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The ‘Knitted midwife project’: a political statement

knittedmisrcm

 

At the Royal College of Midwives conference in Harrogate over the 19th and 20th October a strange ‘art’ installation appeared formed of, in the region of, 500 knit and crochet midwives. The purpose of the display was to highlight the current shortage of midwives throughout the UK and started as a light hearted conversation on twitter between Dr Jenny Hall from the midwifery team in Bournemouth University and midwifery lecturer Lindsay Hobbs in the University of Bradford. (More information is here https://knittedmidwife.wordpress.com/)

When the conversation took place the statistics showing the number of midwives required was 2600 (by the time the project had commenced it had risen to 3500). To highlight the situation, the @knittedmidwife was born, encouraging midwives and others to ‘knit a midwife’ to solve the problem in time for the RCM conference. Instructions for a simple pattern were placed on a blog and participants were encouraged to create their own clothes. The campaign caused some amusement and inspiration with non-knitters persuading friends and family to knit one for them. Some midwife teams had ‘knit-evenings’. They arrived in batches from as far afield as Texas and Germany. The display at the conference was well received but the knowledge that the number presented was only 500 of the 3500 missing midwives gave impact. A final twist was that each was sold in aid of the RCM benevolent fund; midwives being sold to aid other midwives.

As an adjunct to the project the ‘knitters’ were asked to send with their midwife a message as to why they had done so. At the conference itself questionnaires were also present to inquire about the impact of the display. This ‘knitted midwife’ project will therefore live on as the lecturers mentioned will now be evaluating the messages and questionnaires.

And here is the mini-me midwfery lecturer, complete with pinards stethescope and tablet computer….. More will follow as the project develops.

knittedme

Deadline for applications 9am Monday 24th October: funds to support global staff mobility

Global staff mobility – including training, teaching, research or networking – brings huge value to BU and our students, whilst offering invaluable personal career experience.

We are pleased to announce that staff can apply for funds to support these activities through Erasmus and Santander, under the revised Staff Mobility scheme.

Erasmus

Erasmus funds are a great way to build networks and gain experience.

Erasmus staff mobility funds can be used to support travel, accommodation and other costs of academic and professional support staff attending training at an organisation or institution in Europe. It can also be used for academic staff wishing to teach at a European university.

There’s more information and guidance in the application form, including: Funding amounts; duration of visits; priority institutions.

Santander

Santander staff mobility funding can be used to support travel, accommodation and other costs for staff wishing to develop research, education and professional practice projects. This fund is ideal to support academic staff travelling to an international university in order to develop a collaborative relationship.

More information, including advice and how to apply, can be found on this dedicated webpage.

The deadline for applications is 9am on Monday 24th October 2016.

Student Research Assistantship – Applications closing 24th October

Student Engagement, student research

The Student Research Assistantship (SRA) programme is closing for academic applications on Monday 24th October.

 

Each academic application will be marked against the following criteria:

  • Student-centred
  • Co-creation and co-production
  • Fusion
  • External engagement
  • Impact
  • Cross-Faculty

We are currently inviting academic applications for the semester-based programme – if you would like to apply for the summer programme now, please do note that in your application.

Semester-based programme

This placement is for successful students to work for 15 hours a week for a total of eight weeks between 16th January 2017 and 7th April 2017. This programme will have the capacity for approximately 45 placements.

The SRA programme is coordinated via RKEO and the Faculties.

Academics will apply for the funding via an application form. A Faculty based panel will review all staff applications and decide which applications to continue to the student recruitment stage of the scheme.  The application deadline for this round is 24th October 2016.

 If you have any queries, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP and Student Projects) –  sra@bournemouth.ac.uk

Do you or a colleague think you have a solution to an environmental problem?

Knowledge Exchange

The Royal Society Of Edinburgh Logo NERC has agreed to support up to five new Enterprise Fellowships to boost the development of new businesses from investments in environmental research.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Enterprise Fellowship scheme provides support to researchers and innovators who have promising business ideas.

The programme, delivered by the RSE with support from BBSRC, NERC, STFC and Scottish Enterprise, allows fellows to focus solely on developing their business idea. They receive one year’s salary, expert business training, business development funding and access to mentors from a pool of successful individuals in the commercial community.

The next call for applications is now open, closing on 9 November 2016.

More information, including eligibility and how to apply, is available on the RSE website.

Horizon 2020 funding for digital health and tourism

Over the next decades, the number of the elderly people is expected to grow faster, which is projected to more than double its size, reaching nearly 2.1 billion in 2050 from 901 million in 2015. The ageing population has been one of important global challenges, which leads to health, social and quality of life issues to be concerned for society in the coming decades.

The recent 2.2 million Euro project, CHARMED (Characterisation of a green microenvironment and to study its impact upon health and well-being in the elderly as a way forward for health tourism), funded under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme aims to address the above challenges. The BU team headed by Dr Shuang Cang has an international reputation in the emerging digital health and digital tourism area. For example, one of recent papers published by Dr Cang has received about 100 citations in a short time. Digital technology is transforming healthcare, tourism and other industry sectors. There is a need for interdisciplinary teams at local, national and international levels to collaborate in order to realise potential. BU is one of the front runners in this emerging industry revolution. The BU team in this project including active researchers from three faculties has multidisciplinary knowledge which covers pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, multivariance statistics and quantitative analysis (Dr Shuang Cang, FM); digital and mobile technology (Prof Hongnian Yu, SciTech); community healthcare (Dr Carol Clark, HSS); environmental geology and ecosystem services (Prof Adrian Newton, SciTech); collaborative communities and collaborative travel (Prof Janet Dickinson, FM); hospitality management (Dr Viachaslau Filimonau, FM); and four PhD researchers who are researching in the related area.

The CHARMED’s goal is to innovate a solution to the consequential health, social and quality of life issues that result from the demographic change in Europe where the average age of the population will rise. The project is to create an innovative social-economic infrastructure based around health tourism and ecosystems and elevating the well-being through social and therapeutic horticulture. The proposed approach has the unique potential to address environmental, social, cultural and economic factors, which all have an impact on individual and population health and well-being. The CHARMED project will

  1. derive cross-disciplinary and inter-sectorial knowledge of how to improve physical and mental well-being in the elderly
  2. characterise the environmental geology of a selected exemplar site and to correlate the identified features with improvements in health, well-being and recovery
  3. train a new generation of specialists in the sector of recreation and health for the tourism industry
  4. train specialists in social and therapeutic horticulture as a way to improve physical and mental health
  5. create a model for health tourism
  6. and produce a business plan with an economic impact analysis.

The project will not only create the new digital health tourism service for the elderly, but will also generate new jobs in this emerging sector.

The CHARMED project fits in the BU innovation themes of digital and creative industries, health and wellbeing, and leisure, recreation and tourism very well and will contribute and promote the BU international reputation and research capacity in this important emerging sector. The project is an excellent exemplar in fulfilling the BU FUSION vision and providing essential synergy between education, research and professional engagement as below

  1. Initiating and developing the new courses and education programmes in the emerging areas such as digital health, digital tourism, health tourism
  2. Contributing in achieving strong and improved performance in REF2020 through publications, patents, external research incomes and international activities
  3. Promoting and strengthening Global Engagement for BU staff and students
  4. Creating a vibrant knowledge exchange community of students, staff and other business and organisational stakeholders through the project planned mobility between cross sectors (academic & industry partnership)
  5. Enhancing the student experience and training the early-stage researchers through the planned project mobility, workshops, seminars, etc.
  6. Enhancing the students and early-stage researchers’ employment capacity through this research mobility programme.

‘Meet the Entrepreneur’

The Business School and BU Centre for Entrepreneurship were delighted to hold the first of the 2016/17 series of ‘Meet the Entrepreneur’ events at the EBC on Wednesday 19th October at the EBC.

Open to BU students and staff, these seminars are a great opportunity to hear the personal journey of a profiled entrepreneur and learn more about their experiences as a business owner and their approach to founding and growing an innovative business.

Entrepreneur Rupert Holloway, Founder of Conker Spirit, kicked off the series with a fascinating insight into how he approached turning a vision to create Dorset’s first independent gin distiller into a reality.

Beginning the journey only 2 years ago, after losing the love of his career as a chartered surveyor, Rupert had the lightbulb moment of producing a beautifully crafted spirit representative of the Dorset landscape. Refining the flavours and teaching himself the tools of his trade, Rupert arrived at a product that rivals the best in the industry.

Mark Painter, Business Development Manager for the Faculty of Management, said, ‘it was really great to start this series of seminars with such an interesting and thought provoking presentation’. Mark added, ‘Rupert’s story is all about being proactive, seizing opportunities and, as Rupert described it, ‘leaning into’ challenges to avoid falling over’.

