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Reading Communities: Past and Present – AHRC conference, Senate House, London

conferences

Simon Frost and I recently took part in this event organised by an AHRC project based at The Open University which follows on from previous research leading to the establishment of The Reading Experience Database (RED). The event brought together book historians, literary scholars and researchers working on the borders between literature and media and cultural studies to explore a variety of examples of reading communities from Quaker reading groups and records of readers in the borrowing records of national libraries, to online book clubs and LARPs (Live Action Role Playing events). img_0020

 

This was a good opportunity for us to promote the work of the BU based Digital Reading Network, and CsJCC, based in the Faculty of Media and Communication. Simon’s paper reported on the findings of his BU Fusion funded project looking at contemporary book retailing, which was conducted in collaboration with the university bookseller John Smith’s.  Simon’s paper provided a fascinating comparison of the retail landscape using past and present photographs of the same Southampton street where Gilbert’s bookshop is based.  He boldly proposed replacing the term literary work with ‘Net Work’ to capture the idea of the work as an event which consists of people, places and bibliographic objects. The proposal plays into wider global HE strategies to study English for its social impact.

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My paper provided a comparison of two online reading communities.  The first, a Jane Austen community called The Republic of Pemberley, brings together devotees of the writer who engage in scheduled Group Reads of her work, using the website to report back and share their reading with other community members.  I also discussed how readers use social media platforms such as Twitter to share their reading, for example using the hashtag #mytolstory as they embarked on reading Tolstoy’s epic novel inspired by the recent BBC adaptation.  My paper drew on an article Julia Round and I recently published in the journal Language and Literature on online moderators, which was one of the outputs from our AHRC funded projects, Researching Readers Online and the Digital Reading Network.

 

The day provided an excellent opportunity for us to expand our networks, and establish new contacts. In particular, we were very excited to connect with researchers from the University of Malmo in Sweden whose research and philosophy for teaching English in a media context is closely aligned to our work here at BU.

Research project showing the transmission of infectious diseases through animation shortlisted for Lumen Prize

Researchers from Bournemouth University and the University of Glasgow have been shortlisted for the Lumen Prize for their project AfterGlow, which shows the transmission of an infectious disease through 3D animation.

Their work forms part of Silent Signal, a collaborative project produced by Animate Projects and funded by the Wellcome Trust, bringing together animation artists and biomedical scientists to create experimental animated artworks.  The resulting artworks are designed to make us think again about science and the human body.

BU animation research lecturers, Paul Smith and Vicky Isley, have been working with Dr Paddy Brock, a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow to explore the transmission of malaria.  Their completed real-time animation shows the spread of the disease through the dancing patterns of mosquitoes at twilight – their prime feeding time.

The animation shows the island terrain lit up by glowing trails of light, mimicking mosquito flight patterns.  These spirals represent blood droplets carried by the mosquitoes, infected with Plasmodium knowlesi, a malaria parasite recently found to jump the species barrier from monkey to human.  The infection left in the wake of Macaque monkeys as they roam the island for food, demonstrates the intricate relationship between disease transmission and its environment.

Together Paul and Vicky form boredomresearch, an artistic collaboration which is renowned for creating artworks that explore extended time frames.

As Vicky explains, “boredeomresearch’s art practice is really inspired by natural and biological processes.  We like to use computer animation to explore the diversity present in nature, exploring behaviours, movements and patterns and why they occur.”

“We were really interested in the unknowns around Dr Brock’s research into mosquitoes and macaques in Malaysia – how little was known about how the macaques move around the island and the mosquitoes populations.  It was these that really fascinated us, because we wanted to explore how you could begin to map and visualise these.”

“We wanted to look at infection transmission and what shape it might take in a landscape,” continues Paul, “That was really interesting to us, because it was something we could explain visually.”

For Dr Brock, boredomresearch’s creative approach to his research was a unique experience, and helped to highlight to him the creative aspects of science.  For example if there’s an unknown in a project, scientists need to hypothesize and test out theories that might fit their data – being creative with science even if it isn’t discussed in those terms.

The resulting project AfterGlow combines Dr Brock’s scientific data and boredomresearch’s visual interpretation of disease transmission.  For both artists and scientists, the project has offered an insight into the benefits of each other’s discipline.

The animation can be viewed here and details of the Lumen nomination can be found here.

New paper Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD in Nepal

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion, international, Knowledge Transfer, open access, Publishing, Training, writing

nnaCongratulations to Dr. Catherine Angell (FHSS) who just had her paper ‘Continual Professional Development (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal’ accepted in Health Prospect.   The paper is co-authored with BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada  both based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Dr. Rose Khatri  and Dr. Sean Mackacel-logo-weby (also at LJMU), Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery and Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and our colleagues in Dr. Sujan Marahatta and Associate Professor Chandra Kala Sharma. Ms. Chandra Kala Sharma is also the president of the Nepal Nursing Association (left in photo).  Health Prospect is an Open Access journal, hence freely available to anybody in Nepal (and elsewhere in the world).

dsc_0124This paper is first of several based on a study aiming to improve CPD in Nepal and it is partly funded by LJMU and partly funded by BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL).  The CEL-funded part of the project centres on focus group research with representatives of the Ministry of Health & Population, the Ministry of Education, the Nepal Nursing Association and the Nursing Council, and Higher Education providers of Nurse Education (both form Government-run universities and private colleges). The focus group schedule will include starter questions to initiate discussions around the kind of CPD nurses in Nepal need, its format, preferred models, the required quality and quantity, and ways of  checking up (quality control). In addition we will be asking a subgroup of nurses registered in Nepal about midwifery skills as midwifery is not recognised as a separate profession from nursing in Nepal. Hence there will be three focus groups specifically about midwifery CPD: one at MIDSON (the Midwifery Organisation of Nepal), one with nurses providing maternity care in private hospitals and one with nurses doing this in government hospitals.

The research is a natural FUSION project in the field of nursing & midwifery as it links Research in the field of Education to help improve Practice in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal, Health Prospect (Accepted) 

 

 

BU at ATLAS annual conference

BU Challenges, conferences

BU had a strong presence at the ATLAS (Association for Tourism apic1nd Leisure Education and Research) annual conference which took place in the historic town of Canterbury, between 13-16 September, on “Tourism, Lifestyles and Locations”.

BU has been a member of the ATLAS network for many years and Dr Lenia Marques was one of the founders of the Special Interest Group on Events back in 2010. The group is very active and has several ongoing projects and collaborations amongst its members.

Several BU academics presented and discussed their research in Canterbury. Dr Hanaa Osman and Dr Lorraine Brown presented a piece of research which touches upon the status of women in tourism and which provoked debate on intercultural issues. Dr Anya Chapman presented her work on piers, which are so important for UK coastal destinations, such as Bournemouth. Dr Jaeyeon Choe presented her research on tourism and quality of life in Macao and we should congratulate her on her first attendance as the ATLAS Asia representative on the board.

Dr Lenia Marques presented her research on events and communities and practice among expats in a panel organised together with the Department of Events and Leisure and the Department of Tourism and Hospitality dedicated to “Lifestyle and communities: sharing in the digital era”. The panel, put together by Dr. Lenia Marques, Juliette Hecquet and Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis, aimed at discussing new trends in the fields of leisure and tourism connected to lifestyle and the sharing economy.

Overall, the discussions at the conference were animated and friendly, raising some of the big issues of our time. Collaborations, projects and further developments will surely continue in the run-up to the next ATLAS annual conference to be held in Viana do Castelo, Portugal (12-16 September 2017) under the theme “Destinations past, present and future”.

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RKE Development Framework – launches today!

dev_frameworkThe RKE Development Framework launches today – 20th September 2016

 

Come along to find out more from 09:00 to 17:00 at:

  • Talbot Campus –  Poole House Atrium
  • Lansdowne Campus – EBC Ground Floor

You will be able to book onto sessions and discuss your future plans! Alternatively, go to the website at www.bournemouth.ac.uk/rke-development-framework to find out more. Please note that this website is only available to BU staff.

Please see previous blog posts about all the Pathways – just search on ‘framework’ or see the related posts.

We look forward to seeing you there and at future RKE Development Framework events.

If you have comments or suggestions, please get in touch via our dedicated email – RKEDevFramework@bournemouth.ac.uk

Horizon 2020 Funding for virtual factory research at BU

Awarded & submitted bids, international

European Union - Horizon 2020Uber, Amazon, AirBnB, Netflix… The Internet has had many impacts to the economy. Not only to the consumer market, but widely across the service sector. There is a large amount of integration and automation to enable things like instant order confirmations. Work in these aspects of business processes is quite well established in the service sector.
Manufacturing is a key part of the economy. To remain competitive or become even more so, automation that supports innovation is also essential for the manufacturing sector. BU will be leading, under direction of Drs L. Xu and P. de Vrieze, an international consortium on a project receiving €1.2 mln in funding to address these challenges.

Advanced ICT supported manufacturing is currently gaining a lot of traction with initiatives such as Industrie 4.0 in Germany, Factory of the Future in Italy and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult the UK. Part of this development is advanced coordination of manufacturing allowing for increased flexibility and reduced costs. A virtual factory ensures exchange of data between smart machines, systems, software and design within the manufacturing chain. Manufacturing processes become more simple through plug-and-play techniques.

To enable this, the “vF Interoperation suppoRting buSiness innovaTion” (FIRST) project provides new technology to describe manufacturing assets and to compose and integrate existing services into collaborative virtual manufacturing processes. The project will see collaboration between internationally recognised academics and industry in Europe and China. As such the consortium will take advantage of it various backgrounds to address the issue from a variety of perspectives.

The FIRST consortium is a competitive consortium with large know-how and expertise in complex software systems and manufacturing automation. The research base of the academic partners will be used as foundation for innovations to contribute to virtual interoperation of smart manufacturing in the area of Factory of the Future/Manufacturing 2.0 to improve the competiveness of our industrial partners and sustainability of the European manufacturing sector. Within this research programme, 6 industrial researcher will get the opportunity to gather knowledge in academia while 22 academic researchers will absorb knowledge in industry. The consortium will provide new knowledge for GK, an enterprise software vendor and KM, a manufacturing software vendor, inform newer training in the area of big data, cloud computing to both GK and KM, and promote innovation, while the academic partners will translate their research to facilitate better understanding virtual factories.

NERC standard grants – internal competition closing soon

Funding opportunities

NERCFurther to the earlier blog post concerning the internal competition for NERC standard grants (January 2017 deadline), please be reminded that the closing date is this Thursday, 21 September. Further details can be found here, but, in outline, the process is as follows:

  • Internal call launched 11 August 2016
  • Internal call deadline 22 September 2016. Academic submits one page expression of interest on research to be carried out, stating aims, objectives, potential impact, and any collaboration – to Dr Jennifer Roddis, RKEO
  • From 22nd September, peer review takes place by DDRPP, BU academics with NERC experience, and external peer reviewers
  • Applicants will be informed of the decision regarding which application is to be taken forward on 3rd October. The successful applicant will then work with Dr Jennifer Roddis to develop, refine and draft their application before peer review in November and submission in January 2017.

 

 

Prestigious undergraduate research conference comes to Bournemouth

Student Engagement, student research

Next spring, Bournemouth University (BU) will be welcoming undergraduates from all over the country to present their research as part of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR).  The prestigious annual conference is a chance to celebrate the valuable contribution of research from undergraduate students across a vast array of disciplines and subject areas.

Undergraduates from all disciplines will be invited to submit papers, posters, workshops and performances as part of the conference.  Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and those accepted will be invited to attend the conference, which is taking place in Bournemouth 25 – 26 April 2017.

Professor Gail Thomas, Head of BU’s Centre for Excellence of Learning says, “BCUR is an excellent opportunity to highlight the research successes of undergraduates from all over the country.  It gives undergraduates their first taste of an academic conference, as well as giving them the opportunity to develop their communication and presentation skills.  It’s also a great place to network with other researchers.”

“Undergraduates will be invited to present research from any aspect of their course,” continues Professor Thomas, “Many will have had the chance to carry out independent research, whether for a dissertation, an assessment, working with an external company or working with a researcher on a particular topic.  If you’re unsure about whether your work fits, it’s best to talk to your tutor first to find out how you can get involved in BCUR.”

Professor John Fletcher, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at BU comments, “We are delighted to be hosting the next British Conference of Undergraduate Research and look forward to welcoming undergraduates from all over the country to showcase their research.”

“Research is a key driver of economic growth and makes a difference to all aspects of society, so we are keen to celebrate the successes of our next generation of researchers.  Here at BU we really encourage our undergraduates to get involved in research throughout their studies.  Our unique fusion of education, research and professional practice is at the heart of the BU experience, so we hope to see plenty of our students representing BU at BCUR next year.”

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 10 December.  Abstract submission will open in early October.

For more information about the conference, visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/bcur17.

RSA coffee morning – new monthly research related themes

The BU Research Staff Association coffee morning is back for 2016/17. It is still an informal opportunity to get together but will now have a research related theme.

This month’s theme is ethics and we are delighted to welcome guest speakers Sarah Bell (RKEO), Dr Katarzyna Musial-Gabrys (FST), Martin Hind (FHSS), and Dr Carol Bond (FHSS) to share their experiences of obtaining ethics and sitting on the BU ethics panel.

  • Date: 28th September 2016
  • Time: 10-11am
  • Venue: B420, Bournemouth House, Lansdowne campus

Please let us know if you are attending so we can order enough cake mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk

See you there,

Michelle and Marcellus

BU Research Staff Association

Committee inquiries: open calls for evidence

Below is a list of committee inquiries with current open calls for evidence. Please contact Emma Bambury-Whitton if you would like to discuss submitting evidence

Commons Select Committee inquiries

Lords Select Committee inquiries

Joint Committee inquiries

Public Bill Committees

 

Policy Update

Technical education

HEFCE has published a report on employer demand for intermediate technical higher education. The report finds that employers generally recruit graduates from Level 6 for technician roles despite not requiring this level for the job, and this practice is increasing. Recruiting graduates from Level 6 is largely due to prestige of degrees and the ready supply of graduates. You can view the report here.

Safe spaces

Speaking during prime minister’s questions, Theresa May said it was “quite extraordinary” for universities to ban the discussion of certain topics which could cause offence. She warned that stifling free speech could have a negative impact on Britain’s economic and social success. Theresa May hits out at universities ‘safe spaces’ for stifling free speech.  (The Telegraph).  

 TEF panel members

The members of the Teaching Excellence Framework panel have been announced. The panel includes academics, students, employers and widening participation experts. It is said that the The Department for Education will likely make further appointments by the end of September to strengthen employer representation. You can view the list of panel members here.

 Research metrics

A new Forum for Responsible Metrics is being set up as a partnership between HEFCE, Research Councils UK, Wellcome, Universities UK and Jisc. The forum will develop a programme of activities to support the responsible use of research metrics in higher education institutions and across the research community in the UK. New Forum for Responsible Research Metrics launched (HEFCE).

 HEFCE stats

HEFCE has published its Higher education in England 2016: Key facts report. The report finds that approximately three-quarters of all undergraduate students are studying subjects in the arts, humanities and social sciences, while almost one in four postgraduate students is studying a business-related subject. You can view the report here.

 The Department for Education

The Department for Education has published data on initial participation rates for higher education from 2006/07 to 2014/15. The data finds that participation rates rose 1.7% between 2013/14 and 2014/15, with an increase of students across the majority of age groups. The report also estimates that there has been an increase of 1,900 mature students entering higher education between 2013/14 and 2014/5. You can view the report here.

Postgraduate Short Course Opportunities!

PG research, student research, Training

PhD and MSC students! Are you looking to develop additional laboratory skills or about to undertake your own research work? Then now is your chance to get involved in some upcoming short courses at Liverpool Science Park. By working in a laboratory setting, these courses give you a chance to attain or further practical skills. With a high staffing level, this doesn’t just bring a wealth of experience, this also gives you a chance to discuss, interact and ask questions with researchers working both in academia and within the field. Please see below and follow the links for more information on how to book.

24 September- Discovering Practical Microbiology

30 September- Laboratory Skills 

1 October- Introduction to Mammalian Cell Culture 

3 October- Practical Skills in Drug Discovery 

8 October- Genomics and Bioinformatics

5 November- Skills in Analytical Science 

Accommodation? They’ve got you covered with bed and breakfast available for £32-£47 a night at Hatters Hostel

For more information email BioGrad.