Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The UUKi International Partnerships team have recently launched a new GCRF funding bulletin which sits alongside the existing Newton Funding bulletin.
If you haven’t already signed up to receive the GCRF funding bulletin, you can do so here: GCRF bulletin sign up.
Please also feel free to share the link to subscribe with your collaborators and partners in GCRF countries of focus too.
UUKi sub-Saharan Africa Policy Network
The next UUKi sub-Saharan Policy Network will take place at Woburn House, London on Wednesday 18 September, 1400 – 1630. The meeting will include a focus upon student recruitment in the region and will also include an update from the HMG cross Whitehall Africa Strategy team. Other speakers will be confirmed over the next couple of weeks. If you haven’t already, please do sign up via Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/uuki-sub-saharan-africa-network-tickets-63104694841
The NIHR will be investing in future social care research with annual funding calls via the Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme. The next call is planned to launch in September and will follow a similar format to the first call, however to give it a clearer social care identity it will be launched as Research for Social Care (RfSC). The RfSC call will have a budget of £3m and further information will be released shortly.
The Research Design Service (RDS) is running an event in Bristol on 30th September which offers an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of RfSC funding. Attendance at these events is FREE and refreshments will be provided.
More details can be found on the NIHR website or on our RDS South West website.
And don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR RDS (Research Design Service) is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.
Flourishing with Fusion is the theme for this year’s research showcase for Mid-Career Academics.
This event will explore how fusion works in practice, and how engaging with research at BU can enhance your career. It will showcase the exciting work of a number of BU academics, and there will be a panel for Q & A.
POSTPONED from Wednesday 4th September – a new date will be announced shortly. Contact RKEDF for more information.
At Bournemouth University we collaborate with global institutions and organisations through our education, research and practice.
Our vision is that by 2025, BU will be recognised worldwide as a leading university for inspiring learning, advancing knowledge and enriching society through the fusion of education, research and practice.
In recognition of the important contribution that international academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to be launching the BU Global Visiting Fellowship (GVF) scheme in 2019. This aims to attract global research talent from our international priority partner institutions to collaborate with BU academics in our strategic investment areas:
Each Fellowship is offered for a three year period to support the development of a collaborative partnership between the Fellow and their Bournemouth University host member of staff. Funding is available to support a range of activities that promote research collaboration between individuals and groups at both institutions. During their Fellowship tenure each Fellow will spend a minimum of one month at Bournemouth University.
Fellows must be nominated by a member of academic staff at BU. The BU nominator will complete the Global Visiting Fellowships Application Form. This collaboration will be expected to propose ambitious and innovative programmes of research and related engagement activities. The closing date for the 2019 round is 30th August 2019.
To find out more details about this scheme and applicant eligibility (including who our international priority partner institutions are), please read the scheme guidance (pdf 350kb).
If you are from one of our international priority partner institutes, your research aligns with one of our strategic investment areas, and you would like an introduction to a BU academic to collaborate with, please contact: researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk
Demonstrating impact is becoming an increasingly normal part of academic life, with changes in the external environment underpinning the need to show how research is making a difference beyond academia. As well as forming a significant part of a university’s REF submission, impact pathways are often included as a routine part of funding applications.
In order to support impact development at Bournemouth University, an impact fund was established in spring 2019, overseen by the Research Impact Funding Panel. The first call for applications was launched in March 2019 for the remainder of the 2018/19 academic year. This call is now closed.
For 2019/20, the Research Impact Fund has been split into three strands:
We are pleased to announce that the fund is now open for applications for strand 3.
Eligibility
This strand is open only to those developing an impact case study for REF2021. It is expected that those who are applying for the fund will have previously submitted a draft case study for review through mock REF exercise. If you are yet to submit a draft case study, but believe you have a potential impact case study for REF2021, please speak to your Faculty Impact Officer in the first instance:
Application process
To apply, please read the application form and policy document. To apply, please read the application form and guidance. Applications must be submitted by your Impact Champion or UoA Lead to researchimpact@bournemouth.ac.uk by Friday 20 September.
If you have any questions about your application please email either Rachel Bowen (for HSS or FM queries) or Genna del Rosa (for FMC or SciTech queries).
You can also seek advice from the following RDS colleagues when developing your application:
BU’s Research Principles
Putting the Research Impact Fund into strategic context, under BU2025, 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:
Please see further announcements regarding each initiative.
These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles. Specifically, but not exclusively, regarding the Research Impact Funding Panel, please refer to:
This past week Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen from the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) presented several workshops on academic writing and scientific publishing to BU’s partners in Nepal. He presented at Nepal’s oldest and largest university Tribhuvan University (TU) on Wednesday. The Faculty of Education had made the effort to produce a personalised banner for Edwin. Prof. Bhimsen Devkota, who invited him to run this workshop, was his PhD student many years ago at the University of Aberdeen
The next day he visited Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIH
S) which has a Memorandum of Agreement with BU, which was signed by Prof. Tee in early 2018 (see BU Research Blog). At MMIHS the audience that day consisted mostly of Master of Public Health students. Edwin recently celebrated his ten-years of being Visiting Professor at MMIHS.
Yesterday he had the honour of running a workshop at BNMT (Birat Nepal Medical Trust), affiliated with the Britain Nepal Medical Trust which started working in Nepal more than fifty years ago in 1967. The audience at BNMT was smaller and this allowed for loads of fruitful discussions.
These workshops are part of BU capacity building approach for health workers, development workers, health students and researchers in Nepal. Writing with colleagues in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, and various UK universities, including with Visiting Faculty based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and University of Exeter Medical School (UEMS) as well as Visiting Faculty at NHS Poole Foundation Hospital and Hamad General Hospital (Qatar) the BU team as published 12 papers on aspects of academic writing and/or publishing [1-12].
References
Hardly ever does a research trip go smoothly and completely to plan. Our latest trip to Nepal was no different. It started really with a delay, I had the money for a flight in the spring, but I really could not find the time to leave Bournemouth University for a three-week trip.
The first little hiccup of this summer’s fieldwork trip, during the monsoon, occurred on arrival at Kathmandu Airport on 23 July. I normally bring three bottles of whisky as a present for my PhD former students and fellow researchers in Nepal. These are bought during my stop-over in the Middle East and this always worked well until this year. This time I was stopped on arrival by a very apologetic customs officer who informed me that the rules for bringing alcohol into Nepal had changed since the beginning of this year and that I could only bring in one bottle. I received a lovely certificate for the two bottles I had to leave behind (see photo).
The second little hiccup was that one of the three research dissemination meetings we had hoped to organise in Kathmandu could not take place. Unfortunately, the organisation we had been collaborating with had not managed to finalise the research report on time. We had also hoped to meet up with staff at Social Science Baha. We have submitted the final draft manuscript for our next book to them and wanted to discuss progress, but the director was unfortunately out of the country.
Further little hiccups were more mundane, such as the electricity going off twice (for perhaps five minutes each time) during one of my teaching sessions on Introduction to Qualitative Research. This meant trying to start a slow laptop as back-up, whilst restarting a still warm overhead projector, etc. But the Nepali audience, being used this, took it all in its stride. And I’ll spare you the details of my day of diarrhoea (either weather or food-hygiene related, probably both).
The biggest problem this time was much more unexpected. Two days ago there was a big fire not too far from in Kathmandu (see picture taken from my bed room). A little later after the photo was taken, we got stuck in traffic because several roads were blocked around the burning building on our way to Tribhuvan University. Later I found out that the fire had destroyed the head office of a national internet provider, which is also the provider for the charity Green Tara Nepal, which we are working with. So I have had hardly any internet for a few days which is really difficult for a 21st century academic.
However, this fieldwork trip has been very successful to date. We have co-organised two well attended meetings, one on the introduction of CPD in Nursing led by Dr. Bibha Simkhada (see previous BU blog here) and one Consultation meeting on migration and health research led by Dr. Pramod Regmi, both run in collaboration with BU’s Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada. Moreover, I was invited to speak at an international sociology conference last Sunday here in Kathmandu which I did not even know was going on till two days before. I had to pleasure of meeting our midwifery friends in Nepal as well as a representative of the German Aid Agency GIZ. We managed to have dinner in Kathmandu with loads of colleagues and friends who work with BU in one form or another, including one of my recent co-authors from the University of Tokyo who happened to be in Nepal.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Sometimes Open Access is viewed as an administrative requirement for the REF, but it is more than that: it is a way to ensure that research outputs are available to the wider world, even in developing countries, where universities cannot always afford prohibitively-expensive subscription costs.
For example, Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, alongside other BU academics, has built close research links with Nepal. This has resulted in his collaboration on several papers and projects with Nepalese academics and health professionals. He gives an insight into access to research in Nepal in this article. This blog post is an excellent glimpse into the world of academic publishing and Open Access in Nepal.
Organisations such as INASP or AmeliCA are providing a platform for scholarly publishing and Open Access in Africa, Oceania, Asia and Latin America, to ensure that research from those regions is available.
This shows the wider implication of Open Access to the world-wide community.
More information about Open Access can be found in this library guide.
Remember that your faculty library team is always happy to help you with any enquiries about Open Access.
Jose
HSS Faculty Librarian
Former PhD student, Dr Andy Harding, now at Lancaster University, and BU Professors Jonathan Parker, Sarah Head and Ann Hemingway have been highly commended for their paper Supply-side review of the UK specialist housing market and why it is failing older people published in Housing, Care and Support.
As a result, this paper has been made available on OpenAccess on the Emerald website for the next six months.
On the 4th of April 1944, just two months before D-Day, a large-scale, live-fire amphibious landing exercise “Exercise Smash I” took place in Studland Bay. Unfortunately, the sea conditions on the day resulted in the sinking of six of the DD (Duplex-Drive) Valentine amphibious tanks used, also resulting in the loss of six lives. In 2014 BU Maritime Archaeology conducted a search for the tank wrecks, as the location of some of them had been lost, and carried out a survey of archaeological remains. In 2018 they returned to the wrecks and created 3D photogrammetric scans of the tanks.
“Exercise Smash” Virtual Heritage Experience
Following a brief developed by Dr Eike Falk Anderson of the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) in cooperation with Tom Cousins of BU Maritime Archaeology, and on the basis of the 3D scans of the sunk tanks, a group of undergraduate students of the NCCA created the “Exercise Smash” virtual heritage experience, leveraging modern video games infrastructure (in this case the Unreal Engine 4). Blending a historical serious game with a virtual dive trail, in a snapshot in time, users live the past and try to land an amphibious tank while taking part in “Exercise Smash”, and then return to the present to explore the tank wrecks in Studland Bay during a virtual dive. The project was conducted as part of the 2nd year Group Project unit (led by Susan Sloan) by students from three of the NCCA’s undergraduate programmes, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Art and Design (Arran Bidwell, Alexander Lechev and Manuella Nagiel), BA (Hons) Computer Animation Technical Arts (Joseph Adams and Dawid Kupisinski) and BSc (Hons) Software Development for Animation, Games and Effects (Radu Rosca).
“Exercise Smash” at Tankfest 2019
At the end of June, the “Exercise Smash” virtual heritage experience was presented to the public for all three days of Tankfest 2019 at The Tank Museum in Bovington (this year enjoyed by a record of around 24000 visitors according to the Dorset Echo) at the BU Maritime Archaeology stand. There, the project was very well received by the museum as well as by the visitors of Tankfest. Visiting children especially loved the virtual heritage experience and “had to be peeled away from driving the tank by their parents”.
Daniel Hills (FMC PGR) has recently returned from the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School. This year it was held at Tartu University, Estonia between 9th to 16th July.
Taken from the ECREA website, the summer school brings together members of the European research community to this summer school in order to debate contemporary issues in media, communication and cultural studies. The summer school aims to provide a supportive international setting where doctoral students can present their ongoing work, receive feedback on their PhD-projects from international experts and meet students and academics from other countries, establishing valuable contacts for the future.
It is a full on conference including a variety of back-to-back workshops, lectures, group feedback sessions and consultation every day for 8 days, and is extremely intense. To qualify for this conference, I had to supply an initial 500 word abstract of my PhD, and following being successfully shortlisted for the next round, produce an expanded 3,000 word introduction and summary of my research project, as well as a 10 minute presentation summarising my research plans as they were prior to the summer school.
There were 40 delegates selected and I was lucky enough to be one of them. The conference commenced at 09:30 on the 8th with a half day meet and greet so we could all get to know one another and our personal areas of research. This was followed by lunch and then into an afternoon of interactive workshops taking us to 6PM. This was followed by a welcome drinks party where we could discuss our first day over a glass of wine and provided a great opportunity to bond with my new peers. Over the following days, we would cover a further 16 workshops, 5 lectures and most importantly for me, individual feedback sessions. Our large group was broken into 2 groups or 14 and 1 or 13, and over the course of the work were give an hour dedicated to presenting our research (10 minutes) maximum and then to receive a structured feedback from lecturers and peers whom had already read my 3,000 word paper. This delivered invaluable feedback for me and gave me a plethora of new perspectives which I had hitherto not considered.
I gained a great deal of insights, useful techniques and a re-ignition of enthusiasm towards my research throughout the 8 days, and would encourage anybody whom is more than a year into their research to apply for the 2020 version. I graduated with 10 ECTS points on the final day, but more importantly new-found knowledge and a new direction to progress with my PhD, and a whole lot of new friends and peers. I am planning on writing a paper with one of my new friends whom is interested in a similar field to my own. All in all, the ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School has been one of the most useful academic experiences of my career to date.
Daniel Hills is a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, and is focusing his research in advertising planning and practice theory, aiming to complete in 2020.
Yesterday Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen from CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health) gave a presentation on ‘Social and Medical Model of Childbirth’ at the International Conference 2019 with the specific title ‘Sociology of Nepal: State Restructuring, Good Governance & People’s Participation’. This international conference was organised by NSA (Nepal Sociological Association) in Kathmandu.
Prof. van Teijlingen outlined the notion of the social-medical model [1-5] and linked it to recent developments in Nepal, including the introduction of midwifery education (i.e. midwifery separately from nursing) something tat has been advocated for a long time [6] and the rising Caesarean Section rate in Nepal, especially in hospitals in the capital [7].
References:
Denyse King from the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal (CMMPH) recently presented her CILVRS Project at a Parliamentary event. The CILVRS Project is a Virtual Reality Learning Environment (VRLE) to improve healthcare education. Denyse presented this at the Further Education for Leadership symposium on Ed-Tech at Parliament on July 17th 2019. She introduced a VRLE on ‘safeguarding’ to share with delegates there who then experienced the VRLE through immersion with Oculus Quest headsets. 
The response from symposium delegates to the VRLE was overwhelmingly positive and with excellent discussions regarding the possible content of future VRLEs. Denyse has written this VRLE content as part of her role as a lecturer in midwifery. This was subsequently built to her specifications by a company called Daden Ltd. The VRLE are designed to be profession generic and topic specific, which ensures that the majority of healthcare students can use each VRLE. Denyse King is sitting on the far right of the table of experts for the Further Education Trust for Leadership (photo). 
VRLEs offer healthcare students access learning materials in ways which enhance their student experience. Use of VRLE mean Bournemouth University can offer students clinical experiences which cannot otherwise be guaranteed as routine part of their healthcare education. In addition to this, Continuous Practice Development (CPD) is a requirement of the Nursing and Midwifery Council [1-2] and the World Health Organization (WHO) [3] have highlighted that learners globally have limited access to Higher Education. The WHO also state that educators internationally lack skills and necessary equipment as well as a lack of access to practical skills teaching. Therefore, VRLE also have a place in offering realistic clinical experiences for CPD nationally and internationally. One example of the latter would be through Bournemouth University a close working relationships in Nepal: (1) where midwifery students can also benefit; or (2) in the development of CPD in nursing and midwifery in Nepal as recently presented on the BU Research Blog (click here).
The CILVRS Project is another excellent example of the BU FUSION with Research resulting in improvements in Education, which in turn are leading to better Practice.
The response from symposium delegates to the VRLE was overwhelmingly positive and with excellent discussions regarding the possible content of future VRLEs. Denyse is very active in this field. She has created a VRLE for urinalysis training as well as three VRLE related to safeguarding (which are nearly complete) as part of the CILVRS Project. She is developing further VRLEs I: two for perinatal mental health which I am creating in collaboration with University of Newcastle (Australia), Solent NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. Some of this is being trialled within the BU midwifery programme in the forth coming year 2019/2020, and this exciting work is part of her doctorate research: Towards more holistic clinical practice: exploring the impact of virtual reality learning environments on healthcare education.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References:
BU2025 sets out ambitious plans and targets for research at BU. In support of these, an exciting new opportunity has been developed.
In recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to be launching the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. We will employ up to six new Senior Lecturers with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with one of six targeted research areas:
We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.
To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.
To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.
Any enquiries about the scheme should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk. If your enquiry is about applying under one of the targeted research areas and you want to know more about this then please go to our website to find the academic contact for each area.
Please note that the closing date is 11th August 2019. No late applications will be accepted.
Bournemouth University facilitated a Strategic planning meeting to develop a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework for Nepal last week in Kathmandu. The planning meeting was held on 30th July 2019 at the Institute of Medicine IOM Maharajgunj Nursing Campus. Midwifery is not formally recognised in Nepal, i.e. as a profession separate from nursing, therefore when refer to nursing CPD in this blog we mean both ‘nurses’ and ‘nurse-midwives’.
Bournemouth University is collaborating in this project with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) in the UK, the IOM Nursing Campus, the Nursing Association of Nepal (NAN), MIDSON, the Nepal Nursing Council (NNC) and several other key stakeholders in Nepal to support nursing regulatory bodies to establish mandatory CPD and/or post-registration training programmes relevant to their current practice in nursing. 
The Bournemouth team (led by Dr. Bibha Simkhada with Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and Dr.Pramod Regmi) argued that CPD offers nurses the opportunity to maintain, improve and broaden knowledge, expertise and develop their personal and professional qualities to enhance practice and career development. Nepal has had limited process and progress in ensuring CPD for nurses and the uptake of post-registration education and training programmes or CPD tends to be ad hoc. Generally, CPD in Nepal remains under-developed as showing evidence of having received CPD is not currently a requirement of nurses when they re-register every five year.
This project is a good example of a BU FUSION project as our earlier Research in the form of a needs assessment will to the introduction of CPD which is of course, post-registration Education in nursing, helping to improve Practice in a low-income country. We think we have had at least some impact on nursing in Nepal as the general feeling of our strategic planning meeting positive towards introducing CPD in the near future in Nepal.
The latest podcast from the National Institute for Health Research is available and this time concentrates on Research Ethics Committees.
All research with human participants should have appropriate ethical reflection – the podcast this month contains the thoughts and guidance of Dr Hugh Davies who is an established Research Ethics Committee Chair and former Ethics Advisor for the Health Research Authority.
If you are interested in learning more about NHS Research Ethics Committees you can view the dedicated section on the HRA website here, and even register your interest to sit as an observer at a committee meeting.
Happy listening!
BU staff can login below:
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