The next seminar in this series will be held on Friday 25th November at Talbot Campus and will profile Paul Tansey, Founder and MD of Intergage. For more information and to book your place follow the link to: www.bucfe.com/events

 

A Cloud Based Intelligent Safety Transport Framework for Schools

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.mano

 

Speaker: Manoharan Ramachandran (PhD student within the Creative Technology Department).

 

Title:     A Cloud Based Intelligent Safety Transport Framework for Schools

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 26th October 2016

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Safety in school transportation systems is a critical issue which involves children who are the most vulnerable users of them. Statistics show that in Great Britain (GB) alone 1191 children were injured in 371 coach crashes between 2005 and 2015. Though coach journeys are considered as the safest mode of transport for children, the coach accidents are the one which resulted in a high number of fatalities per accident. England has more than 25000 schools and each school at least make 2 trips per year which is equivalent to 50000+ trips made every year. Schools rely on coach operators to provide vehicles for school trips and home to school services. In the last eight months alone (Jan – Sept 2016), 102 coach operators’ licenses have been revoked without public inquiry in England due to operator’s non compliance. Around 8.3 million pupils are enrolled in England schools. There are no specific safety models available to ensure the safety of children who travelling through coaches. Parents have to spend a considerable amount of time on the streets and making phone calls seeking information about the coach whilst waiting for it, due to the unpredictable nature of the traffic, particularly during the winter months. Proper selection of coach operator, vehicle and real time vehicle tracking & monitoring can considerably mitigate safety risks and the problems of school transport. Most of the existing literature so far has focused on the economy and the shortest routes to transport children, but they do not consider the safety aspects of the coach operator, vehicle and the driver. In this research, two case studies have been conducted in four sectors of stakeholders to identify their problems and needs in school transportation. The outcome will be discussed at this seminar.

 

 

We hope to see you there.

BU 9th Postgraduate Conference 2017 – Call for Abstracts

PG research

pg-conference-2017The BU Postgraduate Annual Conference, Wednesday 8 March 2017  showcases the best of BU’s postgraduate research. It provides a unique opportunity for Postgraduate researchers and Masters’ students to present their work.

Call for Abstracts is open from 24 October 2016 Closes: midnight, 24 November 2016

Abstracts are invited for oral, poster and photography presentations from Postgraduate Research and Taught students at any stage of their degree. Please download and complete the Abstract Form with reference to the guidance notes for Oral, Poster and Photography presentations. Visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/pg-conference for further information.

Please note, the number of oral presentations is limited and therefore the selection process is competitive – abstracts will be shortlisted by a Faculty academic panel and you will be advised if your abstract has been successful 2 weeks after the deadline date.

14:Live Returns Tomorrow!

Student Engagement

It’s just one day until 14:Live returns to BU! Join Dr Dinusha Mendis on the 5th Floor of the Student Centre, on Thursday 20 October at 14:00-15:00 for an exciting talk around her research.

What’s it about you ask? Going for Gold! 3D Scanning and 3D Printing of Jewellery and Implications for Intellectual Property Law.

Have you ever seen 3D printing and 3D scanning happen in reality? By allowing physical objects to be replicated, 3D printing is increasing in popularity. However, this can raise questions about intellectual property (IP) laws.

Unfortunately, there can be implications to modifying and replicating someone else’s existing design or Computer Aided Design (CAD) file. Does it infringe the IP rights of the creator? How much ‘modification’ is needed to create a new and non-infringing product? Are we about to see a new wave of file sharing in 3D designs? While the technology has significant potential to expand into various sectors, including jewellery, it raises many issues in relation to ownership and authorship. Can IP law deal with this growing technology or will we see a new wave of piracy and counterfeiting which will be hard to control?

All staff and students are welcome to attend so come down and join us for what is going to be an exciting and engaging session, over lots of free snacks and drinks! So pop it in your calendars and we can’t wait to see you.

If you have any questions about 14:Live or other student engagements events, then send over an email to Hannah Jones.

14:LIve

BU Researcher Dr Firend Al Rasch has released a book: Asian Case Studies- Lessons from Malaysian Industries

BU’s Dr Firend Al Rasch has recently published a book around his research into Asian industry and their significance to the world of trade and commerce. The book ‘Lessons from Malaysian Industries’ is one of a series of Asian case studies and explains how these industries can stay relevant among other key players in the Asian market.

This section of the series explores Malaysia which is relatively small in comparison to its other Asian-Pacific neighbours, such as India and China. In 2010, the country set a target to become a high-income nation by 2020. Dr Rasch analysed a number of Malaysian companies from a number of industries, including palm oil, electrical, electronics, business services, oil and gas etc. He discusses how Malaysia is at a disadvantage as it’s unable to compete with its larger neighbours, nor is it able to grow to the high-end market value of Singapore.

In the wake of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) the economic landscape is becoming ever more competitive and has the potential to force many businesses to become non-existent.  The study recognises how Malaysia needs to identify its strongest market niche and use this to maximise its income in order to remain relevant in the global market.

The book has used research methods that enable the reader to understand the reasoning of how Malaysian companies build their company structure and how they discuss moving forward. For example, Dr Rasch, has examined case studies such as VADS Berhad, a fully integrated Connectivity/ICT/BPO Solutions Provider which represents the issues a typical Malaysian company faces.

As well as this, the book has analysed financial data, to present the importance of financial structure. He has also looked at a breakdown of the company’s marketing strategies, to understand how they sell themselves. The methods of data collection of real companies, give the reader real-life perspective of how companies run and how the industry can survive in such a diverse and important trade region.

To get yourself a copy of the book head over to Amazon

If you’d like to ask Dr Rasch anything, then get in touch.

Postgraduate Researcher Experience Survey (PRES)

PG research

The Graduate School would like to remind all PGRs (on behalf of SUBU) that the BU/SUBU Postgraduate Researcher Experience Survey (PRES) is now open. It is an opportunity for PGRs to tell us about their experiences as a PGR student, which will help us identify areas of good practice and areas in which we could improve.  The closing date is 1 November 2016 – see link below.

PRES is an important anonymous survey which speaks out for BU PGRs only, and has been developed in consultation with BU PGR students to make it relevant to PhD, MPhil and MRes students here.

Feedback from last year’s survey helped us to, amongst other things:

  • Improve the processes for administrative support
  • Explore how to make the faculty research environment more stimulating
  • Improve communication about how to apply for funding for specialist resources

The more responses we receive, the more we can do for PGRs.  If you are a BU PGR, please help us by sparing a few moments to fill in the survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BU_PGR_Student_Experience_2016

Today at 11 – support to develop your Festival of Learning event

This morning (Wednesday 19 October) I’m basing myself in the cafe area on the ground floor of Fusion to answer all your Festival of Learning questions.  If you’ve got an event idea you want to discuss, or want help writing your application come along and say hello.  I’ll be here 11am-12pm.

To find out more, including when future drop in sessions are taking place have a look at this blog post.  To submit your Festival event take a look at the guidance available here on the staff intranet.

EU award for PhD student Preeti Mahato

international, PG research, Publishing, student research

FHSS PhD student Preeti Mahato in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) has been awarded a funded place on the COST Action Training School BEYOND BIRTH COHORTS: from study design to data management.  This training school will run from 23-15 November in Spain.

eu-flagCOST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a unique platform where European researchers can jointly develop their ideas and initiatives across all scientific disciplines through trans-European networking of nationally funded research.  Preeti pal has been awarded the sum of 500 euro to cover the cost of attending the Training School and travel and accommodation costs.    Preeti’s PhD project is on maternity care provision in  Nepal. Preeti’s research focuses on the quality and equity of service available at birthing centres. In Nepal, birthing centres act as first contact point for the women seeking maternity services especially the basic obstetric care. She is supervised by Dr. Catherine Angell, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University).

Preeti has already published the first PhD paper ‘Birthing centres in Nepal: Recent developments, obstacles and opportunities’ in the Journal of Asian Midwives (JAM) [1], whilst another was published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology [2].  Furthermore, a more general health and development paper was published this year in Health Prospect [3].

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C. (2016) Birthing centres in Nepal: Recent developments, obstacles and opportunities, Journal of Asian Midwives 3(1): 17-30.
  2. Mahato, P.K., Regmi, P.R., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C., Sathian, B. (2015) Birthing centre infrastructure in Nepal post 2015 earthquake. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 5(4): 518-519. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/14260/1157
  3. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sharma, S., Mahato, P. (2016) Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal. Health Prospect 15(1):9-10. healthprospect.org/archives/15/1/3.pdf