the resources a student will need to understand what approvals are required and whether they are eligible to carry out their research in the UK.  It contains links to existing decision tools as well as some new ones developed especially for students. It uses a simple question and answer format and will provide answers to the following questions:

  • Is my study research?
  • Is my research taking place in the NHS and will it need NHS approval?
  • Do I need NHS REC review?
  • What type of NHS ethics review do I need?
  • Can I carry out my research?

Completing the tool will provide students with an understanding of what activities they can do and ensures that they do not waste time applying for approval for research that they are not able to carry out under the new student eligibility criteria. Through completion of the toolkit, students can access supplementary declarations that need to be completed by their academic supervisor, confirming that they meet the criteria for the type of approvals they need for their research. There are three separate declarations depending on the approvals needed – the toolkit guides the student to the right one based on their responses.

Please share this update and new resource with colleagues and students who might benefit. Further details about the new eligibility criteria can be found on the HRA website.

Please see our question and answer section for further information. If you have any other queries about the eligibility criteria, please contact queries@hra.nhs.uk.

Please contact Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor in RDS if you have any queries or concerns.