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December 18, 2014

BU academics appointed as dual editors-in-chief

BU research, EU, Women's Academic Network Jonathan Parker

Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Professor Jonathan Parker of the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy have been appointed as joint editors-in-chief for a journal published by UK publishing house Whiting & Birch and the Tbilisi SState University in Georgia: Social Policy & Social Work in Transition.

The journal stemmed from an earlier EU-funded Tempus project between Sheffield Hallam University and post-Soviet Eastern European states, including Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and has recently negotiated a bipartite arrangement with Whiting & Birch to ensure its sustainability.

The journal aims to provide a platform for developing insight and research into transitions in social policy and social work predominantly in Eastern European countries, and this remains its primary focus. However, the new editors-in-chief will also expand the journal’s reach into Asia, the Asia Pacific region, Africa and the Americas especially in countries moving through complex socio-political, economic, historical and post-colonial transitions.

This important position was confirmed on the basis of the new editors’ international research links and reputations and adds to the strengths of the Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy at BU. Dr Ashencaen Crabtree and Professor Parker will lead a multinational editorial board assisted by continuing editors Professor Iago Kachkachishvili of Tbilisi State University, Georgia and Dr Tetyana Semigina of National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’, Ukraine (current Secretary of the International Association of Schools of Social Work). Outgoing editor, Professor Emeritus Mark Doel, Sheffield Hallam University, will also remain on the board.

The position offers a springboard to further collaborative social science research in Eastern European and Balkan states, something which the journal is committed to developing.

Prof Jonathan Parker & Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

December 15, 2014

Tired of Writing? Make a Map!

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Featured academics afeigenbaum

This spring semester, thanks to a Fusion CCCP grant, we’ll be turning our BU research into interactive media, designed for making an impact.

If you are like me, dishwashing, hanging laundry, answering emails and even updating your BRIAN profile are more fun than writing academic papers. Beyond the jargon, peer review terror and endless citations, there is something sad about paper writing. Like a farewell party for long-time friend, the paper is a bittersweet goodbye. It is when we send our research off, delivering its findings into the abyss of academic journals, hoping to eventually be discovered and read.

But increasingly, academic writing isn’t the only tool at our disposal for making our research heard. As the impact agenda expands, alongside it, interest in public engagement and social media grow. Unlike most academic journals, with strict limits on figures and black and white print, online platforms are hungry for colour and creativity. Online, image is king and curiosity brings clicks. If a picture was once worth 1,000 words, today a media interactive is worth 10,000.

With many online platforms freely available to visualise our data, making information beautiful has never been easier. So, why not make our own? That’s the question I asked myself last year. Rather than pulling out the drying rack or deleting the ‘pending’ neurological mice studies from BRIAN’s list, I decided to give google maps a go.

Mapping the Media

Bored of traditional content analysis in my field of Media Studies, and taken by the toys of Geographers, I began my very first research map. All it took was a google account, a google alert, and about five hours a month for data input. A year later, an interactive dataset was born.

With over 25,000 views and copied onto news articles and blogs around the world, this map tells a different story about my research and the world we live in, one that I could never capture in linear prose. It opens up new audiences to the data, and in an instant reveals insights into conflicts and communities–and the ways they are mediated. Click deeper and you’ve got a global sample of news coverage from around the world to explore as you wish, offering features no academic article alone could provide.

But, alas, it wasn’t very pretty. So I went in search of real map-makers. With the support of An AAG Enrichment Grant for interdisciplinary scholars, I presented my ragtag version at the American Association of Geographers in 2014, arriving with a plea for help. And as luck would have it, help sat in my audience. Matt Ellis, a geography student from Texas Christian University, came on board, teaching me about ‘coordinates’ and CVS files. Matt created a series of maps, designed and hosted for free at CartoDB. Making these media maps opened my eyes to the possibility of the ‘disciplinary mash-up.’ Digital technologies allow us take apart and reassemble our methodologies, sharing interdisciplinary work online to wide audiences.

From Google Maps to Fusion Grants

With a little imagination and a bit of collaboration, our research can be expressed in new and creative forms. What began as a temporary escape from the doldrums of peer review publishing, has turned into a new, cross-school research initiative here at BU. Supported by a Fusion CCCP Grant, between January and July 2015, myself, Nathan Farrell, Dan Jackson, Robert Munday, Shelley Thompson and Einar Thorsen from the Media School will be working with Hamid Bouchachia of the Data Science Institute, geographers Duncan Golicher and Phillipa Gillingham of the GIS lab, and Impact Manager Rebecca Edwards from RKEO to co-create a model for visualising research here at BU.

This project combines traditional approaches for understanding datasets in the social sciences and humanities with geospatial and artistic design practices. Working in co-production with our students, our project embraces digital techniques for orienting output toward public engagement. Bringing in international experts from the Tactical Technology Collective, the New Media Lab and Visualising Impact for a Masterclass in Visualising Data for Societal Impact, our Fusion project will connect up BU research with the growing fields of information design and data communications, putting BU’s innovations in digital humanities and digital social sciences on the academic map.

So next time you’re tired of writing, consider making a map. Or an infographic. A collage or a GIF. A comic strip or a meme. Don’t feel guilty for not writing that paper, take a break from typing and have a play.

December 14, 2014

Wanted: Book reviewers

BU research, PG research, Publishing, student research Edwin van Teijlingen

Sociological Research Online one of the four BSA journals is constantly looking for new reviewers of books for its section on book reviews. Every issue of Sociological Research Online lists the recently received books from a range of publishers. Please spread this message to (junior) sociology colleagues and Ph.D. students in the discipline. For many social science postgraduate students a book review can be a nice first publication, with the added benefit that reading the book can be helpful in their Ph.D. journey. For the budding book reviewer we have written a short ‘how-to-do-a-book-review piece’ which can be found on the Sociological Research Online webpages: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/info/bookreviews.html

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH, Bournemouth University

Book review editor Sociological Research Online

November 15, 2014

Congratulations to PhD student Rachel Arnold

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, student research, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

HSC postgraduate student Rachel Arnold just had the first paper from her research in Afghanistan accepted by the scientific journal BJOG. Her paper analyses the culture of a Kabul maternity hospital to understand its impact on the care of perinatal women and their babies. A heavy workload, too many complicated cases and poor staff organisation lead to a low quality of maternity care. Cultural values, social and family pressures influenced the motivation and priorities of healthcare providers.

The centrality of the family and family obligations in Afghan society has emerged as a major theme. Another theme is the struggle for survival – as health care providers work to support their families, to maintain the power that they have, and to survive within a hospital system where fear rather than compassion appears to drive and motivate. Rachel presented some of the key issues at the 2013 GLOW conference in Birmingham. Rachel is supervised by Professors Immy Holloway, Kath Ryan (LaTrobe University, Australia) and Edwin van Teijlingen.

Rachel’s paper Understanding ‘Afghan healthcare providers: a qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital’ can be found here. The paper is Gold Open Access.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

November 13, 2014

Helping men to lose weight

BU research, Fusion, Knowledge Transfer, Public engagement, Publishing, Research assessment, Research news, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

High quality research from a collaboration of three UK universities has been turned into practical advice. The ROMEO project (Review Of Men and Obesity) by the University of Aberdeen, the University of Stirling and Bournemouth University found that men are more likely than women to benefit if physical activity is part of a weight-loss programme. Also although fewer men joined weight-loss programmes, once recruited they were less likely to drop out than women. The perception of having a health problem, the impact of weight loss on health problems, and the desire to improve personal appearance without looking too thin were motivators for weight loss amongst men. However, the type of reducing diet did not appear to affect long-term weight loss.

The charity Men’s Health Forum linked up with Public Health England and published a ‘How to’ guide based on the evidence of our ROMEO study. This ‘How to make weight-loss services work for men’ guide offers advice for local authorities, commissioners and weight management providers, who are trying to attract men to weight-loss programmes. The guide highlights, for example that:

Programmes that include exercise and behaviour change components as well as dieting are more successful in helping men to lose weight.
Men respond well to programmes that have a higher degree of personalisation, such as setting individual goals, as it increases their sense of control.
Weight-loss programmes based in the workplace or associated with professional sports clubs have been particularly successful.
Using humour and encouraging camaraderie makes programmes more attractive to men as does knowing that there will be other men there.

Furthermore, this ‘How to’ guide includes, amongst other advice, a list of Ten Top Tips.

This is an excellent example how research conducted between three different universities has been turned into easy to understand advice for man who are overweight. The past decade or so has seen an increasing interest in making academic research ‘useful’ to society. Creating and measuring the impact of research conducted at universities has been introduced as key element on the REF, the Research Excellence Framework. The REF assesses the quality of research in, and affects the amount of government money each university in the UK receives.

