Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) Partnership have been so excited to be part of the development of Dorset’s new Community Research and Engagement Network (CREN), alongside our wonderful partners at Community Action Network (CAN) and The Lantern Trust. CREN is a network that brings communities, researchers, practitioners and organisations together to make research more inclusive, accessible and meaningful. With CREN, we will be able to make sure people and communities have a genuine voice in the research and decisions that affect their lives. The network aims to “flip the power” in research, moving away from research being something that is simply done to or for communities, towards research being developed with them as equal partners.
The incredible launch event in July brought together organisations and community members from across Dorset, and it was clear that there is already so much fantastic community engagement happening across the county. CREN is about connecting that work, sharing what we’ve learned and creating more opportunities to work together – we saw so many great examples of this during the launch!
We’re excited to be part of what comes next and to see what we can achieve together as Dorset’s community research network grows. The launch was just the beginning – and we can’t wait to see where CREN takes us!
Read Community Action Network’s full write-up of the CREN launch and watch a film from the day here
What makes this book so special is that it is written entirely by people with lived experience. Through personal stories, it explores issues such as housing, mental health, education and institutional barriers, while connecting these experiences to social policy and encouraging meaningful reflection.
This is more than a textbook, it’s an opportunity to listen, learn, and better understand the realities faced by many people across the UK.
You can get 20% off of a copy using code 26AFLY1 at checkout.
We’re excited to share that the Dorset Community Research Engagement Network (CREN) has joined The Centre for Seldom Heard Voices and the PIER Partnership as a co-host of our Community Voices Webinar Series! We know this partnership will strengthen our mission to amplify seldom heard voices and support community-led research.
CREN was developed as part of the fourth phase of the ‘I Am More Than…’ partnership, working alongside Community Action Network, The Lantern Trust, The HealthBus, and 11 Founding Members – grassroots charities and community groups committed to shaping inclusive research.
The goal of CREN is to link underserved communities with health and social care research, fostering equitable, two-way partnerships to improve local outcomes, and so working together, we can continue to engage with inspiring community groups, activists, and organisations working to promote inclusion and social justice across our region and beyond.
We have been delighted to hear from many of the founding members of CREN (grassroot charities and community groups committed to shaping inclusive research) in the 2025/2026 webinar series, and we are excited to hear from more in the coming months. We are looking forward to building even stronger connections between researchers and the communities they serve.
Our first webinar as a collaborator will be this Wednesday 11th February, 12-1pm, and another one of our members, Rosa Trout from Bournemouth Walk for Freedom is going to be joining us to share the wonderful work they do!
#WalkForFreedom an annual global event by A21 to raise awareness of human trafficking & exploitation. One of A21’s strategies in the fight against human trafficking is Reach. Reach focuses on educating and equipping the general public to understand, identify, and reduce the risk of human trafficking through education curriculum, prevention materials, and awareness campaigns.
Come along to find out more!
Find out more about CREN, here: https://can100.org/connecting-communities/i-am-more-than/
Scroll down on our page to watch some of the previous webinars: https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/centres-institutes/centre-seldom-heard-voices
Community Voices is a collaboration between BU PIER partnership, the Centre for Seldom Heard Voices and the Community Research Engagement Network (CREN) to provide a platform and a voice to local community activists.
BCP Age Friendly Communities, in partnership with Bournemouth University, are bringing together researchers, practitioners, and community organisations for an event focused on connecting research with real-world practice.
This event offers a valuable opportunity to share, learn, and collaborate around research involving older people. It will be designed to spark conversation and attendees will have the chance to connect with community organisations and networks supporting older people across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, building relationships that can lead to meaningful collaborations, inclusive involvement opportunities, and future research partnerships.
If you are a researcher, or a practitioner keen to connect with research that reflects lived experience, this is an ideal opportunity to be part of the conversation.
Join us to exchange ideas, build connections, and help shape more age-friendly communities across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole!!
See you there!
We are excited to share that on January 14th we will be welcoming Tom Lane, a Principal Youth Worker at the charity STEPS Club For Young People in Weymouth, to the Community Voices Webinar.
STEPS provides a range of activities, opportunities, projects, awards and support for young people aged 13-19, many of whom are disadvantaged, excluded or vulnerable.
They undertake a significant amount of work supporting young people with a wide range of issues and problems. These include education, training and employment, relationships, bullying, bereavement, drug and alcohol use, crime and anti-social behaviour, self-harm and suicidal ideation, abuse, sexual health and mental health.
We would love to see you there!
Community Voices is a collaboration between BU PIER partnership and Centre for Seldom Heard Voices to provide a platform and a voice to local community activists.
Join the meeting to find out more
Meeting ID: 324 372 201 287 1
Passcode: ug6rJ3c7
Contact Stevie for more information.
PIER turned 20 years old this year and its influence and impact has continued to grow. PIER is all about bringing lived experience into the heart of education and research, and it is central to everything they do. This year, strong collaborations with 66 community organisations has enabled work with groups who are often excluded from education and research, ensuring that those most affected by health and social inequalities help shape solutions, and this work is feeding into wider conversations about inclusion, inequality and change.
Looking ahead, PIER will continue to build genuine relationships, and creating flexible ways for people to get involved.
To find out all about PIER’s incredible achievements this year, read the full report here: https://issuu.com/bournemouthuniversity/docs/pier_annual_report_2024-25?fr=sODY0ZTgzNTU0MDQ
We would like to thank all of our BU colleagues for your continued support and collaboration, and encourage you to share this report widely!
Mel, Kate, Pete & Angela
Late last week my colleague Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health, returned home from his Erasmus+ exchange to Nepal. He brought home for me a copy of the MMIHS (Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences) Souvenir 2023, this outliens key events at the institution of the past year. One of the write ups in the Souvenir is from the seven MMIHS M.Sc. students in Public Health who visited Bournemouth University in late 2022-early 2023 for three months. 
The students have since all completed their M.Sc. in Public Health at MMIHS. Their story highlights some of the British features of student life which were new to them. These included the support they received from our SUBU (=students’ union), or registering with the NHS, and the UNIBUS app, as well as cultural celebrations during their time in Dorset, such Halloween, Christmas and New Year. They rave about the module Public Involvement in Research and specifically thank Dr. Mel Hughes and BU’s PIER (Public Involvement in Education & Research) team. Their second module at BU focused on Systematic Reviewing, they particularly mention the guidance and support received from Prof. Vanora Hundley in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH) and our Faculty of Health & Social Sciences librarian Mr. Caspian Dugdale.
Unfortunately, the Erasmus+ scheme has come to an end, but Bournemouth University has just been awarded funding for a serious number of Turing Scheme exchanges. The latter is for BU students to go aboard, and this funding supports study exchanges, work placements, voluntary traineeships and other international extra-curricular or curricular activities worldwide for a minimum of 28 days and maximum of 12 months.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
Follow the thoughts and reflections of the guest editorial team through our special issue blog series. The special issue of the British Journal of Social Work: Voice and Influence of people with lived experience is written, edited and reviewed by people with lived experience of social work. To date we have received 140 submissions across the three categories of academic papers, reflective pieces and creative artefacts. Follow our progress as we work toward publication in Spring 2023 via our blog series here
We would like to invite you to the Bournemouth, Christchurch ad Poole Poverty Truth Commission launch on Thursday 14th July 10-12.
The project so far
14 inspirational Community Commissioners (CCs) – those with lived experience of poverty locally – have agreed to become part of the Commission. They have been meeting together fortnightly since April to get to know each other, better understand the process, and tease out key themes common to their stories such as housing, mental health, rising costs, benefits. They have told the commission they already feel “less alone”, “really listened to” and “inspired”. They are now working together with the commission to design and prepare for the public launch event (10-12 on 14 July) where similar numbers of local leaders including myself (Mel Hughes) in my role as Academic lead for the BU PIER partnership will join them as Civic/Business Commissioners (CBCs) to work together to tackle the root causes of poverty over the coming year.
To book a place at the launch please register here
If you would like to discuss, please contact me directly mhughes@bournemouth.ac.uk
We’ll hear from Dr Mel Hughes and colleagues about PPI (Public and Patient Involvement in Research) and a new internal funding stream for public engagement.
Public engagement with research intersects with a number of other ways of communicating your research or involving people in it. At our next PER Network meeting we’ll look at one of those other ways, welcoming Dr Mel Hughes, Academic Lead for the BU PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) Partnership, Rachel Jury, PIER member, and Angela Warren, PIER coordinator who will provide a brief introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement in research, or PPI.
This is an opportunity to learn about different approaches to public involvement, the benefits to your research and the pitfalls to avoid. This session is co-designed and facilitated with a representative from the PIER partnership (Public Involvement in Education and Research), who has extensive experience of sharing their lived experience expertise in research studies. There will be opportunity at the end to ask your questions about public involvement.
We’ll also other news on public engagement from BU, including a new internal funding stream for public engagement and how you can apply.
The meeting will take place 1-2pm on Thursday 25 November, on Teams.
To join this meeting and find out about future ones, join our BU Public Engagement with Research Network. Check under ‘Meetings’ for upcoming sessions.
Today saw the publication of a new paper ‘Importance of involving patients and public in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and health research in South Asia’ co-authored by the BU Public Involvement in Education and Research (PIER) Partnership [1]. This paper is co-written with Dr. Bibha Simkhada, until recently Lecturer in Nursing in N4LTH Centre (Nursing for Long-Term Health) and now Senior Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Huddersfield, Dr. Aliya Naheed at icddr,b in Bangladesh, Angela Warren based at PIER, Dr. Sue Green (Principal Academic) and Prof. Edwin van Teilingen. The paper appears in the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, which is published by Cambridge University Press.
The authors highlights that Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement (PPI/E) in public health research and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in has significantly increased over past decade in countries such as the UK. PPI/E helps improve health research and hence benefits patients and service users. For example, organisations like BU’s PIER bring a unique patients and (potential) users’ perspective of these services, which enables FHSS to enhance the education the future workforce in health and social care as well as research in this area.
However, PPI/E is still very new concept in many LMICs (Low- and Middle-Income Countries). This paper considers the importance of PPI in public health research and HTA in the development and implementation of technology in the health sector in South Asia. Currently, in this region, health technology is frequently adopted from HICs without local research and HTA. It also discusses the importance of local co-creation of technology to reflect the needs of users within a culturally appropriate setting. It is important for LMIC-based researchers to understand the potential of PPI/E and how it can contribute to it to improve health care and research, especially perhaps in the era of COVID-19.
Reference:
Within the Bournemouth University PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) partnership and the BU Research Centre for Seldom Heard Voices we have been re-evaluating the nature and purpose of PPI (what, why and how) in order to identify ways of broadening the models and approaches used by researchers. This stems from our on-going work to identify, pilot and evaluate models which have the most impact and which involve a more diverse range of voices in shaping and informing health and social sciences research. As part of this process we conducted a concept analysis drawing on published research where claims of PPI were made. As a result, we identified five operational definitions for conducting PPI. The five definitions which outline different models or approaches to conducting PPI, were: undefined involvement; targeted consultation; embedded consultation; collaboration and coproduction; and user led research. We deliberately avoided presenting these as a ladder or pyramid of involvement given the significant impact on the research cycle which can be achieved with each approach. The definitions provide a useful tool for researchers to consider how best to incorporate public involvement into their research and to consider what the impact of doing so might be. The paper is available for open accesss at https://rdcu.be/5uin Hughes, M. and Duffy, C 2018 Public involvement in health and social sciences research: a concept analysis. Health Expectations.
I was invited to present at Imperial’s PPI network this week to talk on the theme of inclusivity in PPI (public and patient involvement in research). In the PIER partnership and the newly formed Research Centre for Seldom Heard Voices, we are exploring challenges and opportunities for engaging seldom heard voices in PPI. The basis of our work is that those most affected by health inequalities often have the least opportunity to inform and shape health research. Beresford (2007:310) highlights that if diversity and the barriers that can be in the way of increasing diversity are not addressed, ‘participation is likely to be partial, and reflect broader social divisions and exclusions’ i.e. it will further reinforce health inequalities. This led to some great discussions within the PPI network. The main focus was whether we need to approach PPI differently to engage a more diverse range of voices. From our work at BU, we are finding that we need to think differently about who we involve and how we involve. Only a certain demographic of people will feel comfortable and confident engaging in focus groups, providing feedback on plain English summaries or voicing their opinions in formal settings. These methods and voices are valid but in our experience, are not particularly diverse. Our current work seeks to engage marginalised groups such as rough sleepers in PPI activities by creating outreach opportunities for researchers to ‘go to them’. As a starting point, we challenge the notion of ‘hard to reach’ groups. In our experience, marginalised groups are easier to locate and engage when collaborating with community organisations such as night shelters. The challenge is to change a culture of PPI which relies on the public ‘entering our world’ rather than us seeking a wider range of voices out in the community. It would be good to hear your thoughts and examples. Dr Mel Hughes, mhughes@bournemouth.ac.uk
BU staff can login below:
National Postdoc Appreciation Week 2026: The Changing Landscape of Postdoc Careers
NIHR Insight South West Central Conference 2026 at Bournemouth University
BU PhD student presented at World Safety Conference in South Africa
National Research Supervision Recognition: Apply Now & Join the Supporting Workshop on 16 September
Horizon Europe Cluster 3 (Civil Security for Society) 2026 Calls Now Open
MSCA Doctoral Networks 2026 Call Information Webinar
ESRC Festival of Social Science 2026: Application Deadline Extended to Thursday 25 June 2026 Apply now to take part in the 2026 ESRC Festival of Social Science
Reminder: Register for the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2026 Information Session
ECR Funding Open Call: Research Culture & Community Grant – Apply now MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 Call
ERC Advanced Grant 2025 Webinar MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
Research Information Network