Tagged / Postdoc appreciation week

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Anastasia Vayona

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, research staff

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Anastasia Vayona, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Social Science and Policy, about her research journey to date… 

Confucius said, “Find something you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. I admit it took me a while (!) but I finally got there…

Being a Postdoc has proven to be the most fulfilling career choice that I have made to date. I am working on things that I am passionate about with people who share the same passion and interest.

I started my professional career as a Landscape Architect who was always interested in sustainability and the societal aspects of designing for people and through that I got exposed to the concept of Circular Economy. It was the Eureka moment for me, I developed an appetite for further research and explored the societal aspects of Circular Economy, so I pursued a doctorate on the subject. I was fortunate to work on EU-funded projects along with my studies and got to meet like-minded scholars and further develop my knowledge and interests.

Anastasia Vayona presenting her research

Anastasia Vayona presenting her research into the circular economy

I have recently been given the opportunity to work as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Social Science & Policy, at the Faculty of Science and Technology. I am one of the 4 postdocs working on the Research Capacity Transformation Scheme (RCaTS): Resolving the extinction crisis: sustainable and technological solutions for biodiversity and society project, along with academics from Life and Environmental Sciences and the Business School.

This role has allowed me to work with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues and academics on a series of different projects, all involving biodiversity and society. As a social scientist, I constantly explore new ways of involving society in practice and broadening the consumer/ residence/ human understanding of issues that involve sustainability and their livelihood.

Being a postdoc is an important first step of an academic career. It provides one with a relatively high degree of freedom to pursue their research interests – free from the pressure of completing and submitting their PhD thesis! It gives one the luxury to dedicate their time wholly on research and pump their research skills during the outset of their career. In the six months I have been in my current post, I managed to publish three papers and I am in the process of preparing a further five at the time of writing.

However, a postdoc role is not permanent by design, so it also comes with some degree of job insecurity and anxiety: time is ticking, and you need to deliver outputs that will showcase your capabilities and competency as a researcher.

Being an all-rounded researcher involves building and mastering a wide range of competencies – not just the obvious skill of writing scientific papers, but also understanding and participating in funded research (both pre and post award), gaining research independence by working with colleagues within and outside your institution, participating in supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate student projects, and of course teaching, through the delivery of targeted, guest lectures showcasing your research.

This complex and challenging landscape was one of the reasons I volunteered for the role of institutional Research Staff Association (RSA) representative, where I aspire to make a difference through working together with other members of the university to produce an actionable plan for supporting early career researchers in navigating through the various options, opportunities, expectations and responsibilities.

When I started this journey, I could only dream of what I have succeeded to date but now I am grateful for what I have achieved; I am thankful to all the people who helped me through the journey so far and look forward to the future.

Thank you to everybody who has shared their experiences as part of Postdoc Appreciation Week – and thank you to our postdocs for all you do, this week and every week, to support research at BU. 

You can get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Dr Aralisa Shedden

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, research staff

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Dr Aralisa Shedden, who writes about her experiences as a postdoctoral researcher… 

I am a terrestrial ecologist who aims to understand the emerging challenges for biodiversity conservation in a changing world. I obtained my BSc and my MSc at the University of Veracruz, Mexico. My MSc thesis investigated sustainable use of tropical forest fragments to enhance biodiversity conservation and how endangered species adapted to changes in their environment. I also worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute of Neuroethology, where I supported research development and management.

I was then invited to join the Center for Tropical Research at the University of Veracruz, where I worked as a Scientific Associate until 2012, when I began my PhD at Bournemouth University. I completed my PhD in 2016 and my thesis combined environmental, ecological and social data to rank the suitability of areas for conservation in a multi-user and multi-use landscape in Mexico. I explored using primates as flagship species to establish these conservation sites and also aimed to support decision making and planning in response to threats including agriculture and hunting.

After a five year break in my career due to full-time care responsibilities, I re-joined academia and began a Post Doctoral position at Bournemouth University working on a EU Horizon 2020 project called RESONATE that investigates how past and current site factors and management affect forest system resilience in different forest types and management systems across Europe.

I also continue to collaborate with colleagues from universities in Mexico and the U.S.A. on topics related to interactions between wildlife (e.g. jaguar and puma predation on primates), the effects of landscape transformation on animal health (e.g. increase in parasitism in animals living in human impacted forests) and enhancing our knowledge on how to tackle conservation issues in the tropics.

Through my applied research, I am driven to understand the intricate relationships between the need for economic growth in rural communities and the necessity for environmental conservation. I am interested in how species respond to changes in their ecosystems, ongoing climatic events and human pressures. With this knowledge, I aim to provide practical solutions for conservation under varying scenarios.

For me, the best part about being a post-doc has been learning new skills and being exposed to topics/concepts that I had not been involved with in my previous research. And worst thing about being a post-doc is it can be somewhat isolating and the learning curve can be steeper than expected, which can be quite challenging.

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your experiences, or show your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

 

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Postdoc Appreciation meet-up

BU research, Events, Featured, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, Research Concordat, research staff

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

To mark the week, we hosted a Postdoc Appreciation meet-up event on Talbot Campus…

A photo through a window of people gathered in a room with a poster saying Postdoc Appreciation Week

The Postdoc Appreciation Week meet-up

The event offered the opportunity for postdoctoral researchers, their line managers, and research staff from across the university to come together and network, as well as find out more about current postdoctoral research taking place at BU.

The event was opened by Professor Mike Silk, Co-Chair of the Research Concordat Steering Group at BU.

Introducing the event as an opportunity to increase and enhance the visibility of postdoc researchers at BU, he said: “Postdoctoral researchers really are the ones who drive forward the research agenda at any institution.

“They are the lifeblood of my research and career – I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing without the postdoctoral researchers that I have managed.”

As part of the event, postdoctoral researchers Sina Safari and Anastasia Vayona presented short summaries of their current research.

Sina Safari stood in front of a screen

Sina Safari presents his work as part of the ADDISONIC cluster

Sina, a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Structural Dynamics and Advanced Materials, shared his work as part of the ADDISONIC research cluster, which is looking at how ultrasonic fatigue testing can provide valuable data around how long materials will last.

The work has applications for industry in helping them develop more robust modelling around the lifespan of materials, as well as exploring ways of potentially using less material while extending their life.

Anastasia, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Science and Policy, spoke about her research exploring greenwashing, wish cycling and the circular economy.

Anastasia Vayona presenting her research

Anastasia Vayona presenting her research into the circular economy

She shared a brief history of the introduction of plastic packaging and the development of a ‘throwaway culture’, which peaked around the 1990s. She also spoke about some of the challenges around recycling – including the responsibility being largely left with consumers, and unclear messaging which leads to recycling becoming contaminated and ended up in landfill.

The event ended with the chance to chat over coffee and cake, and offered a great opportunity to learn more about postdoctoral research at BU and meet some of our current researchers, as well as say thank you for the contribution they make to research at BU. The hope is to hold similar events in future – watch this space!

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

 

 

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Local Authority Adult Social Care Recruitment and Retention research project

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, research staff

This week is UK Postostdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Dr Andy Pulman, Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Care, who shares details of his research exploring recruitment and retention in social care… 

An effective health service is reliant on an effective social care system, and it is therefore vital that we develop a robust research base for social care, to ensure that local authorities (LAs) and third sector organisations provide the most effective services within a wider integrated system of health and social care.

The National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work (NCPQSW) has been contributing to this area of national research recently by helping to generate deeper insights into the challenges of building capacity to undertake social care research across the sector and the opportunities for building research engagement and capacity across Higher Education Institutions and the social care sector in the Wessex region (Dorset, South Wiltshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight).

In 2022, Professor Lee-Ann Fenge (PI) and Dr Andy Pulman (Post Doc) completed a year-long study examining social care research enablers – which could help to build a positive research environment – and barriers – which might prevent or limit a positive research environment for practitioners. We are currently working on a follow up project – one of four in the Wessex region being funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) – building on this initial scoping work.

Our study explores local recruitment (employing people as adult social care staff) and retention (providing a working environment where they want to stay) issues in adult social care from the perspective of four populations of interest:

  1. Social care practitioners currently working in two local LAs – Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) and Dorset.
  2. Social care staff with responsibility for performing exit interviews with LA staff (prior to their leaving the LA) currently working in the two local LAs.
  3. Students currently enrolled in social care undergraduate and postgraduate programmes (within the Wessex region) who might enter the adult social care workforce locally once qualified.
  4. Service users with lived experience of receiving services in BCP or Dorset/advocates drawn from Wessex Region Local Authority contracted services and the impacts of practitioner retention in relation to use of these services.

This project runs between November 2022 and April 2024 and at time of writing (11/09/23), we are currently collecting and analysing qualitative data from over n=100 participants. 

More information on our project:

Dr Andy Pulman – apulman@bournemouth.ac.uk

https://ncpqsw.com/building-research-capacity-in-social-care/

https://www.arc-wx.nihr.ac.uk/research-areas-list/social-care%3A-local-authority-adult-social-care-recruitment-and-retention-research-project

Further viewing:

Pulman, A. 2023. NIHR ARC Wessex Social Care Lunchtime Seminar #2 – Building Research Capacity in Social Care.

Further reading:

Pulman, A. and Fenge, L.-A., 2023. Building Capacity for Social Care Research—Individual-Level and Organisational Barriers Facing Practitioners. The British Journal of Social Work.

Pulman, A. and Fenge, L.-A., 2023. Building Capacity for Social Care Research – Ways of Improving Research Skills for Social Workers. Social Work Education.

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Dr Rejoice Chipuriro

BU research, Featured, PG research, Postgraduate Research, Research communication, Research Concordat, research staff, Uncategorized

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Dr Rejoice Chipuriro, Post-Doctoral Researcher In Social Care, about her experiences as a postdoctoral researcher… 

I trained as a social worker in Zimbabwe before relocating to South Africa where I obtained my MA in Social Development and PhD in Sociology. I joined Bournemouth University in February 2022 as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Social Science and Social Work.

A group of researchers stood on steps

Dr Rejoice Chipuriro with her wider research team

I have worked in community-led interventions and health research programmes in Southern Africa and in the UK. My current research projects are both funded by the National Institute of Health and Social Care and focus on community assets and how these contribute to people’s health and wellbeing (commonhealthassets.uk).

I also work with a local arts-based community organisation which supports mental health for marginalised populations such as asylum seekers, people in recovery from drug and alcohol use.

I was initially drawn to social work as a helping profession and later I ventured into research to learn from and understand the societies that I worked in. When I practised social work, I noticed that beyond individual pathologies lay structural and socio-economic issues that either developed or deprived access to life enhancing choices and opportunities. This led me to studying social development and sociology. I found these inter-disciplinary postgraduate courses helpful for my community work.

I was able to co-design participatory and anti-oppressive interventions with the help of people in the communities as experts by experience. I enjoy supporting people going through life transitions as well as groups and communities striving for a more equitable and just society for all.

What I like about being a post-doctoral researcher

I have travelled widely and met researchers, academics, and communities of practice across the globe, which is an enriching experience. I have presented my research in three continents and collaborated on research across the globe. My network is expansive, and I have accessed resources, intellectual support, and mentorship which has helped me grow professionally. I bring with me this international experience into my work, and this benefits the students and communities I support. When work is challenging, I have empathetic colleagues who hold the space for me and offer encouragement when I need it most.

I have been granted opportunities to teach social work and sociology units as well as to co-facilitate CPD units. I am still mastering teaching skills whilst I support colleagues in lesson planning, delivering virtual and in-person teaching and assessments. I enjoy doing things out of my comfort zone and this aspect of my academic training was at first intimidating but now pleasant. I have settled into my teaching duties well and I like infusing the creative as well as pragmatic aspects of my research into the lectures to enhance student learning experience from different fields of practice.

I was allocated a fellow post doc to be my uni buddy, who helped me settle into my role and the practicalities of living in Bournemouth and we became friends, which alleviated some loneliness away from home. I was assigned mentors to help direct my career progression. From the mentorship I managed to submit a successful portfolio of evidence for my associate fellow Advance HE. I also got mentorship in submitting research bids and got my first grant as a Principal Investigator. These achievements are an indicator of the time and effort invested into professional development for post-docs at BU.

The difficult part of being a post-doc

The writing process for peer reviewed publication can be lonely and arduous. However, BU has put in place support for post-docs to attend writing retreats, meet fellow post-docs, exchange ideas and make friendships. This alleviates loneliness and the retreats are an opportunity to learn from established academics. I have joined research centres such as the Centre for Seldom Heard Voices and the Women’s Academic Network, where I present my work and get feedback, which has also positively impacted my academic publishing.