For a traditional academic publishing the HTA report would be a success in itself. Which, of course, it is to culmination of a large-scale and extensive review, well conducted, published through Open Access, which also attracted considerable media attention from across the globe when it came out. However, ROMEO did not stop there. Due to the involvement of the Men’s Health Fora right from the start of ROMEO, the Men’s Health Forum in England linked up with Public Health England to create and publish ‘How to make weight-loss services work for men’ guide is published today.

The ROMEO project, led by Prof. Alison Avenell (University of Aberdeen), examined the evidence for managing obesity in men and investigated how to engage men with obesity services. The evidence came from trials, interviews with men, reports of studies from the UK, and economic studies. ROMEO was funded by the National Institute for Health Research, Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA Project 09/127/01). Our full report is Open Access and can be freely downloaded here.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

School of Health & Social Care

Bournemouth University

November 12, 2014

Congratulations to Dr Sarah Hean & colleagues!

BU research, Publishing, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Hean in the School of Health & Social Care and her colleagues Staddon, Clapper, Fenge, Heaslip and Jack on the acceptance of their article: ‘Improving Collaborative Practice to Address Offender Mental Health: Criminal Justice and Mental Health Service Professionals’ Attitudes Towards Interagency Training, Current Training Needs and Constraints’ by the Journal of Research in Interprofessional Practice and Education.

The paper is Open Access funded by BU! A copy is available in BU’s repository BURO: http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/21462/

Well done

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

November 6, 2014

Third time lucky in Bangkok

Post-award, Research news, Uncategorized Tom Watson

Group photo of the delegates at the opening of the Researcher Links Workshop in Bangkok on November 2

Working with partners at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, a team from BU led and participated in a British Council Researcher Links Workshop in Bangkok from November 2 to 4.

For Professor Tom Watson of the Media School and Associate Professor Jirayudh Sinthuphan of Chula’s Faculty of Communication Arts, it was ‘mission accomplished’, as the Workshop had been postponed twice in February and May because of Thailand’s febrile politics.

“This time, there were no problems as Bangkok was about as quiet as it will ever be,” said Professor Watson. “As a result, the Workshop was attended by representatives of four UK and seven Thai universities who worked very well together”.

From the three days of collaborative working, four projects related the Workshop theme of ‘the impact of social media upon corporate and marketing communication in Thailand and UK’ emerged. They will be developed over the coming months into research actions, bids for funding and publications.

With Professor Watson were Associate Professor John Oliver (Senior Researcher), Dr Ana Adi (Deputy Workshop Coordinator), Dr Tauheed Ramjaun and Mona Esfahani, all from the Corporate & Marketing Communications academic group. Among the Thai participants was Dr Waraporn Chatratichart of the University of the Thailand Chamber of Commerce, who is a PhD alumna from the Media School.

“The Workshop also reinforced the existing relationship between BU and Chulalongkorn University as the Dean of the Faculty of Communication Arts, Dr Duangkamol Chartprasert, and Professor Parichart Sthapitanonda both took part as Senior Researchers,” said Professor Watson. “The BU-Chula relationship has great potential for research collaboration and staff exchanges. I hope that other BU staff will follow the opportunity that the Workshop has opened up.”

November 2, 2014

Surrogacy, legislation & exploitation

BU research, Public engagement, Publishing, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

A few months ago Jillian Ireland (BU Visiting Faculty) and I wrote a short Bournemouth University Research Blog on the case widely reported in the media about the Thai baby abandoned by the Australian parents who had ‘placed the order’ for the surrogate child. Following this Blog, Dr. Vijay Sharma, Consultant Physician in Chelmsford, sent me a very interesting paper that appeared in last week’s BMJ.

The paper ‘Taming the international commercial surrogacy industry’ is written by health journalist Sally Howard. She highlights the different laws (or absence thereof) governing surrogacy. She cites an Australian lawyer as saying: “there are no international conventions and agreements …. Legal issues relating to parentage and immigration vary so widely that the process can result in dramatic outcomes, such as a child born via surrogacy who is both legally orphaned and stateless.”

Howard makes a very good point that legislation in low-income countries such as Thailand, India or Nepal is important to help protect surrogate mothers and their off-spring, but equally important is the role of high-income countries to legalise the commercial surrogacy market within their own borders. High-income countries such as the UK, Australia, the USA and the Netherlands have a moral duty to legislate for (restrict) our citizens to help protect poor and vulnerable people in low-income countries from engaging in unethical and/or exploitative commercial surrogacy transactions.

Visit vizecounselor.com if you’re looking for a Thai lawyer for class action lawsuit.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health, Bournemouth University.

October 15, 2014

ESRC impact prize 2015, celebrate your impact!

Uncategorized ssquelch

Impact helps to demonstrate that social science is important, that it is worth investing in and worth using.

In 2015 the ESRC is celebrating 50 years of supporting excellent social sciences. The 2015 impact prize is an opportunity to celebrate the outstanding economic and social impacts achieved by ESRC funded researchers over the last 50 years, this is one that cannot be missed.

This prize is now in its third year, growing ever more each year and brings together successes of impact from different aspects of ESRC research. This is an annual opportunity to recognise and reward the success of ESRC funded researchers who have achieved or are currently achieving, outstanding economic or societal impacts. The prize celebrates outstanding ESRC research and success in collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities that have led to significant impact.

You are eligible for the prize regardless of how long ago you were funded, whether you were funded 50 years ago or very recently, it does not matter, as long as your research has helped change the world, provided deep insights into key social and economic questions, shaped society and made a difference, then this competition is for you, you must apply!

This competition is also looking for an impact champion, someone who has inspired, supported and encouraged others to achieve impact.

The prizes are very generous and are an added incentive to you applying for this competition. With £90,000 worth of prizes to be won, and six prize categories, what a great way to celebrate your amazing research impact. The closing date for applicants is 20^th November 2014 with the awards ceremony sponsored by SAGE being hosted in central London week beginning 22 June 2015.

To see the categories, gain inspiration from previous impact prize winners or if you’re interested in applying for this fantastic opportunity, click here.

October 12, 2014

Congratulations to Malala Yousafzai !

Public engagement, Uncategorized, Women's Academic Network Edwin van Teijlingen

The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health would like to take the opportunity to congratulate 17-year old Malala Yousafzai on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Her call for education for every child, especially every girl, is praiseworthy. But her work is more than a local activism; she put her life at risk. Two years ago she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating the education of girls and women!

We know from our research in Nepal that educating girls has all sorts of positive effects. For example, it means they are likely to marry later, with is associated with having the first child later and having fewer children in total. This in turn means they have a greater chance of survival in childbirth. In Nepal the overall literacy rate (aged 5 years and above) rose from 54.1% in 2001 to 65.9% in 2011, but women (57.4%) still lag behind men (75.1%). We have seen a reduction in maternal mortality over the past two decades, which is in part driven the increase in education levels of girls.

As educators we feel strongly affiliated with her calling, but we must acknowledge that Malala was one of two winners this year. We would also like to congratulate Indian Human Rights Activist Kailash Satyarthi. Mr Satyarthi fights the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.

Malala is not only part of the minority of women who have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, she is also the youngest ever to win the award!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

October 12, 2014

Congratulations to BU Visiting Faculty on latest publication

BU research, Featured academics, PG research, Publishing, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada for the paper on financial barriers to the uptake of antenatal care in a rural community in Nepal.¹ The first author (a native Nepali-speaker) conducted 50 face-to-face interviews with women and their families in rural Nepal. These interviews were thematically analysed after transcription.

This latest paper adds to our knowledge into user costs related to maternity services in Nepal as we had already published our findings on users costs in the largest obstetric hospital in the capital.²

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

References:

Simkhada, B., van Teijlingen, E.R., Porter, M., Simkhada, P. & Wasti, S.P. (2014) Why do costs act as a barrier in maternity care for some, but not all women? A qualitative study in rural Nepal International Journal of Social Economics 41 (8), 705-713

Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E., Sharma, G., Simkhada, B., Townend, J. (2012) User costs and informal payments for care in the largest maternity hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Health Science Journal 6(2): 317-334. www.hsj.gr/volume6/issue2/6212.pdf

September 24, 2014

Comparing childcare and child protection in Japan and the UK: Towards constructions of the self, society and responsibility

BU research, Fusion, Public engagement Jonathan Parker

Over the last two days (23^rd-24^th September) the Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy has been collaborating with colleagues from Kawasaki University, Japan on a pilot research project that compares and contrasts two systems of childcare and child protection.

