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Call for Topic Specialists

Wanted: topic specialists for a new social impact observatory

The International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO) is a new collaboration of UK academic institutions and other global networks, established to help policymakers throughout the UK address the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

IPPO is now seeking to develop a network of topic specialists who can advise on, review and author IPPO’s various content streams – ranging from blogs and ‘rapid answers’ to in-depth evidence briefs and systematic reviews.

If you wish to join the IPPO topic specialist network, or sign up for its newsletter and other communications, colleagues should fill in this short survey  by 30 April.

New Select Committee Inquiries

Select committee inquiries launched since 1 March:  

Covid-19 and the criminal law | Justice Committee | Deadline for evidence submission: Friday 9th April 2021

Local government and the path to net zero | Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee | Deadline for evidence submission: Friday 30th April 2021

Tech and the future of UK foreign policy | Foreign Affairs Committee | Deadline for evidence submission: Tuesday 11th May 2021

Armed Forces Bill 2019 – 21| Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill | Deadline for evidence submission: Sunday 21st March 2021  

Role of batteries and fuel cells in achieving Net Zero | Science and Technology Committee (Lords) | Deadline for evidence submission: Monday 29th March 2021  

Concussion in sport | Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee | Deadline for evidence submission: Tuesday 30th March 2021  

Long term funding of adult social care | Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee | Deadline for evidence submission: 16th April 2021 

More inquiries: all inquiries currently accepting evidence are found here. 

Why should I engage? Submitting evidence to a select committee can lead to further engagement, such as an invite to give oral evidence. Your submission will be published on the Committee webpage. Your insights may inform the Committee’s conclusions or recommendations it makes to the Government. Find out more about why to engage with Parliament here. And find more on engagement for impact here. 

Support: Please engage with BU’s policy team before submitting evidence to a select committee. We can provide guidance and templates for colleagues who are new to responding to inquiries and we read through a substantial draft before all colleagues submit their response. Contact us – policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

Clinical Governance RKEDF sessions

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

As part of the RKEDF Academics and Researchers can book onto the following sessions, either as a one-to-one meeting or a bespoke team session:

Please contact Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor if you are interested in any of these sessions.

Graduation: End of an Era

international, PG research, student research

Four PhD students, whom I had the pleasure of supervising, graduated yesterday with a Ph.D.  I never had so many Ph.D. students graduating at the same time.  Not all of these four students started at the same time.  Moreover, two I was invited as a supervisor after the student had started, and for most I was not the lead/first supervisor .  All four students have an internationally focused thesis:

Alice Ladur with her Ph.D. focusing on: Male involvement in facilitating the uptake of maternal health services by women in Uganda.

Peter Wolfensberger with his Ph.D.: Creating meaning- Understanding the experiences of people living with mental illness in Switzerland- A Qualitative Study.

Shaqaieq AShrafi Dost with her thesis: Factors that affect the management capacity, leadership and employee performance in the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), Afghanistan: A single embedded single-case study.

Orlanda Harvey with her Ph.D. study under the title: Male anabolic androgenic steroid-users: A mixed-methods study -The voice of the AAS-user.

Orlanda is a good ambassador for Bournemouth University’s PhD Integrated Thesis.  The newly introduced Integrated Thesis allows Ph.D. candidates to incorporate papers in their thesis (e.g. instead of a chapter).  Papers can be included that have been published or submitted for publication to an academic peer-reviewed journal. As the first BU student to submit an Integrated Thesis Orlanda paved the way with BU library staff to sort out the finer details around, for example, copyright issues and thesis formatting (https://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2020/08/27/supporting-integrated-theses-at-bu/ ).

In this COVID-19 year the graduation was on ZOOM, something I didn’t think would work as well as it did.   I love the British-style graduation with the big audience, the ceremony, the gowns, the band, etc.  In previous years I had always looked forward to ceremony in the BIC, the Bournemouth International Centre.  This year because it was on ZOOM the event was smaller, shorter and more personal.  This offered the opportunity to talk to students and colleagues which is otherwise nearly impossible in the hustle and bustle of thousands of people in the BIC.

