Tagged / nutrition

Euraxess – new workshops and events

Euraxess UK is a British Council hub, which aids researchers in their career development, supporting mobility and acting as a support mechanism for researchers moving abroad or moving to the UK.

The following items have been highlighted in the current Euraxess Newsletter:

Researcher Links Workshop

Grants are now available for early career researchers to attend a Nutrition Policy to Practice in Pakistan: Exploring the Challenges and Research Opportunities workshop at the Serena Hotel, Islamabad, Pakistan between 8-11 March 2015.

Application forms can be downloaded from the website and the deadline to apply is 30 January 2015. Further eligibility criteria may apply, and applicants should read the Further Information document.

Researcher Links Complex Systems workshop in Brazil

Under the Researcher Links scheme offered by the British Council and FAPESP, there will be a workshop on Complex Systems held at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, Sao Paulo, between 8-13 March 2015. The workshop is being coordinated by Dr Murilo S. Baptista and Prof José R. C. Piqueira, and will have contributions from other leading researchers.

Early Career Researchers from the UK or Brazil are invited to apply to attend this workshop before the deadline for applications, 23 January 2015.

Newton International and Newton Advanced Fellowships- UK/Mexico/Brazil

Scholarships and grants are announced for UK Researchers focusing on Clinical and Patient oriented research from The Academy of Medical Science/CONACYT -Mexico/CONFAP-Brazil. The duration and terms of the awards vary between partners. Further detailed information can be found on specific programmes can be found on the Academy’s website.

You can sign up to receive the British Council – Euraxess alerts direct to your inbox. For more information about Euraxess, please go to the British Council website. For example, read more about FameLab, part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival, which runs from 19 Feb – 1 March 2015.

HSC student Jib Acharya wins Santander award

Awarded & submitted bids, PG research

HSC PhD student Jib Acharya has been successful in the recent round of BU Graduate School Santander Mobility Awards.  The panel felt that his case for support was well justified and the Graduate School in conjunction with Santander and the Development Office will be supporting him to a value of £1000.00.  The award is made available for Jib to attend the Third World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in November 2014 in Spain.  (website: http://www.nutrition2014.org/)

The PhD thesis research of Jib Acharya is based on A comparative Study on Nutritional Problems in Preschool Aged Children of Kaski District of Nepal.  His mixed-methods thesis brings together the academic fields of (a) Nutrition and (b) Public Health.  His research is supervised by a team of three BU supervisors: Dr. Jane Murphy, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and Dr. Martin Hind.

 

Congratulations,

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

BU establishes Food & Drink Research Group

Delicious links

Early September saw the official launch of the recently formed Food & Drink Research Group (at Bournemouth University).  This cross-university research group has current membership from all schools, while formally residing under the ‘Leisure, Recreation & Tourism’ theme (See: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2012/10/BU-Research-Themes-information-060913.pdf).  The Food & Drink Research Group focuses on a wide-range of food and drink issues ranging from consumers’ food choices to local food and drink production and distribution to healthy eating, to name.  Group members have also studied the different meanings people attach to food and eating, for example among students in Dorset and pregnant women in Nepal.

Academics associated with the Food & Drink Research Group are involved with studies focusing on consumers, the hospitality industry, food producers, wholesalers, distributors and the retailing industry. In addition, members have researched food labelling, aspects of nutrition, health promotion and education. The research group aims to act as a hub to all food and drink research activity across the University. In the spirit of Fusion, the group is focusing on student consultancy projects, PhD research, and engagement with industry.

The next meeting of the Food & Drink Research group is scheduled for November 6th at 10.30 in The Retreat at Talbot Campus.

Anybody member of staff interested in joining the group should contact Rhyannan Hurst (email: rhurst@bournemouth.ac.uk ).

Emerald Literati Network : 2012 Awards for Excellence

Publishing, Research themes

Image of Dr Heather Hartwell

Bournemouth University’s Associate Professor Dr Heather Hartwell has been chosen as an Outstanding Reviewer at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012. Each year Emerald names and rewards the Outstanding Reviewers who contribute to the success of the journals.  Each journal’s Editor has nominated the Reviewer they believe has been that title’s most Outstanding Reviewer.

The most Outstanding Reviewers are chosen following consultation amongst the journal’s Editors, who are eminent academics or managers. Dr Hartwell was selected for the very impressive and significant contribution she made as a Reviewer to the British Food Journal throughout 2011.

Launch of the Association for Nutrition’s Workforce Competence Model

 

As Chair of the Department of Health funded project, ‘Improving Capacity Confidence and Competence across the Workforce in Nutrition,’ I hosted, with others, the launch of the Association for Nutrition’s Workforce Competence Model: at the Royal Society, in London last week.   We should applaud our profession’s capacity to deliver such a high quality, large scale mass participation project, working across professional boundaries, to time and to budget; a project with enormous potential to influence change across the wider health & social care sector.

Nutrition has a critical role to play in tackling inequalities, especially in deprived communities at risk from poor intake and obesity. It is therefore essential that frontline workers operating in the most disadvantaged sectors of society can lead in reducing nutrition-related health inequalities by demonstrating their competence in communicating and delivering appropriate messages. The aim of the workforce model is to encourage high and consistent standards of education and training alongside robust support, recognition and progression mechanisms to ensure that the nutrition workforce is sufficiently developed and skilled to deliver the government’s targets for public health.   It was a proud moment for me.

 

Engaging Undergraduates with Research

Fusion

BournemouthUniversity’s Associate Professor,Heather Hartwell, took part in a lively online debate on Friday, discussing how to engage undergraduates in research.

Screen grab of online debateHosted by the Guardian Higher Education network, Dr Hartwell joined panellists from the Universities of Leeds,Central Lancashire,East LondonandLincolnamong others, to provide expertise and advice on how to develop undergraduate research programmes and ensure they are successful.

Dr Hartwell explained BU’s ‘fusion’ concept, describing ‘a community where research is part of core business and where both undergraduates and post graduates are engaged in that activity so becomes part of the ‘daily’ business’.

The British Conference for Undergraduate Research was widely considered by panel members to be an excellent initiative. This takes place at theUniversityofWarwickin March, with ten BU students from theSchoolofTourismpresenting posters.

Fellow panellists and participants in the web chat were also impressed by Dr Heather HartwellDr Hartwell’s own experiences engaging undergraduates with research; notably her work with theUSarmy. “We were awarded a contract by theUSarmy to study food and emotions,” she said. “This was with the demographic of their ‘war fighters’, so young adults. During a first year lecture I asked for volunteers to help me, and the sea of hands was amazing. In fact recruiting students to help was beneficial because they were the same age group as the sample.”

But it’s not only the students who benefit from engaging with research. Dr Hartwell commented that sometimes dissertation data is of such high quality that she has been known to use it to form the basis of a short co-authored paper.

Inevitably the issue of peer ‘snobbery’ was raised, questioning the status of published undergraduate research. Dr Hartwell suggested that if ‘published work was blind peer reviewed and therefore the ‘process’ did not know where the work had come from – it was accepted on its merit’.

The full debate can be viewed via the Guardian Higher Education Network.