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Enabling insights into reading behaviour

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, Research communication, research staff, Research Supervision, Uncategorized

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Dr Julie Kirkby and Professor Marcin Budka about the work of Postdoctoral Researcher in Machine Learning for the Modelling of Eye Movements Thomas Mercier… 

Enabling Insights into Reading Behaviour and related Pathologies through Eye-Tracking Technology and Machine Learning

In the past decades, eye-tracking technology has emerged as an invaluable tool for uncovering the cognitive processes involved in reading by offering unique insights into individuals’ reading patterns. This technique involves measuring an individual’s gaze position on a computer screen over time with high accuracy to reveal critical information about where and how long their eyes are fixating while navigating text. This provides essential clues about mental processes at play during the act of reading.

Eye-Tracking Technology in Reading Research:

The data collected from eye-tracking technology has proven valuable not only for studying general reading behaviour but also specific disorders such as dyslexia. By examining an individual’s eye movements during a reading task, researchers can better understand the cognitive mechanisms engaged in comprehending written material and potentially improve interventions for those who struggle with reading due to neurological differences or other factors. Additionally, this technology has been used to gain insight into accessibility-related issues of visual stimuli such as web pages.

Challenges in Eye-Tracking Data Analysis: Line Assignment and Measurement Noise

While technological advancements have enabled the recording of gaze points during reading with high accuracy, raw eye-tracking data still requires post-processing to identify which gaze positions are part of fixations (periods of relative positional stability) and which are part of saccades (rapid ballistic eye-movements). Furthermore, for most data analysis in reading research these fixations need to be assigned to an area of interest in the reading stimulus, such as a character or word, depending on the experiment design.

This line assignment can become significantly more difficult when dealing with multi-line passages of text, usually requiring laborious manual correction. The assignment process is made non-trivial by noise present in the tracking data due to factors such as loss of calibration during an experiment, subtle head movements or pupil dilation. Such measurement noise may manifest as dynamically changing vertical drift of recorded gaze positions, causing them to appear closer to lines above or below the actual line being read.

Attempts have been made to create algorithms that automate the line assignment process to enable researchers to carry out larger studies involving multi-line reading experiments that more closely resemble reading as it would happen outside the lab. However, these techniques often lack sufficient accuracy and reliability, leading to manual correction remaining the gold standard for addressing noise in eye-tracking fixation data.

Julie Kirkby (Department of Psychology) and Marcin Budka (Department of Computing and Informatics) are working with post-doctoral researcher Thomas Mercier, to tackle this noise correction/lines assignment problem using modern machine learning algorithms. This works by utilising deep neural networks that work directly on sequences of fixations and assign each of them to their most appropriate line of text.

Thanks to the rich and diverse datasets from previous studies carried out at BU, Thomas was able to train such a model to outperform all previously published methods of automatic line assignment. This new model is highly consistent across all datasets, unlike previous models, which makes our model a robust, default choice that will automate this task and enable researchers across psychology and the cognitive sciences to carry out and analyse eye-tracking studies with larger amounts of text without being limited by the bottleneck of manual line assignments or the need to test multiple models.

As a result, Thomas’s work represents an important step forward in advancing our understanding of cognitive processes through improved methodologies for analysing large volumes of text-based eye-tracking data (paper currently under review in the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, a high impact journal).

Thomas will make the current code public and follow up with a publication focusing on usability of the program for non-machine learning researchers. Thomas is currently extending this model, to include diagnosing specific disorders such as dyslexia and schizophrenia.

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

Postdoc Appreciation Week 2023 – celebrating our postdoctoral researchers

Events, Research news, research staff

Postdoc Appreciation Week(PAW) takes place each year to celebrate, showcase and recognise the contribution that postdoctoral researchers make towards research and academic life.

 

Originally an initiative from the National Postdoc Association in the USA (National Postdoc Appreciation Week), it is now also celebrated in the UK, and this year will take place from Monday 18th – Friday 22nd September.

 

To mark Postdoc Appreciation Week, we are holding an appreciation event on Monday 18 September for postdoctoral researchers and their managers.

 

The event will be a chance to celebrate all the hard work that postdocs and researchers dedicate to research, teaching, outreach and so much more, as well as an opportunity to catch up with our Research Staff Association (RSA) representatives over coffee and cake.

 

We will also be profiling the amazing work and research undertaken by our post-doctoral research staff community.

 

If you would like to attend the event, or find out more about our Postdoc Appreciation Week activity, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk

You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.