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34th International Human Science Research Conference

I have recently returned from presenting at this conference in Trondheim, Norway. It was a very positive experience and there was a great deal of dialogue and networking  amongst the participants.

“The lived experience of intentional weight loss whilst living in a society with cultural expectations of thinness”

Dr Teresa Burdett

EC Info Day – Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy taking place on the 14th-15th Sept

Info Days

EC Info days: relating to Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy are being held on the: 14th-15th September 2015 in Brusselseuflag

Info days and brokerage events run by the EC are an opportunity to get an overview of work programmes covering the 2016 and 2017 calendar years, meet up and hear from others who are interested in the same programme and potentially form links and build consortia for future applications.

Please click on the link below to book or register your interest – please bear in mind places are limited

http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=events&eventcode=0B56FA95-AFE0-D63B-DD0527FE301EC26C

Please let Emily or myself know if you intend to go so we can co-ordinate if others also wish to attend.

Piirus – top five ways to find collaborators

The Piirus Blog is discussing the top five ways to find collaborators to further your research.

ideasAccording to their research Piirus found that 85% of researchers said collaboration with others helps drive research excellence and 79% of researchers think international research collaboration increases research productivity. In their recent survey, however, research managers ranked developing collaborations as one of their top challenges.

So what can you do?

  1. Decide the types of collaboration activities you seekPiirus
  2. Get tips on how to make collaborations in these areas work
  3. Find collaborators in your research field or from other disciplines
  4. Find people by research methodology or technique
  5. Find collaborators with experience in the equipment you need

Interested? Read more about this topic on the Pirrus Blog.

Piirus can help you make these connections. It is easy to sign up!

 

HE Policy Update

Monday

Staff Teaching Qualifications

It has been argued that the failure of universities to supply sufficiently robust data on staff teaching qualifications is another obstacle to the government’s bid to introduce a Teaching Excellence Framework. HEFCE has asked universities to reveal how many of their staff hold an accredited teaching qualification, with the information viewed as a potential metric in the teaching excellence framework. Lack of teaching qualification data seen as blow to TEF (THE).

NUS

The NUS Vice-President for Higher Education has argued that traditional methods of assessment such as exams and essays “privileged people from certain backgrounds”, particularly the privately educated, and that getting a good mark often reflected “that you know how to play the game” rather than “the effort you have put in or the learning that has gone on”. NUS vice-president blames university teaching for struggles of poorer students (THE).

Students in Work

The insurance company Endsleigh has revealed that three out of every four students are working either part or full-time to help fund their way through university. Three out of every four students working to help fund university, according to new figures (The Independent).

Tuesday

International Students

Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield discusses the integration of international students studying in the UK. He argues that one of the greatest challenges may be convincing home students that they can benefit from working and socialising with international students. Get UK students out of comfort zone and engaging with international peers (The Guardian).

University Admissions

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire has argued that there should be a longer-term aim to move to a system of applying to university after students know their result, rather than the current system of relying on predicted grades to receive conditional offers. University applications ‘should come after results’ (BBC News).

Wednesday

NSS

The National Student Survey results revealed that undergraduate satisfaction has held steady despite the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in England. National Student Survey 2015: £9K fees fail to dent satisfaction (THE).

Thursday

QAA

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has responded to the current quality assessment review. Their response reveals that the QAA supports most of the principles behind the consultation. However, it argues that the UK Quality Code should be reformed rather than removed. Fighting for survival (Research Professional).

A-Level Results

A-Level results revealed that more than 409,000 students have been accepted on to UK higher education courses, a record high and a rise of 3 per cent on the same point last year. Figures also reveal that the gender gap in university admissions continues to widen, with 27,000 more young women than men set to enrol. A-level results 2015: record number of students accepted into UK higher education (THE).

Friday

HE Funding

A report due to be published next month by the influential thinktank, Policy Exchange, argues for funding to be redistributed from university to FE provision. The report is expected to argue that FE colleges would be better placed to meet the growing demand for higher-level technical qualifications than universities, so government funding should be allocated accordingly. Cut university budgets to fund FE, suggests thinktank (THE).

FREE – Places for BU Staff and PhD Students for Creative Approaches in Dementia Masterclass

Research themes, Training

BUDI have a few free places available for BU staff and PhD Students to attend its masterclass entitled “Creative Approaches in Dementia” being held on Wednesday 30 September. This masterclass will be an interactive session which will be exploring the power and potential of creativity in supporting good practice and positive experiences of living with dementia.

Our speakers are:

Derek Eland, artist; Jonny Fluffypunk, poet; Andrew Baker, musician and Sharon Muiruri, drama specialist.

To read the flyer please click here . To book your free place please contact Dr Samuel Nyman at snyman@bournemouth.ac.uk

A year in the Life of an Early Career Researcher

Grants Academy

I joined BU as a lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication on 1 September 2014, three months after being awarded my PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Salford.

So, as the anniversary of my appointment approaches, I consider it timely to reflect on my first year as a full-time academic. I hope that my experience will be of interest to others starting new academic roles this year, at a similar stage in their careers.

To put my experience in context, while technically an early career researcher, I’m no spring chicken! I was a very mature PhD student (even though no-one ever guesses my real age) and joined BU with baggage in tow!

The eclectic baggage I brought with me was six years’ experience as a lecturer in higher education on a part-time basis combined with a variety of other roles including journalist, research assistant, blogger, PhD student, social entrepreneur and Chief Executive of Black British Academics.

I arrived at BU with drive, motivation and ambition intact, after four years of intense doctoral study, with my carefully prepared 5-year research plan, diligently completed after receiving my PhD award, which accompanied me to my interview at BU in June 2014.

By my own observations, the first five years post PhD is make-or-break time. With aspirations to become a professor one day, performing the yearly regime of international conferences, journal articles, books, book chapters and funding bids are necessary tasks.

My primary area of research in media and communication is centred on racial constructions and representations in media and popular culture and how race shapes and influences engagement with and use of digital technologies.  My PhD thesis is a study on the social, cultural and counterhegemonic practices of Black British bloggers.

DG-MPG-Nov2013

A the Media and Politics Group conference

Year 1 of my 5-year research plan included developing publications from my PhD thesis. In November 2013 I had presented a paper from the chapter: Alternative Voices, Alternative Spaces, Counterhegemonic Discourse in the Blogosphere at BU for the Media and Politics Group annual conference. It won the James Thomas Memorial Prize, and is the first chapter in a new book being published with Palgrave Macmillan in September, edited by four faculty colleagues, called Media, Margins and Civic Agency.

I presented another chapter of my thesis at the Cyberspace conference in the Czech Republic in November 2014, which I recently submitted for review at Information, Communication and Society: Blogging While Black, British and Female: A Critical Study on Discursive Activism.

A third chapter: Challenging the Whiteness of Britishness: Co-Creating British Social History in the Blogosphere, was presented at the ICCMTD conference in Dubai in May, and has been accepted for publication in the Online Journal of Media and Communication Technologies for a special issue in September.

My PhD thesis now exhausted publication-wise, I am currently focusing on three strands of research: race and ethnicity in media and communication, pedagogies of social justice and cultural democracy and race equality and cultural democracy. These research interests are broadly linked to three key dimensions of my role as an academic: 1) research (extending knowledge within my discipline) 2) education (teaching), and 3)professional practice.

Cultural democracy, a recurring theme in my research, is a conceptual framework developed in the US more than a decade ago, surprisingly unfamiliar and underexplored on this side of the Atlantic. However, I plan to change that by advancing understanding through research based on its application in practice. After setting up the Cultural Democracy Network in May, shortly after being awarded a small grant from the Grants Academy to develop partnerships with UK-based institutions, I was invited to deliver a guest lecture on cultural democracy to 14 journalists at Research Fortnight’s London offices.

DG at RG [2] 260515

At Research Fortnight

Two of my current research projects represent research papers based on consultancy projects completed this past year. The first is a journal article I am co-authoring with Prof Kevin Hylton called Culturally Democratic Voices: Enhancing Race Equality Through Minority Staff Experiences, which we plan to submit to Race, Ethnicity and Education.

The second is a co-authored paper with Aisha Richards called Social Justice Pedagogy and Cultural Democracy: Promoting Inclusion and Equality in Further and Higher Education. It has just been accepted for presentation at the IAFOR International Conference on Education taking place in Hawaii in January, and we hope it will be selected for publication in the Journal of Education.

I have a book chapter coming out in September being published by Verlag Springer called Race, Racism and Resistance In British Academia, which I presented at the Surviving in a White Institution symposium at Leeds University in May, organised by the Critical Race and Ethnicities Network.

Finally, I am co-editor of a book project with Dr Shirley Tate, an Associate Professor in sociology at Leeds University, which is a collection of autoethnographies called Hear Us: Women Academics of Colour: Surviving and Thriving in British Academia, which we plan to publish next Autumn. It is a project I developed for the Black Sister Network at Black British Academics.

It has been a busy and productive year as an early career researcher, and in terms of my plans for the year ahead, this will be focused on the completion of work in progress, developing a funding bid and turning my attention to new areas of research.

One of these areas is advertising, which will inform my teaching on the BA Advertising degree. I plan to examine issues around constructions and representations of race and gender in TV advertising, examining audience perceptions. The other new area of research which builds on my doctoral study is engagement with digital technologies among Black elders.

In terms of the 5-year research plan I started out with, I discarded it within the first three months! I prefer to work with a yearly plan as I have found that in practice, the research culture and environment is too fluid, dynamic and constantly changing to plan specific publications so far in advance.

However, it is still a useful exercise post PhD to prompt thinking about the areas of research to focus on and the types of research projects to undertake. I have a target for publications and funding bids I aim to complete by 2019 – just before REF2020, so forward planning helps to ensure I stay on track!

By Dr Deborah Gabriel, Lecturer in Politics, Media and Marketing Communications in the Faculty of Media and Communication.

Creative Skillset – news & updates – August 2015

Business Engagement

theme - creative-digitalView all of these stories and more in full:

News

* Trailblazer apprenticeships on the way: Help build your ideal apprentice

* Tick talent takes jobs: Why to Pick the Tick as we celebrate our graduates’ success

* Film and TV Launchpad: A stellar line-up for our Tick graduates

 Opportunities

* Are you in the 500?: Digital companies can pledge a vacancy for the Tech London 500 talent pool

* Film Trainee Finder: Film placements open!

* The Old Vic 12 hit Hiive: New competition for directors, playwrights, producers, and designers

 Events

* Edinburgh TV Festival: We’re sponsoring with inspirational diversity sessions

* Into Film Festival: Open students’ eyes at over 2,500 free screenings for 5-19s

* Open Doors Meetups: 16-24? Find your digital career at our next company-hosted meetup

About Creative Skillset

 

 

 

Introducing Katarina Krumplevska: Undergraduate Research Assistant

student research

Hello! My name is Katarina Krumplevska and I have just finished my Undergraduate Research Assistantship position within the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. The project I worked on was to validate a questionnaire which explored attitudes and beliefs of pain. This involved data collection, data analyses and starting to write up the results in a paper. As a graduate in psychology I had the experience of being a research assistant last year within the Psychology Department where I was involved in a health psychology project. I really appreciated the challenge of learning about pain and completing statistical analyses which were new. I think this project provided a great opportunity to realize that I can rise to the challenge of a project and work with people I have not worked with before. This has given me confidence which I believe will contribute to my next venture to do the MSc of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology at Bournemouth University in September.

Lunchtime Seminar on Measuring and Monitoring Research Impact 1-1.50pm, Wednesday 19th August in R301!

REF Subjects, Research assessment, student research

For those who will be around, please come along to support Jo George’s lunchtime seminar to hear her ‘Reflections on Measuring and Monitoring Research Impact from my Undergraduate Research Assistantship’.  She will present her findings around what makes a good impact case study, the case studies she has been working on, as well as her personal learnings.  Hope you can make it!

EC Info Day – EU Brokerage Event on Key Enabling Strategies taking place on the 1st of Oct 2015

Info Days

EC Info days: relating to EU Brokerage Event on Key Enabling Strategies is being held on the:

1st of October 2015 in Strasbourg, France  euflag

Info days and brokerage events run by the EC are an opportunity to get an overview of work programmes covering the 2016 and 2017 calendar years, meet up and hear from others who are interested in the same programme and potentially form links and build consortia for future applications.

Please click on the link below to book or register your interest:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=events&eventcode=2DE41882-FADE-977A-8FDF508D5871C5AA

Please let Emily or myself know if you intend to go so we can co-ordinate if others also wish to attend.

RCUK Telling Tales of Engagement Competition 2015

Funding opportunities

RCUKThe RCUK Digital Economy Theme (DET) is running a competition designed to help capture and promote the impact that your digital economy research is having. Three prizes of £10,000 are available to support researchers to further tell the story of research impact in an interesting and engaging way to a wider audience.

The competition, which has been co-developed with the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB), is designed to produce very informative case study exemplars which can be used to help the wider research community develop understanding of the nature of a pathway to impact. It aims to encourage applicants to tell a story to describe the pathway to impact which actually occurred. This should be even more informative because understanding how impact arises is key to planning for future impact pathways.

They want the stories to portray impact as including what capability has changed outside the institutions, and what benefits that exercising this capability change has then delivered. Each ‘Tale of Engagement’ in showing how the actual impact arises and the evidence of the impact itself will thereby show clearly the link between the impact and the research. Choosing how to tell the story should reflect the nature of the story itself. They hope that giving the timeline of the whole story should stimulate thinking on more imaginative and illustrative ways to tell the tale of engagement and the resulting impact.

You will need to complete the form on this page, addressing the questions raised in the ‘Scope of Competition’ section of the full call document, and taking into account the “Guidance on completing proforma” notes. You will need to attach to the form, a single PowerPoint slide which summarises your entry in an interesting and engaging way.

Resources

Closing date: 01 December 2015 at 12:00

Please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer in the first instance if you are interested in applying to this call.

New publication by BU PhD student Jib Acharya

Publishing, student research

Jib paper India 2015

Congratulations to FHSS Ph.D. student Mr. Jib Acharya, whose paper ‘Study of nutritional problems in preschool aged children in Kaski District in Nepal’  has just been published in the Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Healthcare [1].  The academic paper, based on his Ph.D. thesis, reports on his mixed-methods Public Health study addressing attitudes and knowledge of mothers of young children (pre-school aged) in one particular district in Nepal.  The research comprises a quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups.   Jib Acharya, who is originally from Nepal, compares and contrasts the attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of poor rural and poor urban women (=mothers) in that district.   The research is supervised by Dr. Jane Murphy, Dr. Martin Hind and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

SAM_3423

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Reference:

  1. Acharya, J., van Teijlingen, E., Murphy, J., Hind, M. (2015) Study of nutritional problems in preschool aged children in Kaski District in Nepal, Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Healthcare 1(2): 97-118.

Fusion Investment Fund 2014/15: Upskilling the Engineering Workforce – an update

Awarded & submitted bids, Festival of Learning, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

In December 2014 we received funding from the Fusion Investment Fund for a project which we hoped would allow us to strengthen strategic partnerships with local/national engineering companies (see previous posting). We are happy to report that the project has been a success.

Over the past few months we have been working with the Missions Systems division of Cobham PLC, based in Wimborne, and four of their employees, who are also students on our innovative Flexible Learning MEng (Hons) Engineering degree, to develop a Professional Registration Mentoring Scheme. Cobham was an ideal company to work with as it is the third largest aerospace and defence employer in the UK with over 12000 employees globally and 500 employees at the Wimborne site alone.

The main outcome of the project has been the development of the structure of the scheme, scheme material and promotional material.

Mentoring Scheme Flyer

In addition, a Festival of Learning lecture was developed entitled: ‘what professional engineers do and how to become one’. The lecture was attended by a mix of children and their parents who wished to find out more about embarking on engineering as a career and engineering employees from a range of industries who wished to find out more about how to develop themselves professionally. Promotional flyers for the professional registration mentoring scheme were provided to the engineering employees to take back to their companies. It is hoped interest from employers in the scheme will be generated from the event.

The scheme has also been integrated into the flexible learning engineering degree curriculum through the Level 6 unit Advanced Engineering and Level 7 unit MEng Project. Students studying on the degree will be mentored for up to a year after graduation to provide professional development opportunities by achieving professional registration. Thus, preparing the individual with key skills for the workplace and creating sought after individuals who will be recognised as the future leaders in their field.

Finally, a strong link has been developed with Cobham which is expected to carry on after this project. The links and reputation of BU developed through this project will be used to build the relationship with Cobham to ensure the apprentices progress to BU to complete their academic studies on the FdEng Engineering and MEng Engineering degrees.

A future goal, once established regionally, is to secure recognition for the scheme from an appropriate professional body. This will then provide the credibility to expand the scheme nationally

Please do feel free to get in touch with us if you would like further information.

Dr Phil Sewell –  (Principal Investigator) – Acting Head of Design and Engineering Department/Associate Professor – psewell@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dr Tania Humphries-Smith – Associate Professor – thumphri@bournemouth.ac.uk