Tagged / Associate Professor

The Friday Prof-ile: John Oliver

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick.

A headshot image of Professor John Oliver

John Oliver

This week, we’re chatting with Professor in Media Management, John Oliver…

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?

My current research has examined the hidden effects of crisis events on organisational innovation and performance. It’s been very successful in terms of businesses engaging with the findings and it has influenced the UK Government’s new Innovation Strategy (2021).

Why this topic? Well, my research has taken a highly original and perhaps unusual approach to the topic. Doing something new is what keeps me motivated!

What has been your career highlight to date?

Developing my current research idea on the hidden effects of a crisis on firm innovation and performance been a struggle because its based on a truly original approach. That has meant a lot of critical feedback and even derision from many circles. So, to have the research inform the UK Government’s new Innovation Strategy has been pleasing to say the least.

What are you working on at the moment? 

A lot! But, an ESRC grant and publications on business innovation in a post-pandemic environment.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

Management Consultant

What do you do to unwind?

Surfing, skateboarding, yoga and the gym

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?

The beach

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why? 

Time travel – how cool would that be?!

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?

A surfboard

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Never, ever give in.

The Friday Prof-ile: Roman Gerodimos

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

A photo of Roman Gerodimos

Roman Gerodimos

This week, we’re chatting with Professor in Global Current Affairs, Roman Gerodimos… 

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas? 

I’m interested in the relationship between the individual citizen and the world at large: the things that motivate us to engage with others, with politics, with global affairs, and the things that stop us from doing so: fear, disappointment, cynicism, apathy. I’ve been an avid consumer of politics and world news since I can remember myself and for a long time just assumed that everyone else would be, too. We know, of course, that that’s not true. Ironically though it is now perhaps more important than ever that people engage with politics and global issues; that we assume our share of responsibility for the future of the planet, and that we put themselves forward to lead.

Identifying those factors that can motivate us to engage – whether that is through psychology or a better understanding of history or communication and media or art or even user-oriented design – is key to finding and implementing solutions.

What has been your career highlight to date? 

I have several highlights, but if forced to choose I would pick two. One would be producing Deterrence – a feature-length documentary on European security and the past, present and future of NATO that we co-created with staff and students at BU. I’m very proud of our work. It was a very intense but unique experience, we got to cover a major NATO summit from the front row (quite literally), and I loved every minute of the creative and filmmaking process.

My other top highlight would be organising Human Library workshops at the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change – an annual summer school that BU co-founded back in 2007, which brings together students, faculty and leaders from all over the world. Creating a space with the simplest ingredients in which a hundred people, over the course of an evening, have some of the most meaningful, personal discussions of their lives is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I’m just about to complete an edited volume on the relationship between shame and violence (Interdisciplinary Applications of Shame/Violence Theory: Breaking the Cycle, Palgrave Macmillan), which brings together brilliant contributors from different countries and disciplines so as to find innovative ways of breaking that cycle.

I’m also working on my next film project called A Probable Outcome – a meditation on fate, love, otherness and persistence – and on the associated research project on ‘Black women, dwarfs and other misfits of the Old West’ that is informing the script.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

For some reason most of my friends are architects – I seem to be collecting them – so maybe life is trying to tell me something!

However, if I weren’t an academic, I would probably be working as a full-time professional scriptwriter or filmmaker or composer for the screen. I love great writing, films and music, so it would be something creative.

I have to say, though, one of the privileges of working at the Faculty of Media & Communication is being able to develop my creative skills and my media and storytelling practice while being an academic. Not many universities give academics that kind of space and freedom, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck around for 20 years.

What do you do to unwind?

To misquote Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, ‘what is “unwind”‘? I’m joking, of course. I do unwind – I read a lot, I walk, and I love travelling and photography.

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?

I think it is the university, actually. During the last couple of decades, I have seen how BU – through our diverse student population, our iconic new buildings across both campuses, and crucially our engagement with local businesses, charities and communities – has helped the town modernise and grow.

I think BU can play a leading role in providing space, convening capacity and creative input to nourish Bournemouth’s cultural life – working with artists to put together or support festivals and events, such as the Arts by the Sea festival.

BU is at the heart of a conurbation of three towns – Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch – with hundreds of thousands of residents, including children, students, and professionals. There is definitely the market and the demand for more culture and BU can help provide that.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why? 

My recent research has shown me the literally ubiquitous role of shame in driving negative emotions, such as anger, and violent aggression, including against the self. I’d like my superpower to be the ability to heal people: to make them aware of their own trauma and insecurity, and how that is driving their negative feelings about others and themselves, and how they can gain self-esteem and a sense of responsibility about others and about the world.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?

A typewriter. I love writing – no, let me rephrase: I couldn’t live without writing, it’s like therapy for me. The added bonus of a typewriter is that I wouldn’t have any distractions, so I could finally write a proper monograph.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

I don’t have major regrets – I’ve always followed my heart and my gut instinct, so I wouldn’t change anything, at least career-wise. But I think we can always, always be better listeners, so I would advise me to be a better listener of the things not said – the omissions, the pauses – and a better observer of the things not seen. These can be as revealing as the things that are said and seen.

The Friday Prof-ile: Hywel Dix

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

Hywel Dix sat in an armchair

Hywel Dix

This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in English, Hywel Dix… 

  • What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?  

Since an early age I have been interested in the relationship between literature, culture and political change in contemporary Britain, and this is the main focus of my work. I have published on this topic very extensively, most notably in Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain (2010), After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain (Second Edition, 2013) and Multicultural Narratives: Traces and Perspectives, co-edited with Mustafa Kirca (2018). My broader research interests include modern and contemporary literature, critical cultural theory, authorial careers and autofiction. My monograph about literary careers entitled The Late-Career Novelist was published by Bloomsbury in 2017 and an edited collection of essays on Autofiction in English was published by Palgrave in 2018.

  • What has been your career highlight to date?  

Being invited to give the keynote address at the annual conference of France’s Société d’Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines, Paris Diderot University, in 2013. This might have been trumped by my invitation to give the keynote at a conference on Paulo Freire and Raymond Williams Centenary: Sparks of Transformation, held by UNICAMP, Sao Paulo in Brazil in 2021 – but this could only be given online due to the pandemic, so it was a bit less glamorous.

  • What are you working on at the moment?  

I recently completed a study entitled Compatriots or Competitors? Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish Writing and Brexit in Comparative Contexts for publication this year. I am currently working on a project about autofiction and cultural memory.

  • If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

Before working at Bournemouth University I was a Development Officer at Wales Millennium Centre, the largest theatre and arts centre in Britain outside London, and if I were not an academic I would probably still be working in arts development in some capacity. 

  • What do you do to unwind? 

The 3 Rs: reading, writing and running. A number of BU colleagues sponsored me in the London Marathon in 2018.

  • What’s the best thing about Bournemouth? 

Before I was interviewed at the university, I had never been to Bournemouth in my life and was as guilty as anyone of holding the stereotyped view of it as a place of retirement. The university has really helped change that image and made the population here much more diverse.

  • If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?  

I don’t really get the super hero genre. There’s no replacement for working hard. I wouldn’t mind being able to run a bit faster though.

  • If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you? 

My collection of football memorabilia of the past 100 years or so – but it might need dust covers.

  • What advice would you give to your younger self? 

I was very serious and introverted when I was younger and would probably say: lighten up. 

The Friday Prof-ile: Fiona Coward

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in Archaeological Sciences, Fiona Coward… 

Fiona Coward looking at the head of a dinosaur model

Fiona Coward

  • What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?

I’m interested in how humans evolved – not just our physiologies, but also our brains and behaviour. In particular, I’m interested in how human social lives have evolved; all primates and especially Great Apes, our closest living relatives, are highly social animals, but human social lives are global in scale, and I study how the way our ancestors made a living have shaped our sociality and cognition. I’m particularly interested in the role material culture – aka stuff, or objects – plays in this process. Are practices such as crafting, technology, trade, exchange and gifting a key part of what makes us human?

  • What has been your career highlight to date? 

Getting to walk casually through a door in the Natural History Museum marked ‘staff only’ and wander through the ‘backstage’ areas going through drawers!

  • What are you working on at the moment?

I’m looking at the origins of urban living. Humans as a species have been around for about 300,000 years and for most of that time we lived in very small groups that moved frequently across the landscape to find food by hunting and gathering. Why, then, in just the last 20,000 years or so (the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms!), have we suddenly become a majority urban, agricultural species? What were the implications of this change in lifeways for the wider ecosystem, and are there lessons we can learn from understanding how and why early villagers and farmers lived that might help mitigate our impact on the world today, and hence help us face the current climate crisis?

  • If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing? 

I would probably be a data analyst in the civil service – they offered me a job right after Bournemouth University did!

  • What do you do to unwind?

Reading, writing and watching fantasy and science fiction, and singing along (badly but loudly) to unfashionable music.

  • What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?

The seafront! Also, it’s a small, friendly community with lots of beautiful landscape easily accessible, but also in easy reach of bigger cities if required. Perfect!

  • If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why? 

An everlasting notebook and pen. OK, I cheated there a bit. If I’m not allowed to cheat, then a bar of Divine milk chocolate and gingerbread.

  • What advice would you give to your younger self? 

Not being a d**k does actually pay off!

The Friday Prof-ile: Sam Goodman

Welcome to our new series, The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in English, Sam Goodman.

Sam Goodman

Sam Goodman

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?  

I have always been interested in Britishness and national identity, and this is the broad umbrella under which all my research has tended to take place, whether about twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture, or the work I have done on alcohol, medicine, and colonial India.

I think I’ve always been interested in this subject because Britain has been in the midst of an identity crisis for what has seemed like the entirety of my adult life – this crisis has been going on since the end of the Second World War and the end of the British Empire but seemed to become acute from the 1990s onwards what with the nostalgia of ‘Cool Britannia’ and the growing popularity of historical fictions, the rebooting of so-called quintessentially British characters like James Bond, jubilees, the Olympics, and also the rhetoric leading up to Brexit. I suppose I’ve always been interested in (as Patrick Wright puts it) what it means to live in an old country, and how that affects the literature, culture and identities of the people within it.

What has been your career highlight to date?  

So many come to mind! In research terms, I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to go to conferences and visit archives in various parts of the world, and having the chance to read through Ian Fleming’s papers in the US, or J. G. Farrell’s manuscripts in Trinity College library, Dublin was really exciting. Appearing at the Hay Festival and all the work I have done with the BBC has definitely been a highlight too – especially attending the Leicester Square premiere of Spectre, even though I wasn’t allowed to talk about it for a week afterwards!

When it comes to teaching, it has to be the writing and development of the unit Media & Trauma with my colleague Ann Luce – working on this unit made me think differently not just about how I teach, but about how a trauma-informed approach to working with people and tackling challenging subjects makes such an enormous difference to student wellbeing and the campus community as well as society more widely.

What are you working on at the moment?  

As it happens, my latest book,  The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History After Empire, was just published with Edinburgh University Press so I am at a point where I’m taking a (much-needed) breather and considering my next long term project. In the meantime, I’m editing a special issue for the Journal of the Social History of Medicine, I have just submitted a piece on colonial memoir to Literature & History, sent off a public-facing article for The Cats Protection magazine, and I am now working on an article on space and place in the novels of Graham Swift.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

Working with animals in some capacity. I always had notions of being a vet but was never good enough at science GCSE… I could definitely see myself working for a charity or for a foundation somewhere though.

What do you do to unwind? 

Anything that takes me away from looking at a screen! I’ve long been a runner, and like a lot of people I ran miles and miles in lockdown which was a great way to clear my head at the end of a working day, and meant I got to explore new places near me I’d never been to before. I’m also a drummer, much to the delight of my neighbours.

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth? 

For me, it’s Charminster. I’ve always loved the international shops and restaurants of Charminster; I love to cook, so it’s a great place for ingredients and inspiration.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?  

Eidetic memory; it would make archival trips just so much easier…

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you? 

A cafetière and lifetime supply of dark roast; I’m approximately 70% coffee and wouldn’t survive without it.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Keep your vinyl; MiniDisc is a scam.

If you’re a recently appointed Professor or Associate Professor and you’d like to be featured in the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out more and get involved. 

The Friday Prof-ile: Mel Hughes

Welcome to our new series, The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in Social Work, Mel Hughes.

Mel Hughes

Mel Hughes

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?   

As a social worker, I am interested in marginalised groups and communities currently under-served by health and social care research. My main interests in both education and research are in valuing the expertise of people with lived experience and using my platform as an educator and researcher to amplify these voices through co-produced and participatory methods.

What has been your career highlight to date?   

There are two that immediately come to mind. The first was seeing a copy in print (and on Amazon!) of the book I co-authored and edited with people with lived experience and social work colleagues on Statutory Social Work Interventions: The lived experience. It was a genuine collaboration, and it was exciting hearing from all the contributors as they received their copy in the post.

The second was receiving a phone call (whilst walking on the beach) from Advance HE to say I had been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship. As an Associate Professor I am as passionate about education and the student experience as I am about professional practice and research. It felt like acknowledgment of my value as an educator.

What are you working on at the moment?   

I am co-authoring and editing a textbook on Social Exclusion in the UK: the lived experience and leading on a special issue of the British Journal of Social Work written by people with lived experience rather than about people with lived experience. I am also leading on an ESRC research bid on democratising public involvement in research, where we are seeking to build capacity of researchers to work alongside marginalised communities currently under-served by health and social care research.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing? 

I started my career as a social worker in substance use and mental health services. I would like to think I would still be in practice. I secretly crave the idea of being in the great outdoors on some sort of community project or farm.

What do you do to unwind?  

Walking, walking and walking (usually with a dog pulling me along)

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?  

The BU Social Work and PIER Partnership teams. I can honestly say I have never worked with a more supportive group of people.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?   

Invisibility. The quality that best combines the social work and academic role is curiosity (or being nosey). Oh to be a fly on the wall!

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?  

A comfy bed.

What advice would you give to your younger self? 

Stay true to your values.

If you’re a recently appointed Professor or Associate Professor and you’d like to be featured in the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out more and get involved. 

The Friday Prof-ile: Bryce Dyer

Welcome to our new series, The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

Bryce Dyer

This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in Product Development, Bryce Dyer 

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas? 

My research interest is the design or debate surrounding the technology we use for sport and physical activity. I love it as it bolts together my constant inquisitive inner dialogue and my hobbies.

What has been your career highlight to date? 

There have been a few, but winning and then giving the Brunel Award Lecture at the British Science Festival a few years ago was one that stood out for me. The talk brought together everything I’d done in teaching, research and my professional practice at that point in my career and I then had one of those great days where the talk went really well, I got a few laughs and I had a very large and positive crowd giving me a real grilling. It was a lot of fun.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I did a lot of research and projects on the run up to the 2021 Paralympic Games – I’m now writing them all up and publishing them all before my attention turns to seeking out new opportunities ahead of the next Olympic & Paralympic Games.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

I would have pursued my ‘sliding doors’ decision of serving in the armed forces or have wanted to have been a professional athlete if I’d have been good enough. I was good enough to crawl through a ditch or go marching through the snow somewhere for hours on end but despite making a school team once for throwing the discus (due to what I still call one single ‘hand of god’ throw that could never be repeated), I never chose my parents well enough to have the physical capacity of being an Olympian.

What do you do to unwind?

Competitive sport and the training needed to then not come last doing it.

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?

The huge variety of terrain, geography, and landscapes within a small radius of the town.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why? 

Immortality. It’s always a struggle to have enough time to cram in everything I’m wanting to do. The list just keeps getting longer.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?

My MP3 player with an abundance of questionable choices of music on it (despite then having to come up with how I’m going to power it when the battery runs out).

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Just keep going – you’ll make all the right judgement calls in the end.

If you’re a recently appointed Professor or Associate Professor and you’d like to be featured in the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out more and get involved. 

The Friday Prof-ile: Anna Feigenbaum

Welcome to our new series, The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

Professor Anna Feigenbaum with a microphone and headphones on

Professor Anna Feigenbaum

This week we’re chatting with Professor of Digital Storytelling, Anna Feigenbaum. 

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas? 

My research looks at communication, technology and social change. I’m particularly drawn to topics that are difficult to talk about because of their technical or scientific complexity and social sensitivity. I’ve always seen my role as an academic as serving as bridge or medium between disciplines, as well as between the university and advocacy communities.

What has been your career highlight to date? 

Either being quoted by AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) in a bill to the US congress on the harms of tear gas or being interviewed by Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness for his podcast ‘Getting Curious’.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I’m writing up findings from my AHRC project about “covid comics” and public health messaging over social media. I’m also finally starting work on my book about the cultural and political economy of infertility that got delayed because of the pandemic.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

I still regret turning down an internship at DC comics when I was 19. So in my alternative life I’d like to be writing queer feminist superhero comics.

What do you do to unwind? 

Lots of things! Yoga, forest walks with our fur baby, bingeing fantasy or sci-fi series, and I’m currently teaching myself gothic calligraphy.

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth? 

Dog surfing. And that people don’t take themselves too seriously.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why? 

Teleportation, so it would be easier to visit friends and family around the world – and more sustainable.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?

If I’ve also got electricity on this island, my iPad.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

It’s ok that, in 2009, when those senior people asked what you worked on at an academic wine reception you said, “I do weird sh**.” One day you’ll get promoted to full professor for doing weird sh** well.

If you’re a recently appointed Professor or Associate Professor and you’d like to be featured in the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out more and get involved.