Being a graduation it is also the end of an era for the student and the supervisor, and the beginning of a new one.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)

NEW for 2021! PGR Success Stories

PG research

NEW for 2021! Promoting research culture at BU and celebrating postgraduate researcher achievements, the Doctoral College are collating PGR student stories as PGRs complete their PhD, MRes, MPhil, EdD, EngD and DProf studies. These are a few recent inspiring stories, to be updated regularly from across the faculties. If you have a story to share after you receive your award, please get in touch doctoralcollege@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU Research Matters: What support is on offer internally and growing capacity at BU- part 3

Following on from yesterday’s blog post on the support on offer for research applications for external funding, this post will focus on what’s available from internal funding, and how all the support on offer grows research capacity at BU.

Research Funding Panels: To help us further develop our research capacity in line with BU2025, the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC) oversees research investment and performance. Under the auspices of the RPMC, Funding Panels have been established to have oversight of funding allocations, in order to further build the research environment, our external engagement and the quality and impact of research endeavours. There are seven funding panels and future calls will be released on the BU intranet. You can find out more information about each panel here, including previous funded projects. The panels include the extensive Research Impact Programme.

Strategic Investment Areas: As articulated within BU2025, our Strategic Investment Areas (SIAs) build on our existing academic strengths and future opportunities aligned to external priorities, including policy direction and funding. The four Strategic Investment Areas are:

  • Assistive Technology
  • Animation, Simulation & Visualisation
  • Medical Science
  • Sustainability, Low Carbon Technology & Materials Science.

Each SIA has an academic steering group and are supported by External Advisory Boards, made up of experts from industry and the not-for-profit sector, to ensure our research activities are informed by wider society. The purpose of these groups is to ensure that we align internal and external resources appropriately to secure the growth of BU’s research profile. All of our SIAs are inherently interdisciplinary and build on existing excellence within the University. You can find out more here, including the opportunities available to get involved and who to contact.

Stop Press: An open call for expressions of interest will go out on the BU intranet this week. The University are seeking to identify game changing research ideas and enable these to become a reality. Keep your eyes out for the launch of the call!

STEAMLabs: These offer the opportunity to meet new people from all disciplines and sectors, and to spend dedicated time developing novel ideas for research projects. We will select topics for STEAMLabs and advertise these for participants. For example, each year we run a STEAMLab for each of the four SIAs. These seek to come up with highly innovative and urgently required research which is ambitious in scope and will require a high level of expertise, commitment and funding. The research must address challenges in the topics advertised. As a result of each STEAMLab, we anticipate the development of innovative, ground-breaking and ambitious projects which have the capacity to attract significant, high value funding from the public and private sectors.

STEAMLabs used to be an all day event, in person, but we’ve amended them to online and for two hours duration. You can see here the details of the last event held in February on the SIA for Animation, Simulation & Visualisation. Check the blog for the next events coming up shortly. These will be for the remaining SIAs, Global Challenges and Industrial Challenges and will take place in April – July 2021.

Open Access Publication Fund: BU operates a dedicated central Open Access Publication Fund (OAPF). The BU Open Access Publication Fund policy and procedure has recently been reviewed and revised to reflect changes to this year’s budget. The newly revised policy and checklist can be found here.  BU now also benefit from various Open Access agreements through JISC deals including with publishers like Wiley, Sage and Springer. Please see the recent blog post, including the relevant links to publishers.

RDS: I mentioned in the two previous posts the support on offer from Research Facilitators for bid development. In addition, RDS have several faculty-facing staff (an overview and contacts are here) and areas of expertise that can support you in your research activities. The latter include:

  • Research Commercialisation Manager – Lesley Hutchins, whose overarching role is the exploitation of BU’s research IP for commercialisation and societal benefit
  • Engagement and Impact Facilitator – Genna Del Rosa and Engagement Officer – Adam Morris – support academics to develop research impact with external stakeholders. This includes supporting public engagement events, and working with academic colleagues to develop engagement strategies to enhance funding bids, and supporting colleagues to deliver and evidence impact.
  • Knowledge Exchange Adviser – Rachel Clarke has a focus on Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) and the HEIF.
  • Research Outputs Adviser – Pengpeng Hatch, who works with academic colleagues to increase output volume, quality and impact, and for championing open access publishing across the institution.
  • Research Governance Adviser – Sarah Bell and Clinical Governance Adviser – Suzy Wignall – are all things ethics and governance.

Growing research capacity at BU: Research is a key component of Fusion and plays a critical role in the achievement of our BU2025 outcomes to help us achieve our vision of inspiring learning, advancing knowledge and enriching society. In this context, BU2025 set out ambitious plans and targets for research at BU.

As Julie Northam said in her blog post on why BU research matters, research is a priority for BU. It is central to our institutional strategy and ethos and it is fundamental to Fusion. Our research capacity has grown considerably over the past few years. More staff are now engaging actively in research, as demonstrated through the proportion of staff submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This has increased from less than a third of staff (REF 2014) to over three quarters of staff (REF 2021). We have invested in the Strategic Investment Areas and new institutes (such as the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, IMSET and the Institute for Medical Imaging and Visualisation, IMIV) to bring research to life through programmes of research and collaborative, multidisciplinary research teams. We are applying for and winning longer and larger research projects with more being sent to the prestigious funders.

This weeks posts have outlined the support on offer to BU staff to develop their research activities, regardless of career stage, showing the commitment of the university to grow capacity and build on the excellent work of our ECRs through to the excellent Leadership of our Professors, ensuring research is inclusive to all. The posts have also highlighted the extent to which support is on offer for interdisciplinary work, especially through the opportunities shown above in today’s post.

This weeks three part posts have been a snapshot of what’s available to support you in your research as a BU staff member. Do contact RDS to find out more about how we can support you in your research career. Working together, we can continue to grow research at BU.

HEIF Small Fund Reminder: First Application Round Closes Wednesday 17 March

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, HEIF, innovation, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

The first round for applications closes on Wednesday 17 March.

Bournemouth University has a small amount of funding available to facilitate and enhance research and development collaboration with external partners.

The purpose of the funding is to:

  • Enhance external collaborative engagements with industry partners to further the development of innovative projects
  • Increase the amount of available funds for research undertaken collaboratively with external partners to patent innovations, enhance technology readiness levels and/or commercialisation
  • Encourage future funding bids (such as from Innovate UK) with external partners

There is flexibility in the way that the fund can be used, provided that a strong case can be made, and the assessment criteria are met. Funding could be used in various ways, for example for consumables, staff, and for travel/events/meetings, where restrictions allow.

All funding will need to be spent by 31 July 2021.

Eligibility/What we can fund

The HEIF Small Fund is open to all researchers across Bournemouth University, including those who are already working with industry partners and those who would like to build up new networks. In particular, the panel would welcome the following types of applications:

  • Projects of up to £5,000 which will either facilitate new relationships with external partners or build on existing research collaborations with external partners, support initial prototyping, project/product feasibility and/or market research.
  • Subject to the lifting of current restrictions, small travel grants of up to £500 to help facilitate relationship development with organisations. This could be travelling to potential partner sites or networking/funding briefing events Please note, the HEIF Funding Panel will not fund applications relating to conferences.

Due to the nature of this fund, we particularly welcome applications;

  • from Early Career Researchers (ECRs)
  • that incorporate social sciences and humanities
  • that demonstrate research interdisciplinarity

In line with BU2025, we will positively encourage applications from under-represented groups.

Application process

To apply, please read the guidance and complete the application form

Applications must be submitted to heif@bournemouth.ac.uk

Applications will be reviewed by the HEIF Funding Panel (see Panel Information below), with recommendations submitted to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC) monthly. Once a decision has been made, this will be communicated to applicants. We aim to confirm the outcomes within two to three weeks of the closing date for that month.

The closing dates for each monthly assessment are as follows:

  • Wednesday 17 March
  • Wednesday 14 April
  • Wednesday 12 May
  • Wednesday 16 June

BU’s Funding Panels and Research Principles

The following funding panels operate to prioritise applications for funding and make recommendations to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC).

There are eight funding panels:

  1. HEIF Funding Panel
  2. GCRF Funding Panel
  3. Research Impact Funding Panel
  4. Doctoral Studentship Funding Panel
  5. ACORN Funding Panel
  6. Research Fellowships Funding Panel
  7. Charity Impact Funding Panel
  8. SIA Funding panel

These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles

The following BU2025 Principles are most relevant to the HEIF Panel:

  • Principle 1 – which recognises the need to develop teams
  • Principle 5 – which sets of the context for such funding panels

If you have any questions please email heif@bournemouth.ac.uk

Conversation article: Coronavirus one year on: two countries that got it right, and three that got it wrong

On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 public health emergency had become a pandemic: 114 countries were affected, there were 121,500 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 people had succumbed to the virus.

One year on, we have now seen 115 million confirmed cases globally and more than 2.5 million deaths from COVID-19.

“Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly,” said the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on that day in 2020. But in the year since that announcement, the fates of many countries have depended on how leaders have chosen their words.

The impact of the pandemic was unprecedented and all governments faced challenges dealing with a severe but highly unpredictable threat to the lives of their citizens. And some governments responded better than others.

My colleagues and I recently carried out a comparative study of how 27 countries responded to the emergence of the virus and first wave, and how they communicated that response to their citizens.

We invited national experts to analyse their government’s communication style, the flow of information on coronavirus and the actions taken by civil society, mapping these responses onto the numbers of cases and deaths in the country in question. Our work reveals contrasting responses that reflect a nation’s internal politics, suggesting that a government’s handling of the pandemic was embedded in existing patterns of leadership.

Read more of our coverage of the first anniversary of the pandemic:

COVID-19: how to deal with a year of accumulated burnout from working at home

Pandemic babies: how COVID-19 has affected child development

With news of the spread of COVID-19 flowing across international borders, domestic preventative measures needed to be explained carefully. The WHO proved ill-equipped, provided equivocal and flawed advice regarding international travel, even from Hubei province, and equivocated on the efficacy of wearing masks. So much came down to how individual leaders communicated with their citizens about the risks they faced.

Experts in crisis management and social psychologists emphasise the importance of clarity and empathy in communicating during a health emergency.

So who did well and who missed the mark?

South Korea and Ghana

We found two major examples of this style of communication working well in practice. South Korea avoided a lockdown due to clearly communicating the threat of COVID-19 as early as January, encouraging the wearing of masks (which were common previously within the nation in response to an earlier Sars epidemic) and quickly rolling out a contact-tracing app.

Each change in official alert level, accompanied by new advice regarding social contact, was carefully communicated by Jung Eun-Kyung, the head of the country’s Centre for Disease Control, who used changes in her own life to demonstrate how new guidance should work in practice.

A graph showing coronavirus case numbers for the UK, Brazil, India, South Korea and Ghana
Our World in Data, CC BY

The transparency of this approach was echoed in the communication style of the Ghanaian president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Akufo-Addo took responsibility for coronavirus policy and explained carefully each measure required, being honest about the challenges the nation faced. Simple demonstrations of empathy earned him acclaim within his nation and also around the world.

“We know how to bring the economy back to life. What we don’t know is how to bring people back to life,” he famously said.

Brazil, the UK and India

South Korea and Ghana adopted a consistent tone highlighting the risks of the new pandemic and how they could be mitigated. Nations that fared less well encouraged complacency and gave out inconsistent messages about the threat of COVID-19.

In March 2020, just three weeks prior to placing the country under lockdown and catching COVID-19 himself, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson downplayed the threat, and said he had been shaking hands with infected people, against the recommendations of his expert advisers. Today, the UK has one of the highest per capita death rates from COVID in the world.

Avoiding a full initial lockdown, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – who also contracted COVID-19 – called for normality to continue, challenging expert guidance and polarising opinion along partisan lines. Such practices led Brazilians to mistrust the official information and spread of misinformation, while adhering to containment measures became an ideological, rather than a public health, question.

Meanwhile, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced a snap lockdown with just four hours notice, which caused an internal migration crisis, with poor labourers leaving cities to walk hundreds or thousands of miles to their rural homes. Understandably, the labourers prioritised their fears of homelessness and starvation over the risk of spreading COVID-19 around the country.

None of these responses effectively considered the impact that coronavirus would have on society, or that credibility is earned through consistency. The poor outcomes in each case are a partial reflection of these leadership mistakes.

Bad luck or bad judgement?

Of course, the unfolding of the pandemic was not solely down to good or bad communication from leaders. Health systems and demographics may also have played a role, and the worst impacted nations not only had strategic weaknesses but are also global transport hubs and popular destinations – London, New York, Paris and so on. With hindsight, closing borders would have been wise, despite the contrary advice from the World Health Organization.

Still, it’s evident that leaders who adopted clear, early, expert-led, coherent and empathic guidance fared well in terms of their standing with the public and were able to mitigate the worst effects of the virus.

On the other hand, those who politicised the virus, exhibited unrestrained optimism or took to last-minute decision-making oversaw some of the nations with the most cases and deaths.

Darren Lilleker, Professor of Political Communication, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Funding Development Briefing – Spotlight on: Horizon Europe Work Programmes

Funding opportunities

The RDS Funding Development Briefings now 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.

Next Wednesday 17th March, there will be a spotlight on Horizon Europe – work programmes Health, Culture and Security

We will cover:

  • Overview of Horizon Europe Work Programmes for Heath, Culture and Security
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend, the session will be recorded and shared on the Teams site under the ‘Files’ section, and also saved on the I Drive at I:\RDS\Public\Funding Pipeline\Funding Development Briefings.

Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the Teams invite for these sessions.

 

BU Research Matters: What support is on offer for bid/publication writing and how to access it- part 2

Funding opportunities

Following on from yesterday’s blog post on the support on offer for research training and development at different career stages, this post will focus on writing and developing research applications for external funding and publications.

Horizon Scanning and finding funder opportunities: The Research Facilitators within RDS will horizon scan research funders’ strategic agendas and potential funding opportunities to ensure that BU are ready to respond to these opportunities, maximising BU’s chance of success. We provide information on the latest news from funders’ and government through blog posts, workshops and direct contact with you.

The Research Facilitators regularly send targeted funding opportunities to each Head of Department for dissemination. All Academics will have a Research Professional account, which enables personalised searches for new funding opportunities. You can also find the latest funding opportunities, targeted by RDS, on the left-hand side of the BU Research Blog homepage, together with a red button ‘view current funding opportunities’, which will take you to the latest opportunities from major funders (please note that whilst off campus you will need to follow the link shown to Research Professional in order to access the page).

Funder Briefing events: The Research Facilitators also run weekly funder briefing sessions which anyone can join. Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the MSTeams invite for these sessions. Sessions are recorded and so for those who can’t make the interactive session, you can view them here when convenient to you. The next one is being held on 10th March at 12 noon and is a spotlight on NIHR funding.

Bid writing support: In addition to the training and development on offer, we also have one-to-one support available connected to bid writing. The Research Facilitators within RDS offer one-to-one support to ECRs and those applying for high values to major funders. In addition, we have External Application Reviewers (EARs) who can help support the development of research applications that meet the following criteria:

  • The application is to a prestigious funder (UK research councils, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, Royal Society, NIHR and EU Horizon 2020/Europe)
  • The application is to a strategically important funding call, including those in the BU2025 Strategic Investment Areas
  • NERC Standard Grants
  • One-off calls for multi-million pound bids (such as AHRC’s Creative Clusters Programme)
  • The applicant is a past member of the BU Research Council Development Scheme and is applying to a UK Research Council call
  • The applicant is an ECR and is applying to a prestigious funder

Your Research Facilitator will be able to discuss your needs and approval for an EAR will be considered and awarded by RDS.

Writing academy: The Writing Academy will enable you to develop the skills required to improve the quantity and quality of your publications and to develop a publication strategy which best represents you as an academic. The academy is a great opportunity for academics who are new to publishing or would benefit from some additional direction and coaching. You’ll have access to an external consultant who will advise you on techniques and style. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your ideas and issues with your peers. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your publishing goals and prepare a plan to accommodate writing within your day to day routines.

The next dates for the WA are 13th – 16th April 2021. You can book on here (apologies, but the page isn’t live just yet but will be shortly). In the meantime, contact OD@bournemouth.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.

Tomorrow’s post will focus on the internal funding support available to you, as well as how all the support on offer grows capacity and inclusivity at BU.

BU Research Matters: What support is on offer for your career stage and how to access it- part 1

Following on from the excellent articles detailing why BU research matters, and the experiences of our academics (big thank you to those who posted articles last week), this week will see a series of posts  outlining the support on offer to BU academics to progress their research activities and how to access that support.

It’s been a challenging year, with many opportunities for development being postponed or delivered online, with the latter losing that ability to make a real connection and interact with peers to form relationships that can lead to collaborative and long-term research opportunities. However, there is still much on offer to support research careers, at all levels, and we’re learning (from some slightly torturous experiences) how to ensure that online delivery is just as engaging as face-to-face. One of the things we’re changing is the delivery of the RDS induction for new academics and researchers. You can sign up here to attend the next induction being held on 19th May 2021.

RKEDF: The Research Development and Support (RDS) team have a range of development and support options available to BU academics. The majority of these are badged under the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF). You can click on the link above to see the range of opportunities available. These cover all research interests and various career stage events. The range of support includes applying to major funders (pathways for Research Councils, International funders (includes EU), charities, academies, and NIHR), how to apply, how to manage your award, how to build a team, impact, publishing, REF, and various options for research career based training.

For a quick overview of what’s coming up, you can click on OD’s calendar of events for the latest development opportunities. The RKEDF events currently run until the end of June 2021 but we are planning a new programme to start from September 2021. Each event listed in the above links will have an online booking process (if a date is given for an event). There are currently events for public engagement, impact, publications, search strategies, and the monthly events run as part of the Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN). Where no dates are given, these may be past events, but we’ll be looking at options for the academic year 21/22 and advertise these from August.

Presentations and support documentation from past events can be found on Brightspace. Just click on ‘content’ and ‘pathways’ and navigate to the pathway that is of interest to you. The right-hand page will show you what’s on offer. As an example, clicking on the ‘research council’ pathway will show presentations from funders who have visited BU, such as AHRC and MRC, an overview of the research councils, how to approach your case for support, confronting your unsuccessful bid, and videos of funder briefings, such as the UKRI’s Future Leader Fellowships scheme. Do have a browse to see what might be of interest to you and help support you in your research activities. If you have trouble accessing the content then please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Career stage development: As part of the RKEDF, the Academic Career Pathway to Research Funding identifies what type of external funding you should be aiming for depending on your level of career.  This covers Student, Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professor, and Professor.  Each of the funding types identified link up to the training and development on offer through the RKEDF. You can view what’s been provided in the past and expectations to what will be on offer for 2021/22. When developing your research plans for the year, three years and even five years, do consider what type of grant will be suitable for you at your career stage and work with your faculty mentor to realise your plans. You can also consult an RDS Research Facilitator who can discuss plans with you and direct you to the right support including the funder briefings that are on offer weekly (see part two tomorrow for further details).

Early Career Researchers Network: As mentioned above, the ECRN, run by academics for academics, offers monthly sessions for ECRs on a range of topics. Chaired by Professor Ann Hemingway (FHSS) and Dr Sam Goodman (FMC), sessions are held for general discussions, networking, and specific topics to support early career researchers. Still to come in 20/21 is:

  • 24/03/2021 General discussion and ECR surgery (15.00 – 16.00)
  • 21/04/2021 Building your Research Profile / Networking, Partnership & Collaboration (15.00 – 16.00)
  • 26/05/2021 Writing Day / Networking Lunch (09:30 – 16:30)
  • 26/05/2021 Networking Lunch only (12:30 – 13:30)
  • 23/06/2021 General discussion and ECR surgery (15.00 – 16.00)

If you’d like to join the network, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can read an article by Dr Rachel Arnold on the benefits of attending the ECRN.

I hope the above has provided a useful outline of the general support that is on offer to you as a BU academic and signposted you to how to get involved. Tomorrow’s post will focus on support for writing and developing research applications for external funding and publications.

Ask the Experts – Briefing on COVID-19

The Parliamentary & Scientific Committee are holding an Ask the Experts briefing on COVID-19 on Monday 15 March from  5.30pm to 7.00pm on Zoom – organised jointly by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.

This briefing event is the next in a series of ‘ask the experts’ online briefings and Q&A sessions on COVID-19 organised for Parliamentarians by the National Academies.

As all four nations of the UK begin to ease restrictions, this session will bring together a panel of experts who can answer your questions about:

  • New variants of COVID-19 and our ability to respond to them
    Professor Judith Breuer FMedSci, Director of Infection and Immunity, Professor of Virology at UCL, who sits on the BSI immunology advisory group  
  • Vaccine passports
    Professor Melinda Mills MBE: Fellow of the British Academy, Director, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford & Nuffield College and co-author of Twelve criteria for the development and use of COVID-19 vaccine passports 
  • How we can make spaces COVID-safe and the limitations of this
    Dr Shaun Fitzgerald FREng Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in Sustainable Buildings at the University of Cambridge and member of the SAGE Environmental Working Group
  • Long COVID
    Professor Charles Bangham FMedSci FRS: Professor of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine; Co-Director of the Institute of Infection, Imperial College London

    The event is free for BU colleagues. Please contact policy@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out how to book your place.

 

Other Forthcoming  Meetings and Events 

Monday 12th April 2021 at 5.30pm, Online 

The UK National Quantum Programme  

In partnership with Innovate UK 

 

Monday 7th June 2021, at 5.30pm, Online  

Natural Capital Initiative  

 

Monday 5th July 2021,  at 5.30pm, Online  

Climate Change    

In partnership with the  Met Office    

 

NIHR RDS Researcher Roadshow – health and social care datasets

 

 

 

NIHR Research Design Service are pleased to offer the opportunity to attend the next in its series of ‘Researcher Road Shows’ – Using health and social care datasets in research: Practical advice to support your research journey. 

This event is taking place via Zoom and is aimed at all those seeking practical guidance on how to find, access and gain approvals to use health datasets, including early career researchers:

Monday 15 March, 10am to 2.30pm: ‘Lifting the Lid on Data – Meet the Data Custodians’

  • HQIP Datasets & top tips for accessing (Yvonne Silove)
  • NHS Digital Datasets & top tips for accessing (Garry Coleman)
  • Morning event close and details of this afternoon (Martin Williams)
  • GP Data (Kathryn Salt)
  • COVID-19 Data (Richard Irvine)

Wednesday 17 March, 10am to 2.30pm: ‘Navigating the system’

  • Research Approvals for Data-Driven Research (Alex Bailey)
  • Introducing the Innovation Gateway – the journey so far (Paola Quattroni & Peggy Barthes-Streit)
  • Recent Changes in Health Data Governance (Alex Bailey)
  • Innovation Gateway working session: from data discovery to access (Susheel Varma)

Find out more.

Your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU)

We can help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.

Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice

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BU project explores potential power of constructive journalism in Covid-19 aftermath

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the news media have played an instrumental role in providing the latest updates and information. An increasing number of people, however, have sometimes avoided the news, finding negative coverage has a detrimental effect on their mood and wellbeing.

A new collaborative project will explore how constructive journalism – also known as solutions journalism – can increase audience engagement and empower communities to tackle the problems they face in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Constructive journalism breaks from traditional journalism’s focus on reporting social problems to also feature how people respond to problems, in order to help audiences to feel more motivated, inspired and empowered to deal with challenges.

Early evidence shows that this style of journalism also leads to greater engagement, with articles read more deeply and shared more widely.

The project is being undertaken by Bournemouth University (BU) in conjunction with Newsquest, one of the UK’s largest publishers of local and regional newspapers, with training and consultancy provided by the US-based Solutions Journalism Network, and the Association of British Science Writers.

Dr An Nguyen, Associate Professor of Journalism at BU, is leading the project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the UK Research and Innovation’s Covid-19 rapid-response research scheme.

He said: “Traditionally, due to their professional dedication to the watchdog role in monitoring and holding powers to account, journalists focus disproportionately on social problems and pay inadequate attention to the ways to solve problems.

“Over time, it has become a bit too much of ‘doom and gloom’ news, which can lead to many people becoming mentally fatigued, desensitised or feeling helpless or powerless, because they can’t see a way out or don’t know how they could take action.

“Constructive journalism does not shy away from the crucial watchdog function but aims to offer a balance, moving away from focusing on problems to also exploring how problems are tackled and solved.”

Dr Nguyen added that the pandemic offered an opportunity to deploy constructive journalism in a large scale to help the UK’s local and regional communities and investigate the potential of constructive journalism in helping the public to deal with the social issues of our time.

“People will face a lot of problems during the transition out of lockdown and will try to find ways to limit the damages and adapt to the ‘new normal’,” he said.

“There is an increasing recognition among news industry that constructive journalism can be valuable. This project is an opportunity to test this concept in the context of one of the biggest issues the world is facing and see whether journalism can help people.”

Journalists across the UK, including journalism students, will receive training to produce constructive journalism through series of online training webinars. About 50 of them will then be mentored on a one-to-one basis by journalists with experience in constructive journalism to produce solutions-focused news for Newsquest’s local and regional titles.

It is hoped that at least 1,000 pieces of constructive journalism will be produced in relation to Covid-19 recovery during this campaign. A new professional network of UK constructive journalists will also be established and launched at the end of the project.

A research team in BU’s Department of Communication and Journalism will conduct in-depth interviews, surveys and experiments with local news audiences, including community leaders, to investigate how solutions-focused news can affect the mental health and wellbeing of the public, as well as civic engagement.

“We are trying to explore what type of constructive journalism would work, what sort of effects it has on audiences and how it might or might not help them to be more optimistic, motivated, inspired or empowered to take actions,” said Dr Nguyen.

The team will also conduct a detailed analysis of the solutions-focused news output from the campaign as well as interview the mentored journalists and their editors about their experience.

Dr Nguyen said: “We’ll look at the content output and see what sort of reporting techniques are used, what are effective and how they engage people throughout the post-lockdown stage of the pandemic.

“We will feed our research findings back to the participating news outlets so that they are informed of the effect of their campaign and, where necessary, what might be done to improve things.”

Conversation article: Three ways to ensure ‘wellness’ tourism provides a post-pandemic opportunity for the travel industry

The effects of COVID-19 vaccination programmes have led to a glimmer of hope that some of the things we used to enjoy may soon be part of our lives once again. High on many people’s priority lists will be foreign travel.

In the UK, the official declaration of a “roadmap” to normality was quickly followed by a surge in online bookings for flights and holidays. This is a welcome development for one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic. It is good news for countries that depend on tourism, and it is undoubtedly good news for people who are desperate to get away.

Importantly, it is also a step towards an end to the uncertainty and isolation that in 2020 led to warnings of a global mental health crisis.

The pandemic also raised awareness of the importance of “wellness” – a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing – in people’s lives. Even without a pandemic to deal with, attempting to achieve this state is the basis of a global industry said to be worth around US$4.5 trillion a year.

The travel side of this, “wellness tourism”, was worth US$639 billion globally in 2017, a figure expected to increase to US$919 billion by 2022.

And while wellness tourism was growing rapidly before COVID-19 struck, last year saw a reported growth in internet searches about travel to “wellness destinations]”.

Destination-wise, places known for yoga, meditation and pilgrimage routes, such as Chiang Mai in Thailand and Bali in Indonesia, stand to benefit from increased demand.

Our own tourism research leads us to believe that countries which actively improve infrastructure to target wellness tourism will enjoy a particular boost in any post-COVID period.

shutterstock.

To make sure of this, governments and tourism authorities need to optimise wellness tourism resources. Here are three things they should consider:

1. Encourage domestic tourism

One widespread response to the pandemic was the rediscovery of local natural beauty. New Zealanders for example, prohibited from international travel, flocked to the remote and previously under-visited Chatham Islands. Cambodians capitalised on the absence of some three million annual tourists to visit the Angkor Wat World Heritage site.

The pandemic has been seen as a time to reset longstanding social imbalances that barred local people from enjoying their own spaces. Not only would improved domestic tourism help support local businesses at these destinations, but it would also contribute to the wellbeing of the communities who live close to them.

2. Understand differences

Wellness can mean different things to different people and cultures. In Indonesia, the Balinese travel to religious or spiritual sites for rituals linked to their ancestors and families. This runs parallel to most western tourists’ experiences in Bali, who often visit centres targeted at their personal requirements, with spa treatments or yoga classes. Although westerners generate more profits than locals, it is important for the wellbeing of the surrounding community to ensure equal access to these sites.

Local Balinese yoga instructors often lack the marketing and financial resources to attract global wellness tourists. During the pandemic, some foreign-owned facilities (such as Yoga Barn, one of the most popular studios for westerners) sustained their business through digital video platform. Meanwhile, local facilities struggled without the technical skills and hardware to compete. And while large resorts are well positioned to benefit from post-pandemic wellness travel, they usually provide only low-paid jobs to locals. Support should be provided for small, locally owned wellness tourism businesses as well.

3. Support the small scale

The lack of social sustainability has often plagued tourism development schemes. Our concern is that as tourism gradually opens up again, businesses and governments will simply focus on the high-end luxury wellness market. They may look to smaller numbers of wealthy tourists to remedy economic damage, limit the possibility of spreading the pandemic, and mitigate the high costs of hospitalising sick visitors.

But they would be misguided to focus solely on this competitive niche. Many high-value tourism businesses are owned by foreign investors without local involvement or economic benefit. Local governments, tourism authorities, large businesses and international organisations must support community-based, small-scale enterprises in remote areas to build a more comprehensive wellness tourism sector.



Read more:
How Bali could build a better kind of tourism after the pandemic

Overall, wellness tourism programmes should be developed in a way that empowers local communities, helps to reduce economic inequality and creates new livelihoods, especially in rural areas where poverty rates are high. It should also be developed beyond the popular destinations of Thailand and India to include poorer destinations, such as Laos, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

For while wellness tourism was gaining attention before the COVID period, the trend
will probably continue as COVID restrictions (hopefully) ease. And with the necessary pause in arrivals right now, the industry has an opportunity to reflect on how to create a more sustainable approach to everyone’s wellbeing, wherever they live.

Jaeyeon Choe, Senior Academic in Sustainable Tourism Development, Bournemouth University and Michael Di Giovine, Associate Professor of Anthropology, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.