Tagged / media

*LAST CHANCE TO BOOK* Rebel Yell: The Politics of Equality and Diversity in Disney’s Star Wars

BU research, Events

#TalkBU is a monthly lunchtime seminar on Talbot Campus, open to all students and staff at Bournemouth University and free to attend. Come along to learn, discuss and engage in a 20-30 minute presentation by an academic or guest speaker talking about their research and findings, with a Q&A to finish. 

Since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012, the Star Wars saga has become a lightning rod for political debate and discussion. Both The Force Awakens and Rogue One have activated a series of online quarrels hinged on a marked shift in fictional representations of women and ethnic minorities.

In this talk, Dr. William Proctor will examine the forces and factors surrounding these quarrels, specifically the way in which mainstream media outlets promote and publicise the ideologies of right wing commentators in the contemporary age of Brexit and Donald Trump.

When: Thursday 26 October at 1pm – 2pm

Where: Room FG04, Ground Floor in the Fusion Building

Register here to attend

Click here to find out more about our future and previous #TalkBU events.

BU Briefing – It was only a mild concussion

BU research

Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field.

Sports concussion has been the subject of much discourse in the scientific literature and mainstream media for many years. Major national and international sporting events are extensively covered by the media, with vast numbers of column inches and webpages dedicated to summarising these events. The frequency of concussion in some of the world’s biggest sports such as soccer, football, and rugby means that many of these concussive events which occur in high-profile competitions are also the focus of this reporting.

This paper analyses the descriptions of online sports concussion news on a global scale, using a search engine to retrieve news stories, and evaluates the media’s role in shaping public perception and misconception regarding concussion in sport. Further analysis sought to identify geographical patterns associated with different descriptions of sports concussion.

Click here to read the briefing paper.

For more information about the research, contact Dr Osman Ahmed at ahmedo@bournemouth.ac.uk.
To find out how your research output could be turned into a BU Briefing, contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Recent Writing from Kip Jones Available on the Internet

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

 

“Kyle’s photo-montage of black and white clippings, mostly from fashion magazines, Bailey and Avedon, etc., glued to the walls surrounding his bed”.

Kip Jones is pleased to announce that the tripartite story, “True confessions: why I left a traditional liberal arts college for the sins of the big city”, first published in Qualitative Research Journal, is available on Academia.edu.  Jones is particularly pleased that what is now called ‘auto-fiction’ has been accepted for publication by such a major qualitative journal. The three stories in the article conclude with a scene from Jones’ ongoing development of the feature film script for “Copacetica”. All three stories portray aspects of the sexual fumbling and romantic insecurities typical in youth.

“Dirty Frank’s” bar, Philadelphia, where the main characters of “Copacetica” frequently meet.

The second piece of writing consists of the bar scene from “Copacetica”. This is the scene in which all the major characters are introduced and the story sets up the conundrum that the main character will face in the film.

“Copacetica” tells the tale of a gullible youth on a roller coaster ride of loss of innocence and coming out in the flux and instability of 1960s hippy America. Often seen as a period of revolution in social norms, Copacetica’s themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture, or ‘heteronormativity’.  Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity.

In the later gallery scene (not yet published), a minor character explains the meaning of the word, “copacetic”:

VISITOR TWO
What d’he say?

VISTOR ONE
“Everything’s copacetic”! (Beat) 
What does that mean, anyway?

VISITOR THREE
Everything’s cool. Everything’s okay. 
Or “Groovy” as they like to say.

Asked what he enjoyed about writing the script for this film, Jones said, “Definitely revisiting the slang used by youth of the 1960s! It’s virtually its own language. And writing the sex scenes. Exciting and very tiring. Almost like the real thing”.

You can read the opening scene planned for the film on KIPWORLD: “Copacetica” Scene 1. EXT SUBURBAN HOUSE POOL NIGHT

Top three most accessed 2016 paper BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, writing

bmc-media-luce-et-alIt is always nice to receive some good news just before Christmas.  The journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth informed us that our paper ‘“Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media’ was in the top three most popular papers [1].  This interdisciplinary paper crosses the boundaries between the study of maternity care & midwifery, sociology of health & illness, and that of the media.  With BU’s Dr. Ann Luce as first author, it is one of the top three accessed articles of nearly 400 articles published in 2016 (as of Dec 16th).     

 

Reference:

  1. Luce, A., Cash, M., Hundley, V., Cheyne, H., van Teijlingen, E., Angell, C., (2016) “Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 40 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0827-x

Public Engagement Fund – Funding call

Funding opportunities

rfp-image-620x620Wellcome exists is a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. It exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive.

They currently offer number of funding schemes and one of them is public engagement fund.

Public Engagement Fund is for anyone with a great idea for engaging the public in conversations about health-related science and research. It replaces the Society, People, Large Arts, Small Arts, Development, Co-production, Capital and International Engagement Awards. Read more here.

The fund is open to anyone, including those working in:

  • the arts
  • entertainment media
  • museums and heritage
  • leisure, sport and tourism
  • education and informal learning
  • the community, charity and public sectors.

Scheme at a glance

Proposal stage:

Research and development, Production and project delivery, Developing practice and building networks

Where your activity will take place:

UK, Republic of Ireland, Some low- and middle-income countries

Level of funding:

You can apply for anything from £5,000 up to £3 million

Duration of funding:

Up to 5 years

For more information click here.

CMMPH disability & childbirth research

BU research, Featured, Publishing, Uncategorized

Last month’s press release for the latest study in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) was picked up by the Journal of Family Health.  disability-pregnancy-2016The study ‘Human rights and dignities: Experience of disabled women during pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting’ appeared under the heading ‘Maternity care failing disabled women, charity warns’ in the Journal of Family Health.  The charity in question is Birthrights which funded the survey of women with physical or sensory impairment or long-term health conditions and their maternity care experiences.  The research was conducted by midwifery researchers Jenny Hall, Jillian Ireland and Vanora Hundley at Bournemouth University and occupational therapist Bethan Collins, at the University of Liverpool.

rcm-disabilityLast month this important study had already been reported by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) on their webpages (click here to read more).  On the RCM website  Louise Silverton Director for Midwifery at the RCM said: “It is deeply disappointing to hear that women with disabilities are not getting the maternity care they need and deserve. Although this is only a small survey, it does provide a very valuable insight into the realties of the care these women have received while pregnant.  The RCM believes that maternity services should treat disabled women like every other woman, while ensuring that the care provided does not ignore or overreact to their specific wishes and aspirations.”

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH