Tagged / 2022

Research reflections 2022: Your highlights

As we come to the end of 2022, we’re taking a look back at some of our research and knowledge exchange successes from across the year.

In today’s blog post, Professor Jane Murphy, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, shares some of her highlights… 

“I started this role on 1st April 2022 – April Fool’s Day, ironically! At the same time, I started a new funded project – the DIALOR ( DIgitAL cOaching for fRailty) project, which has been funded by the NIHR ARC Wessex and is a digital health coaching project for people in the early to moderate stages of frailty.

Starting a new role and a project on the same day was quite interesting and there was lots to prepare and get up and running but I was really fortunate to have a huge amount of support from my predecessor.

It’s been brilliant to join such an inspiring and forward-thinking leadership team and also great to work with colleagues across the Faculty in a different role.

It’s been a really exciting year for the Faculty in terms of research. We obviously had the REF results in May, with lots to celebrate from our submission, and some major research successes and funding awarded – such as Professor Edwin van Teijlingen’s NIHR grant for drowning prevention work in Bangladeshi children.

We’ve also had a lot of new staff join us this year and, in particular, early career researchers (ECRs) within the Faculty, and I’ve started work this year on understanding how we can better promote a positive research culture.

One of the initiatives that I’ve implemented is a new ECR Community Hub, which I’m running in partnership with Professor Lee Ann Fenge so we have both the health and social care perspectives. We’ve had a couple of meetings to date and will have more in the New Year but it gives our new ECRs and research staff an opportunity to come together, have a conversation, and meet with myself and Lee Ann.

We’ve also established a new Professoriate Group which is going to be chaired by Professor Vanora Hundley for professors and associate professors.

We’re making the most of our new fantastic new building – it’s made such a difference being able to walk down the corridors and bump into people and make those connections. Next year, we’ll be looking at ways to use the building to bring our research to life and thinking creatively about how we can bring people into our lovely building and show them what we’re doing.

We’re also building exciting partnerships, such as our links with University Hospitals Dorset. We had the research event in October, which was really successful, and we’ll be having more engagement events to help develop new pathways to grow research and support clinical academics who want to conduct research in partnership with us.

We’re building similar models with Dorset Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset County Hospital as well, so it’s very much a Dorset-wide approach, strengthening and growing the region as a place to engage with education and research, with the capability to improve patient care and public health.

I think as a Faculty, we’re in a really strong position. We have ambitious targets for our research income and knowledge exchange but underpinning that, we’re thinking our strategy and processes and what we need to put in place to help us grow and develop and help us achieve those targets. I’m looking forward to continuing to build on this work in 2023!”

Research reflections 2022: Your highlights

As we come to the end of 2022, we’re taking a look back at some of our research and knowledge exchange successes from across the year.

In today’s blog post, members of the BU community share some of their highlights…

In 2022, we celebrated the REF 2021 results (and associated increase in QR funding) and our increase in performance in KEF2. We also supported BU to successfully retain the HR Excellence in Research Award for the 8th year.

We had a successful internal research audit and we received positive feedback from the Senate review on URPPC management, administration and advice.

We supported the launch of the Strategic Narratives, including organising the Online Public Lecture Series, and we ran our first research conference in several years, which was a great success. We also re-started our in-person Café Scientifique series and delivered several events as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.

We established the Research Excellence Team and welcomed the Business and Knowledge Exchange Managers to BU, as well as launching the RCaTS scheme.

We made further improvements to the RKE processes by working with the BU Transformation Team, such as the implementation of the enquiry management system, the eItB, and the launch of a new process for Research Centre memberships.

We’ve increased our number of bids compared to the previous year, which has led to some exciting new awards, such as Dr Philip Riris’ AHRC grant and a Knowledge Transfer Partnership led by Professor Marcin Budka.

RDS moved into Studland House and Joelle Fallows, RDS Operations Officer, has been instrumental in linking a new charity (Story Works, set up by Dee Hughes in FMC) with a local primary school, launched with a visit from Michael Rosen (the charity patron) to BU – pretty cool!

Julie Northam, Head of RDS

The work being undertaken by myself and Henry Bang from the BUDMC has had major impacts through projects such as AFRICAB, EVALDIS and ELIED, working with governmental organisations in preparing for, responding to, and recovery from crisis.

Elsewhere in the Faculty, Professor Mike Silk has concluded his big grants around the Paralympics, with major coverage in the year of the Paralympic Games; Professor Dimitrios Buhalis’s achievement of being the most cited academic in terms of individual papers in the field of Tourism and Hospitality; Professor Janet Dickinson and her exciting e-drones project; and Professor Chris Chapleo has been supporting local business Actisense, enhancing and automating their customer service through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

Professor Lee Miles, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice, BU Business School

As part of the BOU (British Ornithological Union) panel that records fossil and archaeological birds from the last 2.6 Million years for the official British list (category F) we published a paper in Ibis detailing our database. This can be used to inform policy decisions on native status of British birds. The paper includes a discussion of some of the more interesting and controversial records like the mandarin duck, pigmy cormorant etc.

Professor John Stewart, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeoecology, Faculty of Science and Technology

The launch of the Research Excellence Manager role, full stop; having a role which has specific responsibilities for BU’s research environment and research culture is pretty brilliant. Equally, the launch of the Research ‘Most Excellent’ team – having a team with this lens brings a lovely perspective to the work we do.

Our REF results and QR funding increase was a massive achievement and testament to the hard work everyone has been putting in for years. We’ve been rejuvenating connections among the UOA teams, with a large number of expressions of interest from staff wanting to get involved (50 plus), ranging from ECRs to Professors. We’ve also been working with academic colleagues to achieve 100% compliance on our Research Outcomes submission.

We have lively, active and full research leadership programmes, ECR network and almost fully represented Research Staff Association, and the research conference had a large number of attendees and great speakers – cracking!

It’s been great to reconnect our RDS team after a few unsettling and disjointed years and move into our new home on the 8th floor of Studland House (complete with sea views!) Finally, a special shout out to Peng Peng Hatch for being awarded the Doctorate in Education!

Shelly Anne Stringer, Research Excellence Manager, RDS

A paper published by Dr Laura Renshaw-Vuillier, Dr Rachel Moseley and Dr Maddy Greville-Harris (entitled “The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with eating disorders: the role of emotion regulation and exploration of online treatment experiences”) was selected for the Best COVID-19 2022 Research Paper award in the Journal of Eating Disorders.

Professor Jan Wiener, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology

Research reflections 2022: the year in numbers

2022 has been another great year for research and knowledge exchange at BU. From receiving our excellent REF 2021 results to securing prestigious external funding and supporting new research activity, there’s a lot to celebrate.

Across the coming days, we’ll be featuring stories and reflections from across the BU community, sharing some of their highlights from across the year.

To get us started, here are just some of the numbers that make up the year in research at BU…

We received 171 new awards, representing over £7.5 million in research income

94% of BU research was found to be internationally-recognised or above, with 19% world-leading in quality (REF 2021)

95.7% of our research was found to be delivering considerable impact or above. Nearly one third of our impact case studies achieved an outstanding (4*) impact score. (REF 2021)

We held 20 public engagement events (as part of our regular events series) – attended by 1,231 people

16 positions were funded in 3 new research clusters through the Research Capacity Transformation Scheme (RCaTs)

36 new academic members of staff joined BU

2 new research centres were established – the Centre for Sustainable Business Transformations and the Computing and Informatics Research Centre

27 articles were written by BU academics for The Conversation, which had over 987,000 reads across the world

We’d love to hear from you – please share your reflections, successes and stories from across 2022 in the comments or by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk