Tagged / BU research

New paper by PhD student Sheetal Sharma

PG research, Publishing, student research

Sheetal Sharma, PhD student in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH), published her latest paper this week in the Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities [1].  The paper ‘Nepenglish’ or ‘Nepali English’: A New Version of English? raises the question whether we are beginning to see a new variant of English.

The paper is co-authored with Mrs. Pragyan Joshi from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kathmandu and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.   Sheetal’s PhD research focuses on the evaluation of a large-sclae maternity care improvement intervention in rural Nepal.

The paper is based on listening to people in Nepal speaking English and reading their writing in English.  English is a living language and different native and non-native speakers develop English in slightly different ways. This paper argues that it is time to consider whether we should study the English spoken by native-Nepali speakers (Nepenglish) as a separately developing variant of English. The question is particularly intriguing since Nepali English bears such a similarity with Indian English, as both are largely based on originally Sanskrit-based languages. The focus is particularly on how native-Nepali speakers express themselves in English.

 

 

Reference:

 

  1. Sharma, S., Joshi, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2015) ‘Nepenglish’ or ‘Nepali English’: A new version of English? Asian Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences 4(2): 188-193. www.ajssh.leena-luna.co.jp/AJSSHPDFs/Vol.4%282%29/AJSSH2015%284.2-21%29.pdf

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

What do Fishbone, Amusement Park and Apigee have in common?

Fusion, Knowledge Exchange, R & KE Operations

They are all tools for digital storytelling. On Thursday May 14th, the Fusion-funded, inter-faculty BU Datalabs team presented at Interdisciplinary Research Week. Guests from across the University and beyond came to learn about digital storytelling and how visual data stories can better communicate the significance of research findings to policy-makers and the public.

Weathering the rain, the event kicked off with a reflective exercise called ‘Analogue Twitter.’ Participants were asked to write down a story of their research in 140 characters or less. From sports management to midwifery, research stories spanned the disciplines.

To get things going, Senior Lecturer in Digital Storytelling, Dr. Brad Gyori brought his expertise in interactive media, and his experience as the Head Writer of the Emmy award winning show Talk Soup, to introduce the audience to the many storytelling patterns that have emerged with the rise and innovation of digital platforms. Digital storytelling can range from Fishbone narratives that have one main linear narrative with suggested diversions, to the Amusement Park that offers loosely clustered, different perspectives with no central hub, as we see in Highrise: Out of my Window.

Next up, Dr. Anna Feigenbaum, a Senior Lecturer from the Faculty of Media and Communications, introduced the audience to the power of storytelling with maps and infographics. Drawing from her own tear gas project and others’ expertise, she explored how visuals can act as ‘infobait’, drive curiosity, and interrupt dominant narratives.

After lunch, BU Datalabs project partner Malachy Browne from the social media journalism outfit reportedly shared insights and strategies for using online tools to do investigative research, share your findings, and dig deeper into social data. From apigee for APIs to mine social media data, to wolframalpha that can return the weather from any date in history, Browne made connections between the tools of his trade and the possibilities for expanding our digital methods in academia.

For more information on the BU Datalabs project, email: afeigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk  If you would like to get involved, we will be hosting a meeting open to all staff and students in early July. Details to follow. 

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, GB

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, together with the Medical Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, invites outline proposals for its Diet and Health Research Industry Club. Funding enables UK universities and institutes to carry out research that will enhance understanding and facilitate the development of products with health and nutrition benefits, and help address diet-related health issues in the longer term. Research proposals must address at least one of the challenges: Understanding the relationship between food processing and nutrition; designing foods to maintain and improve health; understanding food choice and eating behaviour to improve health through diet. Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 4pm, 01/07/15 for outline proposals. Full proposals are by invitation.

Economic and Social Research Council, GB

The Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the National Council of State Funding Agencies (CONFAP) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) invite applications for their Healthy Urban Living call and the Social Science of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus, under the Newton Fund. For the Healthy Urban Living stream, all proposals must address the theme of health inequalities and justice and one or more of the following areas: urban design, planning housing and infrastructure; communities, culture and heritage; leadership, governance and institutions. The total fund from the Research Councils is £2.5m, with matched equivalent for Brazilian partners. For the Social Science of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus stream, proposals should clearly identify one or more of these themes as the focus of the research project and demonstrate how it will be applied to the development of the Social Science of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Measuring, modelling and understanding the Nexus; innovation for sustainable transformations; the political economy and governance of the Nexus; human welfare, development and the Nexus. The total fund from the Research Councils is £1.25m, with matched equivalent for Brazilian partners. Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 4pm, 02/07/15.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, GB

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK invite expressions of interest to attend their state of the art in simulation and design workshop. This aims to identify the state of the art in fundamental simulation and modelling techniques that can help improve the design process within engineering design, and to enable users to progress in their use of these tools and determine key areas of need not currently being addressed by research programmes. The workshop will be held on 16 July 2015. The workshop will focus on the areas of optimisation, multiphysics, materials modelling and multiscale, with challenges identified in the sectors of automotive, aerospace, energy, built environment, healthcare technologies, electronics, and the process industries of chemicals and food.Awards cover reasonable travel and subsistence costs, including accommodation, refreshments and meal costs. Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 4pm, 10/06/15.

Innovate UK, GB

Innovate UK, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council invite expressions of interest for the fourth round of their Early-stage Translation studies, under the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst. This supports research and development for the processing and production of materials, chemicals and bioenergy through the sustainable exploitation of biological resources, including tissues, enzymes, and genes from organisms that include algae, marine life, fungi, microorganisms and plants, and accelerate commercialisation. Projects must be pre-competitive and academic-led. Funding is only available to academics in line with the standard BBSRC and EPSRC eligibility rules. Total project costs should be between £2m and £5m and projects should last between three and five years. Maximum award: £5m. Closing date: 12pm, 05/08/15 for expressions of interest.

Medical Research Council, GB

The Medical Research Council, together with the Economic and Social Research Council, the Brazilian Council of State Funding Agencies and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, invite proposals for the UK-Brazil Neglected Infectious Diseases Partnership. The initiative will provide funding for collaborative research projects, focussed on neglected infectious diseases in Brazil. Proposals may focus on Dengue Fever and other vector-borne diseases, Leishmaniasis, Chagas Disease, Leprosy, Schistosomiasis, Omtestinal Helminth Infectious, Rotaviruses and emerging viruses. Projects should last between two and three years. Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 01/06/15.

Natural Environment Research Council, GB

The Natural Environment Research Council invites applications for its Industrial CASE Studentships. This scheme promotes collaboration between the research community and the end users of research. Applicants must demonstrate excellent science research along with the potential for societal or economic impact through strong collaboration with the non-academic partners and the provision of high quality training in research skills. The CASE partner must be an end user organisation that can use the outputs of research in developing business, technology, regulation, policy or social and environmental enterprise, within the public, private or third sector. The CASE partner must have a base in the UK.  Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 4pm, 08/07/15.

Please note that some funding bodies 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.

 

Seminar on political violence today

The Politics and Media Research Group in FMC has a very stimulating guest speaker lined up for this afternoon (Monday). Dr. Jeffrey Murer is Lecturer on Collective Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in the School of International Relations. He is unusual for an IR specialist in that he draws deeply on ideas from psychoanalysis in his studies of violent political conflict. The title of his talk is “The Politics of Splitting: Anxiety, Loss and the Anti-Semitic, Anti-Roma Violence of Contemporary Hungary”. While focussing on the situation in Hungary, his talk will illustrate how an interdisciplinary, psycho-social approach can be applied to generate insights into violence in many other contexts.

The talk will be in P406. It will start at 5.00 and be followed, until 6.30, by questions and discussion.

All staff and students are welcome.

BU final year students present at 5th Annual Promotional Communications Conference

Some 44 advertising, marketing, public relations, and politics and media undergraduates present their dissertation research at the Fifth Annual Promotional Communications Conference on 20 May at the Executive Business Centre.

The conference is a capstone event for the Corporate and Marketing Communications Department (CMC) within the Faculty of Media and Communication and is an opportunity to showcase the work of our undergraduate dissertation students. This year we expect more than 100 delegates, including our students and staff, but also industry partners and some mums and dads.

They’ll hear papers on the latest industry issues and trends from our students. Students are presenting their research on topics including what it means to be and the implications of brands being ‘cool’, the cost of unpaid internships on the advertising industry, using social media to communicate science, attitudes toward and the stigmatization of mental illness, how lad culture also hurts men, impulse buying on line, and so much more.

And we’ll all be treated to talks from two outstanding industry representatives: Camilla Kemp, COO at M&C Saatchi  and BU Public Relations graduate Rosie Warin (’09), who is is co-Managing Director of Global Tolerance.
“We created the conference to offer students an opportunity to share the work they’ve done on a project that culminates their studies, and we enjoy showcasing that hard work,” said Dr Richard Scullion, CMC head of department.

The department, which offers undergraduate and postgraduate taught degrees in advertising, marketing communications, public relations, and politics and media, created the conference as an opportunity for students to choose to, in addition to the written dissertation, present their research to colleagues on their course, academics and guests from the promotional communications industries. And again this year we’ll welcome proud parents and friends to the event.

In addition to the conference, CMC launched the Journal of Promotional Communications in 2013. The journal is an open-access, online journal that, since the first edition, accepts submissions from undergraduates and postgraduates from BU and beyond. Research published there can come from a variety of disciplines, such as marketing, advertising, PR theory, consumer culture and behaviour, political communications, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and management.

So far, the journal has published three issues of student work. The latest edition, Volume 3, Issue 1, was published in April and includes some articles where students and staff co-authored papers.

Again this year, the top papers from the 2015 Promotional Communications conference will be published in the journal.

The students presenting at the conference are among the more than 200 final-year students in CMC who have worked for months on their individual research projects. CMC students can choose to write a traditional dissertation of 10,000 words or write a research paper in the style of an 8,000-word journal article and deliver a 20-minute paper at the student conference.

Dr Janice Denegri-Knott, Dr Carrie Hodges, Dr Dan Jackson, Dr Richard Scullion and Dr Shelley Thompson organize the conference.

The social sciences at BU

Research assessment

In response to an open email invitation, a group of social scientists from across BU met on Tuesday 17 March to discuss prospects for inter-Faculty collaboration. As in previous meetings between FMC and HSS colleagues, it was apparent that there were opportunities for more collaborative work than currently exists, and that there is considerable enthusiasm for developing links. A growing presence of the social sciences in BU, and of BU in the social sciences, was felt to be essential to BU’s development as a university with a rich intellectual community. If you haven’t received the report from this meeting by email, and would like to do so, please email Prof. Barry Richards (brichards@bmth.ac.uk)

We regret to inform you ….

PG research, Publishing, Research Integritiy, student research

It is always disappointing for an academic author to receive a rejection letter.   Today I received yet another one from Midwifery (published by Elsevier).   Sometimes I think academic publishing in good journal is not getting any easier over time.  Neither does the experience of having  over two hundred peer-reviewed academic papers make a rejection easier to deal with.  This was my third paper in a row that got rejected by Midwifery.  All three papers were rejected on resubmission, so a lot of extra work had gone into these papers after the initial peer review and the editor’s feedback.  These three papers where led by three different postgraduate students (Sharma, Baral & Burton) as first authors, and in each case co-authored by myself and different BU academics and/or from other universities.

Midwifery is the journal in which I have published more papers than any other journal (see top blue piece of pie in ‘Documents by source’) as reported on SCOPUS today (26 April 2015).  Moreover, I am co-author of one of the top five most downloaded papers in Midwifery for 2014 (see recent BU Research Blog), and this paper is also the most cited Midwifery paper since 2010!   Still I manage to have three papers rejected in a row.

What is does show to me is that the journal’s peer review system is robust (i.e. blind and impartial) because I am also a member of Midwifery’s editorial committee.  I think it is back to the drawing board and discuss with each set of authors what the next step should be for our papers.  To be fair we had a paper published already this year in Midwifery, namely:  Grylka-Baeschlin, S., van Teijlingen, E.R., Stoll, K., Gross, M.M. (2015) Translation and validation of the German version of the Mother-Generated Index and its application during the postnatal period. Midwifery 31(1): 47–53.

As an editorial board we try continuously to maintain a high quality of papers to be published in our journal, and we would like to encourage potential authors to keep submitting their papers to Midwifery.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Leverhulme Trust visit, 29 April, now open for bookings

Funding opportunities

The Leverhulme Trust visit on 29 April is now open for bookings – please visit the Staff Development & Engagement Pages to book.

Are you interested in bidding to Leverhulme Trust for research funding or finding out a bit more about what they expect to see in an application? If so, come along to our visit from Jean Cater of the Leverhulme Trust on 29 April, 12-2pm. 

In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about the Leverhulme Trust, see http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk.

Participating in 13th BNAC Study Day – 16th and 17th April

BNAC Study DayThe 13th BNAC Study Day was organised by SOAS at the University of London on 16th and 17th April 2015. The conference focused on presentations of work conducted in Nepal in many different academic fields: health, education, politics, art and so on. A variety of participants took part in the conference including academicians, students, researchers and artists not only from Nepal but also from UK and other European countries. The aim of this conference was to establish a forum to present the research conducted in Nepal which focussed to discuss about Nepalese lifestyle, tradition, culture, politics, education, art, health and other aspects of Nepal.

BU visiting fellow Prof. Padam Simkhada and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen presented a paper ‘Health and Welfare of Nepali Female Returnees from Gulf Countries: A Mixed-methods Study’ in collaboration with two Nepal based co-authors. I also had submitted my abstract to this conference and was accepted to discuss my proposed research project with a dedicated ‘Study day Tutor’, Dr. Ben Cambell from Durham University. It was a great opportunity for me to attend this conference and meet other PhD students, researchers, peers including one of my supervisors Prof.Edwin van Teijlingen and external supervisor Prof. Padam Simkhada. Besides it was very helpful to meet Dr. Campbell and get feedback regarding my proposal. This experience was helpful for me in many ways as I found myself benefited from the variety of presentations which gave idea on how to present before a mass of audience and also I got a chance to interact with many researchers from various fields. In addition I was able to meet a researcher at the conference whose article I quoted in my literature review.

Preeti Mahato

PhD student, CMMPH, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences.