Tagged / conference

Academic writing workshop in Bangkok

As part of his visit to Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok to plan the FIF-supported conference that will be held in November, Prof Tom Watson of the Media School delivered a well-attended workshop on Academic Writing.

Four leading universities – Chulalongkorn, Assumption, Mahidol and NIDA – sent over 40 academic staff and doctoral students to the workshop held in the host’s Faculty of Communication Arts building on September 3.

“There is a strong push to develop research and publication outputs in Thailand, so the workshop was well-timed to catch that wave,” said Prof Watson. “Our colleagues at Chulalongkorn did a first-rate job in organising and promoting the event.

“The workshop was also excellent public diplomacy by BU to support so many academics in such a targeted manner. It helps build our reputation in Thailand which is sending more Masters and doctoral students to the UK. Previously Australia and the USA were the main destinations.”

The workshop also gave an opportunity to experience one of the venues to be used by the 1st International Corporate and Marketing Communication in Asia Conference on November 18-19.

 

KTP associate attends conferences to promote her research

Dr Celia Beckett, Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) research associate at BU and Five Rivers Child Care Ltd attended the KTP Associates’ Conference at Brighton University on 13th June. She presented a paper on the pilot stage of her project “Improving the care of children in residential units: assessment and interventions”. The conference, which is a Brighton University initiative supported by the Centre for Collaboration and Partnership, was well attended and there were 10 paper presentations and 8 posters. Topics ranged from roller blinds to leak repair additives for coolant systems! A recurring theme at the conference was the role of the KTP in working to effect change in organisations that result in improved commercial outcomes as well as the challenges and rewards of this role.

There are c. 800 KTP associates currently working on projects throughout the UK, ensuring that there is an exchange of knowledge between Universities and private / public companies, making a real difference to all those organisations involved in KTPs. It is one of the largest graduate schemes in the UK. More information about BU’s KTPs can be found at the newly relaunched Business Pages.

Celia will also be presenting a poster at the forthcoming  Recovery-focused conference: Engagement in Life: Promoting Wellbeing and Mental Health, hosted by BU on 6th September 2013.

Fusion funding supports sharing student research at conference, in journal

Last week, 35 advertising, marketing and public relations undergraduates presented their dissertation research at the Promotional Communications Annual Conference at the Executive Business Centre.

The event, held 15 May, was part of a Fusion bid by The Media School’s Dr Dan Jackson, Dr Richard Scullion, Dr Carrie Hodges, and Dr Janice Denegri-Knott to expand the conference and open a journal. This is the third year for the conference run by the Corporate and Marketing Communications (CMC) group within The Media School, and with the Fusion funding the organisers were able to expand the conference to include additional students and guests.

“The CMC Student Conference was a terrific success; the presentations were extremely professional, student engagement was very high and the commitment shown by the staff was exceptional,” said Colin Merrett, associate dean for the academic group. He called it “one of the highlights of the year” for CMC.

Industry guests who attended the event echoed the sentiment, calling the work of students ‘thought provoking’ and ‘challenging’. In total some 80 students, academic staff, alumni, and industry professionals attended the conference, which offers students an opportunity to share their dissertation research and for the academic group to showcase research-led teaching.

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. The 35 students who presented at the conference make up 17 per cent of the dissertation students on the three degree programmes. That’s the highest proportion of student take-up of this option for the dissertation.

“The quality of what I have seen in these dissertations is some of the best I have seen,” said Dr Heather Savigny, who joined BU at the start of the academic year.

The research that students presented ranged from asking questions about how second-generation African immigrant women negotiate culture and identity through hair care rituals to the impacts to pub and restaurant brands as a result of negative word-of-mouth online to whether advertising today represents a return of a sexist visual culture.

“I thought the best papers could have claimed space in some international conferences,” said Prof Barry Richards of CMC.

Now, the team turns its attention to the inaugural issue of The Journal of Promotional Communication. Once the dissertations are marked, the team will shortlist the top research papers and begin the (by all accounts based on the presentations from last week) arduous task of choosing seven papers to appear in the journal.

After the first edition is published, the journal will begin accepting submissions from undergraduates and postgraduates from BU and beyond. The journal represents a variety of disciplines, such as marketing, advertising, PR theory, consumer culture and behaviour, political communications, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, and management.

BPS Wessex Student Conference

On Saturday, Bournemouth University hosted the Wessex Branch of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Annual Student Conference. This event provided an opportunity for students to showcase novel research and, in addition to BU, attracted Psychology students from a range of institutions (e.g. Universities of Surrey, Sussex, Winchester, and Southampton). The breadth of institution was matched by the breadth of student; with undergraduate research assistants through to doctoral students presenting their work to an audience of approximately 100 delegates.

In total, there were 28 oral presentations and 19 research posters. In addition, we were fortunate to have two thought-provoking keynote speakers. First, Dr. Richard Stephens (Keele University) spoke about the role of swearing on pain tolerance (in short, it helps, particularly if you are normally an infrequent user of coarse vocabulary) and, second, Prof. Clare Wood (Coventry University) delivered a presentation on the effects of text messaging on literacy (in sum, ‘textisms’ are not rotting the brains of our nation’s youth).

The conference sought to emphasise that, rather than a perfunctory assessment exercise, student research is an important part of knowledge creation within our universities. Whilst this was highlighted by the collaborative (student-academic) nature of the projects, it was also evident how the presenters had developed into independent researchers. This apprenticeship model is one employed by the Bournemouth Psychology Research Centre and it was pleasing to see a number of our Year 2 Psychology students presenting data that had arisen from their research assistant placements. There was a large contingent of first and second year BU Psychology students in the audience and helping with conference organisation as volunteers. We hope that they have been inspired to participate in more staff projects and will return next year to present their research.

Squeezing the pips from a conference with social media

Please forgive the self-publicity, but I would like to share my recent use of social media to promote BU, research, a conference and papers.

Last week, I attended the annual International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) in the US, where I presented three papers, one with a US co-author. It’s the largest conference in the field, drawing 101 papers over three days and attendance in the order of 150-175 academics, graduates and some practitioners.

To broadcast involvement in the conference, I used my personal blog to present a daily summary of interesting papers:  http://fiftyonezeroone.blogspot.co.uk/. The blog posts have had over 210 visits so far and were also circulated on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. There have been many re-tweets (RTs), plus appreciative emails and direct messages via Twitter.

A short summary of “top 10 research tips” was written for the prmoment.com website which has around 30,000 users, worldwide. It was posted on the site’s blog and is included in this week’s publication: http://blog.prmoment.com/ten-pr-research-tips-from-bournemouth-universitys-professor-tom-watson/

The outcomes of this type of activity will be long-term and hard to measure, but as I was the only UK delegate at IPRRC this year, it has given BU, our research and industry knowledge an international platform of expertise and insight to present ourselves. The capital cost was almost nil, as I used my own netbook, Wi-Fi was free and the time component was less than an hour a day. Try this approach at your next conference or internal event.

Tom Watson presenting at IPRRC 2013

HSC Student receives Graduate Scholar Award at University of Berkeley Conference.

 

Sheetal Sharma, HSC presented at the Science in Society conference (SiS) at Berkeley University in November 2012 where she received a Graduate Scholar Award http://science-society.com/the-conference/graduate-scholar-award

As a PhD student presenting it’s an opportunity to practice for the inevitable viva and a chance to reflect on your work, as there’s always a question you do not expect. For instance, I had a few questions on cultural aspects of my PhD mixed-methods evaluation. That helped me prepare for my transfer viva, where I was asked on the cultural context of the health promotion intervention, specifically in a country context, run by Green Tara Nepal: http://www.greentaratrust.com/ The plenary was the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues http://www.bioethics.gov/cms/node/778 on ethics and morality of science.

Conferences can be competitive, in the sense, you need to be accepted. Secondly you also can compete for a ‘free space’ and in this instance you were able to compete to be a chair. At SiS, graduate students were invited to, through a very formal application process, to be chair of session. Although it means you won’t attend certain talks, the trade-off is worth is as one is forced to think of questions or how to manage, and be critical and aware of several issues of research.

Being ‘forced’ to be critical led to my planning more what aspects I want to present to the audience. This conference was concerned with the science of health, its epistemology and helped me think of how to discuss the development of theory. As in a PhD viva one might need to answer ‘new knowledge to the field’ how the theory or models proposed are better than competing theories.

I was also lucky to visit Howard University, where I spend time researching cultural ‘appropriateness’ of health programmes, specifically should postnatal care be done again at 40 days. For my PhD evaluation of the Green Tara Nepal that the cultural sensitive aspect led to its increase in health services uptake. I encourage those interested to visit their work as they are ranked school in the top 20% of social work programmes. The World Bank and USAID frequently have invitations to talks, the ones I attended highlighted the focus of women in development, what role programmes can play to develop rural areas; as it is women in Nepal who ‘stay’ in the villages to farm and care for the family as men migrate abroad or to the capital city Kathmandu.

This experience helped me begin the reflection of what my evaluation means, whether in a policy context or the epistemological context; on my return I spoke to my supervisory team. Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell and my external supervisor Dr. Padam Simkhada (University of Sheffield) who encouraged me to on this basis strengthen my writing for my discussion on what the research done has meant.

 

Register Online to attend Bournemouth University Dementia Institute Internal Conference

BUDI continues to work towards a truly collaborative approach to dementia and with this in mind our first internal conference will take place on the 31st January.  The theme of this conference is creative collaboration.  We are keen to explore new innovative approaches to all aspects of living with dementia and caring for people with dementia.  If you have an idea or a piece of work that you think could work well or has a potential link with dementia, then this is the opportunity to showcase your idea.  Abstracts are invited for posters and presentations and should be submitted by Friday 16th November at 12noon.

Abstracts should be no longer than 250words and the details can be found on the staff development page.

Presentations will be 10mins duration with five minutes allowed for questions.

Posters should be of A0 portrait size and an award will be given for the best poster on the day.

More to follow shortly.

Patricia Mc Parland

Project Manager BUDI

HSC PhD student from HSC presents in London at Society for Social Medicine

Sheetal’s SSM poster can be viewed here

Sheetal Sharma a PhD student at Health and Social Care at BU was lucky to be accepted at the Society for Social Medicine (SSM) September Conference in London to present her poster on my PhD research: Mixed-methods evaluation of a health promotion intervention in rural Nepal, complete with a photograph of the fieldwork involved in villages in Nepal! This year was particularly tough getting accepted as conference organisers commented that 360 abstracts were submitted, of which just 159 (44%) were accepted (including 3 as plenary presentations, 96 as parallel presentations, and 60 as poster presentations). And further stated that that at another SSM conference, an abstract awarded a poster presentation would have been given an oral presentation.
“My BU supervisors Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell and my external supervisor Dr. Padam Simkhada (University of Sheffield) supported me to submit an abstract with our Spanish and Argentine academic partners, early this year”. I really appreciated the free place as universities have limited budgets to support their students in presenting at conferences; I doubt I would have attended had I had to meet the costs myself. So a big thanks to BU and SSM for supporting me! After my experiences at SSM 2012, I would encourage students and young researchers to attend SSM, as the research presented is stimulating and the feedback obtained is invaluable, the conference is really well organised, the support team and volunteers are really friendly and helpful! I hope to be a part of the ECR committee based on this conference.”
Sheetal mentioned she particularly enjoyed the workshop session on Evaluation of complex public health interventions, the concepts and methods practical guidance on “how to do it” and the applicability of different study designs, particularly the role of qualitative research by Mark Petticrew (LSHTM), James Hargreaves (LSHTM), and Steve Cummins (QMUL), as it relates to her evaluation on a health promotion intervention that aims to improve childbearing women’s demand of health services.
Sheetal felt it was great to see what research is conducted from institutions across the U.K. and globally, in a dynamic setting specifically the welcome address by Dr Piot who co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, the Pemberton Lecture, 2012: Ethnicity and health by Peter Whincup. Sheetal feels research students should be encouraged to present as it motivates them to publish and network. Attending the conference in London also gave her a chance to visit the King’s Fund and dine at Lincoln’s Inn in the 19th century Great Hall with a view onto a fresco of Moses and Edward I ending with a guided tour of the Wellcome Collection.

#hwbbu – Health and Wellbeing Community Hashtag (and biscuits)

#hwbbu – Twitter hashtags

As Carol Bond indicated in the comments to the recent blog post about the successful HSC Health and Wellbeing Community Conference the community agreed to select a twitter hashtag in order to collect information from any tweets relevant to the activities of the community.

I was tasked with organising this, being familiar with the concept, and after a wait for the registration to come through I can confirm that the hashtag is #hwbbu (Health and Wellbeing at Bournemouth University). The hashtag is registered with the Healthcare Hashtags Project here. This project maintains a date-searchable archive of the tweets of healthcare relevant hashtags as well as allowing analysis of activity and reach.

We went for a short hashtag because this is good practice with Twitter being limited to only 140 characters for each tweet.

Biscuits – Light is alright

As you’ll see from the rather fetching picture from the conference post, I took part in the biscuit taste test organised by Dr Heather Hartwell who was talking to us about the concept of ‘Health by Stealth’. We tried two Rich Tea biscuits from the same company and, despite what the picture shows, most people preferred biscuit A. This was actually the ‘Light’ version! Less fat, less calories, slightly more sugar needed to bond it but crunchier (less claggy) and the same price. The problem is we tend to think of ‘healthy’ versions as not being as tasty. I did manage to guess by sight which was the healthiest so was therefore surprised to prefer its taste. As someone who likes a sweet snack I think it’s definitely worth trying out lighter versions in future.

 

Discourses of Inclusion and Exclusion Conference – new sustainability symposium theme

I am co-ordinating a symposium on Issues of Inclusivity in the Sustainable University at the DPR annual conference to be held at the University of Greenwich, 9-11 April, 2013. The link is here.

If DPR (Discourse, Power Resistance) is new to you, it is worth saying that DPR is an annual conference, now in its thirteenth year, with an established and increasing international reputation: in 2012 41 nations were represented at the conference. Perhaps the simplest way to tell you about the conference is to give you some links. The conference website is here. You can find a list of DPR publications here together with a link to the conference journal: Power and Education.

Please consider submitting an abstract.

Chris Shiel

Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology – Funding Opportunities

The Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology have announced a number of funding opportunities.  These include:

Developmental Grants (these must include some members of SRIP) – The Society will provide up to £1500 to cover travel and accommodation for participants and other small incidental costs. Costs will be reimbursed through a University or other appropriate organisation. The organisers of funded workshops will be required to supply accounts of the monies spent and a brief factual report of the workshop.  Applications can be made at any time .

Conference bursary for students – Since 1980 SRIP has organized an annual international scientific conference to exchange research findings, develop research interest and networks and to engage with clinical partners. The society awards bursaries to enable academic students to attend the conference and prizes to esteemed researchers (clinical and academic) in recognition of their work. The Society provides a total of 3 Bursaries for students to attend the conference each year. The bursary will cover Conference Fees and up to £150 towards travel and accommodation. Applications for a bursary will be considered on an individual basis by the committee. Preference will be given to students presenting a paper or poster and to those who have no, or limited, funds available to support conference attendance.  The closing date for receipt of applications is the end of July of the year in which the conference is due to take place.

Annual Student Prize – Each year the society awards an Annual Prize for a research thesis submitted as part of an undergraduate degree (B.A. / B.Sc.), masters by research (M.A. / M.Sc.), or equivalent level professional training (e.g., MBBS).* The subject of the thesis may be any aspect of reproduction, birth or infancy.  If you are working on a dissertation at this level, why not enter?  You could win £150, an expenses paid trip to the SRIP annual conference and a years membership (see terms and conditions). All entries must be received by 30th June.

Annual Graduate Student Prize – The Society has instituted an annual prize for a research thesis submitted as a full or partial requirement for a post graduate degree, including M.Phil., D.Clin.Psy. and Ph.D and other similar awards. The subject of the thesis may be any aspect of reproduction, birth or infancy. If you are working on a dissertation at this level, why not enter? The prize is £250, a year’s membership of SRIP and an expenses paid trip to the SRIP annual conference (see terms and conditions).  All entries must be received by 30th June.

Please visit their web site for specific details on how to apply.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

4th World Business Ethics Forum – 16-18 December 2012, Hong Kong

The 4th World Business Ethics Forum (WBEF) will be held from 16 to 18 December 2012 by the School of Business of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).  BU have received an invitation to submit papers for presentation at the Conference.

The theme for this 4th WBEF is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability.  HKBU welcome research papers related to this broad theme.  Suggested topics include:

Dimensions and theories of CSR; CSR and risk management; CSR and business ethics; CSR and strategic management; CSR and corporate sustainability; CSR and corporate governance; CSR reporting and capital market; Corporate sustainability management; Legal issues of CSR; CSR in Asia; CSR in China; CSR education; CSR case studies; CSR in western perspectives; and other related issues.

They anticipate that over 150 scholars and professionals across the world will attend the Conference.  Selected papers from the Conference will be published in a special issue of Journal of Business Ethics.

The deadline for paper submission is 30th June 2012.  Please submit the full paper and enquiries to the Conference Secretariat at wbef@hkbu.edu.hk.  Email submissions in Word format are strongly preferred.  Submission of full paper for review indicates that it or a similar version has not been previously published or is not simultaneously under review elsewhere.  Each submission should include FULL contact details, including the author(s)’ brief bio, institution affiliation, mailing address, telephone and fax number, e-mail address, topic area (up to three topics selected from the above).  Full paper should not be more than 40 pages in double-line spacing (all inclusive) and must follow the style guidelines of the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE).

For more details of the Conference, please visit the web site at http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~wbef.  The Conference Committee will select full papers on a competitive basis, and author(s) will be notified by September 2012.

EU funding available in the hard sciences for research, networking, visits and conference attendance

FP7 Artemis call for proposals: Funding supports industry-driven research projects in the field of embedded computing systems which aim to design, develop and deploy interoperable, cost-effective, powerful safe and secure electronics and software systems. The budget for this call is approximately €138.73 million and the financial contribution of the programme will be 16.7 per cent of eligible costs. Projects are expected to last for up to three years. Closing date 06.09.12

ESF Research conferences scheme: Grants support high-level research conferences lasting for three to four days in ESF member organisation countries. Closing date 15.09.12

 ESF Earthtime – the European contribution short visit and exchange grants: Grants should foster collaboration between European researchers working on topics relevant to geochronology and stratigraphy. Short visit grants provide €85 per day over a maximum of two weeks. Exchange grants provide €400 per week over a maximum of three months. Both awards provide actual travel expenses, worth up to €500. No deadline.

4th Annual PGR Conference – Thursday 28 June 2012

A Celebration of BU PGR Research

This annual conference is designed to showcase the best of BU’s postgraduate research and to provide a unique opportunity for PGRs to present their work within a learning environment. Our multi-disciplinary conference will allow for cross-school interaction as well as opportunities for collaboration, where appropriate.

The 2012 conference will build on the great success of the previous PGR Conferences in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

Call for Abstracts

We are inviting abstracts for oral and poster presentations from Post Graduate Research students at any stage of their research degree. Presentations may focus on:

  • Research area
  • Specific methodological approach
  • Initial findings
  • Experience of your research journey e.g. transfer

There will be prizes for the best poster and oral presentations. Please be aware that there are limited number of oral presentation slots.

We are also looking for volunteers to help organise the conference and chair sessions. If you are interested please email the Graduate School.

How to Register

All conference attendees, including contributors, will need to complete the booking form (Conference booking form (Word doc 83 Kb)) and send via email to:graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk

Deadlines

For submitting abstracts: Monday 21st May
For attending the conference: Monday 11th June

Further details on presentation formats and programmes from previous conferences are available here.

ESF social inequalities conference grants up for grabs

The European Science Foundation invites applications for grants to attend the ESF-ZIF-Bielefeld University research conference on tracing social inequalities in environmentally induced migration.
The conference, to be held from 9 to 13 December 2012 in Bielefeld, Germany, will concentrate on the social inequalities between world regions, countries, geographical regions, organisations, groups and categories of people involved in environmental- and climate-induced migration. Grants are available to cover the conference fee or assist with travel costs for students and early stage researchers. View the full details for this call on the ESF website and the deadline is July 1st.