Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Thanks to a new partnership between Bournemouth University and Universidad Ramon Llull, Prof. Jordi Pujadas came to BU in July to give some talks in the International PG program of Tourism and Hospitality. Now it is the turn of me visiting their institution for two weeks to teach to their master students and explore students’ collaborations.
Our annual UKRO (UK Research Office) visit from our European Advisor, Maribel Glogowski, will take place on Wednesday, 14th October 2015 at Talbot Campus.
There will be an information sharing session for RKEO-only staff in the morning with presentations for all staff in the afternoon.
Indicative Schedule:
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch (afternoon attendees and RKEO)
13:00 – 14:00 EU Funding (an introduction to Horizon 2020)
14:00 – 16:15 (Draft) Work Programmes (specific strands):
14:00 – 14:25 Cross-cutting – Science with and for society / Widening participation
14:30 – 15:30 European Research Council (ERC) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
15:30 – 15:45 Break
15:45 – 16:15 Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) and Industrial Leadership
16:15 – 16:30 Concluding remarks
You can see the draft Work Programmes in the Subscribers’ area on the UKRO portal. As BU subscribes to this service, all staff can register.
Please register for this event as soon as possible by contacting Dianne Goodman, so that we can arrange catering. Once you have registered, we will confirm your attendance and venue.
If you aspire to be research-active in Europe, this event is for you. We look forward to welcoming Maribel and BU staff with international research aspirations as well as those already active in this funding stream.
I have just returned from a trip to Asia where I attended ICE – International Conference on Events in Macau (a joint organisation between BU and the Institude for Tourism Studies in Macau), followed by a short visit to Hong Kong to train agents on the portfolio of courses offered by the Faculty of Management, in particular the Events & Leisure portfolio.
At ICE I presented two papers and both were co-authored with undergraduate students that I have supervised.
The first one was together with Kate Adams, who is graduating in November. Her dissertation focused on the Strategies employed by wedding planners to manage clients’ unrealistic, fuzzy and implicit expectations. Her research offers a clear framework of management techniques based on the real life experiences of wedding planners. As unrealistic, fuzzy and implicit expectations can occur in any service, the findings can provide a useful tool to all managers, not just those in the wedding industry, to understand how to effectively manage client expectations and ensure that customer satisfaction is being achieved.
The abstract was accepted with no changes, with the following comment made by the reviewer: “This is definitely one very interesting piece of submission to the conference I’m sure. It makes a lot of sense to use expectation management to frame the current research”. Comments at the conference were similar. Attendees said they found the research very well organised and innovative.
I recently met with Kate for a catch up, and we had the opportunity to take a picture with the certificate. During our conversation we also discussed the possibility of extending the data collection to include a wider sample of event organisers. The objective is to improve the research and enhance the chances of getting the paper accepted by a higher quality journal.
The second presentation was on the Cognitive and emotional reactions to the consumption of prestige in events, co-authored with Amy Bain, a 2014 BA Events Management graduate.
A practitioner event manager who attended the conference highlighted this presentation as one that stood out in his mind (together with the presentation by Dr. Caroline Jackson, Head of Events & Leisure at BU). In his words: “As an event designer I was intrigued with talks on motivation and experience. Miguel Moital and Amy Bain presented interesting findings on “Emotional Reactions to The Consumption of Prestige in Events” while Dr Caroline Jackson presented “The Lived Experience of Popular Music Festival-Goer”. You can see his view of the conference here.
One of my favourite parts of being an academic at BU is the opportunity to supervise student dissertations. In the past I’ve supervised very good dissertations, some of which have resulted in journal articles. Not only they are well designed studies, but many are quite innovative in terms of both the topic and methodology. By looking at the reactions of other academics (and practitioners!) at ICE, they agree.
Now that my e-book on “Writing Dissertations & Theses – What you should know but no one tells you” is out, and I continue to add content to it, I am optimist that the quality of the dissertations I supervised will increase even further, leading to many more papers in the future. (You can have a peak at the book here. If you are a BU academic, send me an email (mmoital@bournemouth.ac.uk) and I will return with a code that allows you to ‘buy’ the book for free)
Researchers from the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Fotini Tsofliou, Angela Turner-Wilson, Anne Mills and Juliet Wiseman, working in collaboration with Sarah Watson (Sustainable Food City Partnership) received a Grants Academy Pilot Scheme Award from BU. This funding has enabled us to undertake some exciting new work in the field of Community Food Programmes (CFP). These are widely used services that support people to access food. However at present there is little information from the users on the role of CFPs in building the capacity of the community towards healthy eating.
Focus groups provided fascinating insights into people’s views around food growing in the community. For example, participants said:
“it’s (community gardens) really good for your mental health, your physical health, growing things and for the children as well ‘cos a lot of children think peas come from a pan or from the freezer.”
“they (children ) enjoyed harvesting.”
“yes and they’ve (children ) learnt they can and they’ve eaten them”
“if it brings people together kids take ownership of it”
Work continues with gaining understandings of the role of cooking classes and lunch clubs in relation to community’s health and wellbeing.
This week it was announced that Labour MP Gordon Marsden, who under his roles as both Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills and Shadow Minister for Education, has been given responsibility for universities.
Monday
Graduate Destinations
An interesting comment piece in the Independent explores how statistics on universities’ employability rates mean very little. Statistics on universities’ employability rates mean little. What matters is your background (The Independent).
Campus Extremism
Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the UCU, outlines opposition to the anti-extremism measures that came into force on Monday 21 September in UK colleges and universities. ‘Universities must not shy away from difficult subjects’ (The Daily Telegraph).
Tuesday
Refugee Crisis
A group of academics have written an open letter to university Vice-Chancellors calling on them each to create five undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships and bursaries for students fleeing violence and war. British universities should create bursaries for students fleeing violence and war, say academics, (The Independent).
Wednesday
Student Maintenance Grants
The NUS have announced they are taking legal action against the government over the scrapping of student maintenance grants. They are demanding that the government meets their obligations under the Equality Act 2010. We’re taking legal action against the government. (NUS).
Thursday
Graduate Premium
Graduates earned between £10,000 and £14,000 more in their early careers than people of a similar age who did not go to university, a study by researchers from Cambridge and Harvard Universities and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found. It revealed the graduate premium is bigger for women than men. Graduate salary premium ‘bigger for women’ (THE).
Student Loans
The Sutton Trust has said that freezing the £21,000 earnings threshold for repaying student loans in England would cost graduates an extra £2,800 over 30 years. Women would be more affected than men, with those from poor background hit hardest. Freezing loan threshold ‘would cost students thousands’ (BBC News).
Friday
Admissions
UCAS figures have revealed that enrolments at UK universities have climbed to a record high, with students holding vocational qualifications driving a significant portion of that growth. Admissions to UK universities hit record high (THE).
Ever heard of a hackathon? Nope, neither had I until a few weeks ago. Wikipedia reliably informs me that a hackathon is a “portmanteau of the words “hack” and “marathon”, where “hack” is used in the sense of exploratory programming”.
The challenge is to create an app that facilitates social change through sport at the Sport England Sport Technology Awards Hackathon. It will take place over 25 hours on 2-3 October 2015 during which time teams will have just 24 hours to develop their concept that will help a particular demographic group become more physically active.
The winning team will be awarded a bursary of £10,000 to help them build the app.
Our Team BU will be a collaborative effort across BU departments and services. We have five on our team so far:
Chi will be our star programmer with the rest of us supporting the conceptual and design elements.
We still have space for one more on our team. We’re particularly keen to find another programmer or anyone with skills in graphics design. Staff or students are welcome. If you’re interested please get in touch with Clare at: cfarrance@bournemouth.ac.uk
Wish us luck next week!
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) summit is being held today in New York. As part of this summit the pope will address the United Nations in NY as will Bill and Melinda Gates who run the largest private philantropic organisation in the world. The key underlying principles of the SDGs are: (a) reducing (or eradicating) poverty eradication; (b) changing unsustainable and promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production; and (c) protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development. The seventeen SDGs are outlined in Table 1.
| Goal 1 | End poverty in all its forms everywhere |
| Goal 2 | End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture |
| Goal 3 | Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages |
| Goal 4 | Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all |
| Goal 5 | Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls |
| Goal 6 | Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all |
| Goal 7 | Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all |
| Goal 8 | Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all |
| Goal 9 | Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation |
| Goal 10 | Reduce inequality within and among countries |
| Goal 11 | Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable |
| Goal 12 | Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns |
| Goal 13 | Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts* |
| Goal 14 | Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development |
| Goal 15 | Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss |
| Goal 16 | Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels |
| Goal 17 | Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development |
The SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) formally from today onwards. Key questions to be asked by researchers (and policy makers) include: (a) how are these SDGs different from the MDGs in their effect on international development?; (b) How successful will the SDGs be?, including the question: What do we define as success?; and (c) How useful were the MDGs, in which countries and for whom? These are ‘big’ system level questions, for those of use working in the field of maternity care more specific questions to address would be around priority settting. As reducing maternal mortality was one of the eight MDGs, i.e. recognised as an individual goal or target, but in the SDGs maternal health will fall under the overarching heading of Goals 3 ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages’. As health is only one of 17 SDGs and maternal health fits in with all other aspects of the lifespan does this mean maternal health has become less of a priority? Of course only time and plenty of good research will tell.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Research Professional have recently uploaded new training videos onto their Help Wiki, which can be found here:
User training videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDN8NHKF8qCDkTyiMNejFBvT6gDbr5__G
They employed a professional actress to make the videos and if you are able to guess the voice then they are offering a prize (I don’t know what it is). If you think you know who it is then email me (jgarrad@bournemouth.ac.uk) by 30th September and I’ll forward on the responses to see if anyone is correct (if more than one guesses correctly then the prize will go to the first person to email me).
Good luck!
We would like to invite you to the first research seminar of new academic year for the Creative Technology Research Centre.
Speaker: Asha Blatherwick
Title: Assistive Music Technology
Date: Wednesday 30th September 2015
Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM
Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus
Abstract: Music is essential to most of us. It can light up all areas of the brain and help to develop skills with communication and establishing identity. People use musical experiences to create meaning and coherence in states and times of adversity using its transformative properties. Music can be explored actively by playing instruments, or passively, such as listening to music and can be used to enter a state of flow.
Exploring music actively in this way can be restricted for someone with cognitive, physical, or sensory impairments. The barriers they face may cause gaps between their musical gestures and the music making means available to them. Using technology, we can bridge these gaps by focusing on a person’s capability to create personal instruments that allow for active music making and exploration of sound. Technology can be used to turn tiny movements into huge sounds and tangible user interfaces can be used to investigate the relationship between the physical and digital world, leading to new modes of interaction.
My research will take an Action Research approach to create bespoke tangible tools that combine hardware and software, allowing users to create and explore sound using their capabilities in a participatory way.
We hope to see you there.
The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:
Innovate UK
Analytical technologies for pharmaceuticals
Innovate UK is to invest up to £4 million in collaborative R&D projects to address the UK’s need for improved analytical technologies that support the development of current and next generation biopharmaceutical products.
The aim of this competition is to advance the industry by addressing sector-specific challenges relating to analytical technologies for testing and characterising biopharmaceutical products and monitoring processes, as well as the supporting informatics tools.
Max Award: £500,000 to £1.5 million Deadline: 14 October for registration, 21 October 2015 for EOI
Brazil-UK collaborative industrial research & development competition
Innovate UK and SENAI (the National Service for Industrial Training) of Brazil are to invest up to £3.4 million in collaborative industrial R&D projects that propose new commercial solutions to critical challenges impacting the socio-economic growth and development of Brazil in relation to its energy, water, and waste management.
Max Award: Total funding up to £3.4 million Deadline: 7 December 2015
RCUK – CONACYT
Research Partnerships – UK & Mexico
This initiative will provide funding for transformative and high-quality collaborative research projects which address the following topics:
The objective is to deliver significant research funding for internationally competitive and innovative collaborative projects between researchers from Mexico and the UK that will allow the pursuit of shared research interests.
Max Award: Unspecified for up to 5 years Deadline: 23 October 2015 for Intentions to Submit, 24 November 2015 for full submission
BBSRC
BBSRC & State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation – Joint Call in advanced biofuels
This call aims to advance the excellent scientific relationships developed between UK and Brazilian scientists and encourage new partnerships to develop integrated biorefinery approaches for the manufacture of advanced biofuels, producing industrially relevant scientific outputs which can be taken up by a global industry.
Max Award: Unspecified for up to 5 years Deadline: 26 October 2015 for Intention to Submit and 19 November 2015 for full submission
Resilience of the UK food systems in a global context
The programme will integrate biological, environmental and social sciences to support interdisciplinary projects addressing one or more of the following key themes:
Max Award: Unspecified for up to 5 years, total of £14million Deadline: 27 October 2015
Standard follow-on funding
The Follow-on funding programme is designed to support the translation of fundamental research funded by us into practical application, including commercialisation. The aim of the programme is to help researchers maximise the societal and economic benefits of their research.
This programme is a proof-of-concept model where further work on an idea will take it through to the stage at which the route to application is clear, which may include a spin-out or licensing opportunity.
Max Award: £250,000 for 12 – 18 months Deadline: 11 November 2015
International workshops scheme
This call makes around 8 awards each year for a workshop to be held overseas or in the UK. The aims are:
Max Award: £10,000 Deadline: 12 November 2015
NERC
NERC & State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation – Sustainable gas futures
This call is supported by the UK through the Newton Fund which forms part of the UK government’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment. The AO/CFP is only open to joint UK-Brazil applications. NERC will provide up to £1m of funding (80% FEC) to eligible UK-based researchers and São Paulo partner organizations will match this with equivalent research effort to eligible researchers associated with research institutions in the State of São Paulo.
Max Award: Up to £80,000 Deadline: 10 November 2015
Advanced training short courses initiative
This call invites proposals offering training in a variety of forms that fall both within the NERC science remit as well as addressing one or more of the Priority Training Areas contained within the ATSC Announcement of Opportunity document. Training must prioritise NERC-funded PhD students or develop the skills of environmental sciences early career researchers (working within academic and/or non-academic settings) for future careers in research and other contexts.
Max Award: £20,000 – £50,000 Deadline: 12 November 2015
Soil security research fellowship awards
The overarching aim of the Soil Security programme is to advance understanding of the ability of soils to adapt to perturbations. It will do this by building an integrated and predictive understanding of the multiple functions of soil. This will improve forecasts of the soil system’s response to changes in climate, vegetation or land management at scales of analysis that match the scale of decision making.Max
Max Award: Up to £2 million Deadline: 3 December 2015
Wellcome Trust
Senior Research Fellowships in Basic Biomedical Science
This scheme provides support for outstanding postdoctoral scientists based in academic institutions in the UK and Republic of Ireland.
Max Award: Covers basic salary, research expenses and specified other costs for up to 5 years Deadline: 8 December for preliminary application, 26 February 2016 for full submission
Senior Research Fellowships in Clinical Science
These Fellowships provide support for clinical academics with exceptional ability and outstanding promise to further develop their research potential.
Max Award: Covers basic salary, research expenses and specified other costs for up to 5 years Deadline: 8 December for preliminary application, 26 February 2016 for full submission
EUREKA, EU
Eureka Innovation Award
Each project nomination must target one specific category:
Max Award: First prize in each category: 6000 euros and pan-European promotion package of 10,000 euros Deadline: 15 October 2015
Directorate-General for Climate Action, EU
The objective of the study is to undertake a fact-finding exercise to examine whether there is any conclusive evidence of carbon leakage occurring in phase III of the EU ETS as a result of pricing carbon. This is important in the current context: work is ongoing in preparation for the revision of the Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards post-2020 provisions. A Commission proposal for the revision has been presented in July 2015 and one of the main elements of the future system will be establishing measures to address the risk of carbon leakage.
Max Award: 250,000 – 300,000 euros Deadline: 26 October 2015
ERANID & ERA-Net, EU
Understanding Drug Use Pathways
A first Joint call was launched on 15 September 2015 and aims at funding multidisciplinary transnational research in “Understanding drug use pathways”. The content of this call reflects the findings of a large programme of work to identify common research priorities for illicit drugs in Europe that resulted in a Strategic Research Agenda. The call encourages research that will provide a better understanding of the processes underlying the dynamics of drug use pathways and transitions between types of drug use.
Max Award: Total funding 4 million euros Deadline: 24 November 2015
European Agency for Safety & Health at Work, EU
Eusebio Rial-Gonzalez Innovation & Practice Award in Occupational Health Psychology
The European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, in collaboration with European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, invites applications for their Eusebio Rial-Gonzalez innovation and practice award in occupational health psychology. This aims to award contributions to the field of occupational health psychology.
Max Award: Not specified Deadline: 1 February 2016
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, US
Explore new ways to measure delivery & use of digital financial services data
Develop an innovative analytics or data capture solution to improve the delivery and use of digital financial services in developing countries. The focus of this call is on solutions that are relevant to commercial strategies and likely to make large improvements in performance outcomes for commercial deployments.
Max Award: USD100,000 for Phase I projects, up to USD1 million for Phase II projects Deadline: 11 November 2015
Please note that some funders specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer
You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.
If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.
The first mock exercise in preparation for the next Research Exercise Framework is due to take place soon. This mock REF exercise is open to ALL academic staff and staff will be invited to submit up to FOUR outputs published since 1 January 2014. This first exercise will be a ‘light touch’ review to gauge all eligible outputs and their likely contribution to the unit of assessment(s).
More information and guidance regarding this mock exercise will be provided shortly. Meanwhile, early preparations can be made by ensuring that all outputs and their full texts are deposited into BURO via BRIAN where possible. You can refer to this blog post for a quick guide to uploading your full text.
Also, please see below for your reference, the list of all Unit of Assessment Leader(s).
As mentioned above, more information and guidance will be released shortly so do watch out for it.
Hosted by the UK Intellectual Property Office and the China-Britain Business Council
The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG
09:00-17:00, Wednesday 21 October
Do you want to know more about obtaining and enforcing your intellectual property rights in China? Have you experienced IP issues in China and want to know more about the support networks available or how the IP system is changing? Do you work for a Chinese company looking to protect IP as you invest and do business in the UK?
The 3rd UK-China Intellectual Property Symposium is an opportunity for businesses to engage with policymakers to understand the current IP systems in both countries and to learn about future reforms.
China is a key priority of the Government’s trade and investment strategy. In 2013, UK exports to China were worth $24.5bn (£15.7bn). The Government has worked to increase two-way trade to $100 billion by the end of 2015, and within this to double UK exports to China from their 2010 level to $30 billion. The UK is on track towards achieving this goal.
An effective IP regime is crucial to the success of British businesses in China. China’s IP legal framework is improving through a rapid and relatively transparent process of legislative reform. In this dynamic context the UK Intellectual Property Office and the China-Britain Business Council, will host the 3rd UK-China IP Symposium in London at the Royal Society on 21st October. It will be opened by the UK’s Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Neville-Rolfe. The Symposium will cover all the intellectual property rights as well as more focused sessions on anti-counterfeiting and judicial enforcement. Each session will include a diverse panel of speakers from the British and Chinese governments, industry and academia. They will outline the latest developments and current approaches to IP in both China and the UK.
The organisers expect high level engagement from a number of UK and Chinese businesses. The delegation confirmed to attend from China includes representatives from Lenovo, ZTE, Baidu, JD.Com, Zhongguancun, Xiaomi, 360 Qikoo and Foton.
Find out more and register at the event webpage.
Join us in this Writing Academy Lunchbyte session and learn about the importance of writing an abstract: the why and how.
Date : 30th September 2015 (Wednesday)
Time : 12.00 – 13.00 (presentation); 13:00 – 13:30 (lunch)
Venue : TAG03, Talbot
How often to you undertake important research and yet find the last thing you do is to dash off an abstract without reflecting on just how important this element of writing is? The abstract is the ‘shop window’ for your research. The abstract you write could make the difference between being accepted to present at a conference or not. It could mean success or failure in a grant proposal. It could make all the difference in whether your work is read and cited.
This Lunch Byte will examine the difference between a ‘good’ abstract and a ‘bad’ abstract and give some pointers to success. Matt Bentley will use examples from his own abstracts to illustrate how to do it and how not to do it.
Come and join us in this session and afterwards, there will be opportunities to have informal discussions with the presenter while having a bite to eat.
To ensure that we place the right catering order, please get in touch with Staff Development to book your place.
If you are unsure of how to upload the full text of your publication onto BRIAN to be deposited in BURO, these are the three easy steps you can follow!
Step 1 – Ensure publication record already exists in your BRIAN account. If it does not, click on the ‘+’ sign next to it –
You will see a search box on the following page. Enter the title of your publication in the search box. If the record of your publication already exists within BRIAN, you simply need to scroll to it and ‘claim’ it. Otherwise, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘create manual entry’. You can then populate all relevant information of your publication on the following page. Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom to ‘save’ your record!
Step 2 – Once the publication record exists within BRIAN, click on the the blue arrow up icon, and you will be taken to the deposit page
Step 3 – Locate the correct version of your full text in accordance with the policy advice from Sherpa romeo; and then click ‘upload’.
When the upload is complete, you will be notified on the screen that your full text is under review by the BURO team. Once approved by the BURO team of its legality, the link to the full text in BURO will be created and the link will also appear on your Staff Profile Page. If at any point you are unsure of this process, please send an email either to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk or BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk for assistance and advice.
In our next ‘Photo of the week’, we are exploring research investigating what information a fish scale can provide and how that can be utilised within ecological monitoring. The research is being led by BU’s Georgina Busst.
This scale is from a grayling, which belongs to the salmon family of fishes. There are many rings running around it – similar to that of a tree and just like trees fish grow seasonally. The seasonal growth is visible on their scales as rings are laid down closer together in winter, as fish grow much more slowly and are more spread apart in summer, as fish grow at a faster rate. You can see this pattern in this photo. The fish that this scale belongs to is 1 year old, approaching 2. You can tell this as the rings are closer together near the scale edge, indicating slower growth and therefore winter.
Scales are extremely valuable tools for fisheries ecologists as you can remove a few without harming the fish and you can collect lots of different information from them. Scales can be used not only to age fish, but to monitor their growth rates and relate this back to changes in the environment; reveal how many times a fish has spawned; how many years it has spent at sea; for DNA and genetic analysis and stable isotope analysis, which can reveal what the fish has eaten and what position it is in a food web. All that from a simple scale.
For more information about the project, email Georgina for further details.
This was an entry to BU’s first research photography competition and the entries for the next competition will be open shortly. For more details abouth the competition, please email research@bournemouth.ac.uk
Crew shooting early scene for the short, research-based film, RUFUS STONE
Kip Jones’ draft Chapter for The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History was deposited today on BRIAN and Academia.edu. The book’s section on Ethics is edited by Ivor Goodson, with assistance from Ari Antikainen, Molly Andrews and Pat Sikes. Jones’ Chapter entitled, “Styles of Good Sense—Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship” is based upon his experience as researcher, author and producer of the award winning short film, RUFUS STONE.
Jones proposes that aesthetics and ethics need to be considered in concert and that they are at the very heart of arts-based research. Ethics and Aesthetics become intertwined and support one another. Jones states:
‘Ethics, much like aesthetics, is often misunderstood as something effusive, illusive and somehow, decision-making by the few on a rarefied echelon, involving pronouncements of grand moral impact and/or sophisticated discrimination. For these kinds of reasons and to avoid potential headaches, it is often assumed that checklists and committees will be far better at making such decisions than mere individuals.’
Jones believes that ethics and aesthetics need to remain the prerogative of the researcher/filmmaker and her/his participants and audiences. By developing a trust in instinct and intuition and the naturally expressive and moral potential of our personal resources, research involving people’s stories can become richer and more human, if we only are willing to jettison some of the baggage of the old academic rigor and dry procedural ethics.
Jones’ involvement in the section of the book on Ethics will include co-contributors Arthur Frank, Norm Denzin, Laurel Richardson and Carolyn Ellis, and will be published in the New Year.
Today I attended a contract-signing meeting at the Department of Health, Physical and Population Education at Nepal’s oldest university, Tribhuvan University (TU).
BU, TU and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) have been awarded a Tropical Health & Education Trust (THET) grant for health partnerships to carry out training and capacity-building projects in low-income countries, such as Nepal.
The new BU-led THET project will bring highly experienced UK volunteers to train some 100 maternity care providers, such as Auxiliary Health Workers (AHWs) and Auxiliary Nurse 
Midwives (ANMs) about the key mental health issues in pregnancy and in the months after birth. A local charity Green Tara Nepal (GTN) will support the work through some of the curriculum design, sensitising UK volunteers to live in rural Nepal, assisting in translating, as well as helping to recruit the local health workers. The two UK universities have a long history of working with GTN as well as its sister organisation Green Tara Trust (GTT), a Buddhist charity based in London. The new project will be based in Nawalparasi in the sub-tropical part of the country bordering India. The target population consists of grassroot health care practitioners since there are no doctors in these rural villages.
The pictures accompanying this post illustrate the inequalities and the mix of modern and traditional in Kathmandu today. The city crowded with motorbikes and then occasionnally one sees a couple cows been driven through these busy streets. The green house is in the street in front of where I am staying and the shanty town building are the backdoor neighbours. The picture with text is the price-list ourside the main infectious diseases hospital informing patients about the costs of certain treatments, tests and drugs. A reminder that health care might be free in name for the poorest people, there are still many costs involved in gettiong treated in hospital!
This project is supported by the Tropical Health & Education Trust (THET) as part of the Health Partnership Scheme, which is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The following people make up the international project team: Edwin van Teijlingen, Padam Simkhada, Bhimsen Devkota, Padmadharini Fanning, Jillian Ireland, Bibha Simkhada, Lokendra Sherchan, Ram Chandra Silwal, Samridhi Pradhan, Shyam K. Maharjan, Ram K. Maharjan
The resources can be found here and include some fantastic sections on:
BU staff can login below:
SERVED research project: Supporting Evidence-based Research for Veterans Experiencing Dementia
Alzheimer’s Awareness Week – join us in BGB on Tuesday 20th May
Nanocoatings to Bionanocomposites: Sustainable Solutions
Take part in the 2025 ESRC Festival of Social Science – Deadline for applications: Thursday 15 May 2025 
AI learning to read emotions from motion….
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
Research Information Network
Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme pre-Published