Professor Dr Tadakazu Kumagai, also a visiting faculty member at BU, Dr Katsuki Naoshima and Tim Cleminson of Kawasaki University met with Professor Dr Jonathan Parker, Jill Davey and Richard Williams from BU and held discussions with Centre colleagues from Bournemouth Borough Council led by Principal Social Worker, Stefan Kleipoedszus. They explored different conceptions and constructions of social organisation, practice and policy and what this means for individual members of society and professionals within these two countries. Outcomes from this meeting will result in a further bid being prepared by Kawasaki University to extend the research, a report for the Japanese funder of this research and two peer-reviewed papers.

The discussions highlighted a range of interesting interdisciplinary and cross-cutting themes looking at variation across cultures, different models of social organisation and welfare developing within particular contexts and some of the ways in which cross-cultural research must take into account different models of selfhood and identity, social responsibility and social policy. Matters of great importance to our contemporary global world!

Prof Jonathan Parker

September 13, 2014

BU social science research on ‘Guns, Pride & Agency’

BU research, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

Worldwide, guns are a topic wrought with emotions. While most democratic countries consider guns in private hands a severe risk for public health if uncontrolled, it is not just in the US that licencing laws face resistance that benefit from a political and emotional rejection of state interference (e.g. UKIP’s Nigel Farage earlier this year). But why and how are ‘gun cultures’ built and sometimes sustained, even if they might undermine, an EU-led, much-desired democratisation and peace-building process after violence and war?

Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, social anthropologist at the HSC, addressed this question in her presentation ‘Guns, Pride and Agency—Albanian Ideals of Militancy Before and After the 1999 War in Kosovo’, at the international conference Comparing Civil Gun Cultures: Do Emotions Make the Difference? at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin from August 26 to 28, 2014 (https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/history-of-emotions/conferences/comparing-civil-gun-cultures-do-emotions-make-the-difference). The wider ethnographic research project, on which her findings are based, was also subject of an interview earlier this year, published on a research blog of the London School of Economics: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsee/2014/04/03/ilegalja-terrorists-or-freedom-fighters-an-albanian-tale-from-yugoslav-times/ .

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

September 11, 2014

Communicating thought leadership – (or making known what you think, believe and why it’s important)

BU research, Public engagement, Research news Jonathan Parker

In a US right-wing on-line journal, artist, Cheryl Pass[1] made allusions to the development of ‘thought leadership’ as representative of a totalitarian world, of that scenario painted so well in Orwell’s 1984. This blog identified the marketization and branding of ‘thought’, using those who have something to say that captures a zeitgeist or something that can be used to influence behaviour and attitude or to exert political control.

Thought leaders may be seen as sinister beings, channelling or herding others by setting the words and terms for engagement which demand adherence. This requires learning the language of ‘newspeak’ or speaking the right words in context, something we note in many of our professions and academic disciplines. Such a definition of thought leadership denotes a lack of control over life except amongst those who have wrested it politically by setting the trends of thought or employing those trends for their own purposes.

The negativity associated with these political analyses of ‘thought leadership’ are reflected also within the personal. When I was asked to contribute to the Making Your Voice Heard event and to speak about being a thought leader I had to question what that meant and how that affected me as a person and academic. At a personal level I do not feel comfortable with an ascription of thought leadership which reminds one of sheep and shepherds, of superiority and, more sinister, of manipulation and control for ends which probably do not reflect altruism.

Talking about engagement with the media and why this can be important as an academic seemed more grounded and the brief to offer ‘more of a practical guide to illustrate why you have built up a reputation for thought leadership, how you did it and also look at how you think it has benefited you’ seemed to make more sense and presented a degree of comfort – if one removes the term ‘thought leadership’.

It is this that I intend to highlight, hopefully democratizing the ‘offending term’ and describing some of the ups and downs of engaging with the media and suggesting things that I wish I had done differently including examples of bad practice/good practice.

In response to the original invitation I rushed off an email and duly committed the cardinal sin of not attentively proof reading. So instead of saying I will allude to the impact of some of my pieces I stated that I would talk about the impact of my pies! What I have done in this introduction and in adding a subtitle is to communicate some of my thoughts about this process as we move towards lunch and, possibly, my ‘pies’ later.

I will use a fairly standard approach to discussing my involvement with the media: 4Ws&H, but not necessarily in that order –

Why do it?

When to do it?

How to do it?

What to do and what not to do?

Where to do it?

Why do it?

A common complaint I hear is I’m just too busy to talk to the media, or there’s no point in doing so. The power of the media in daily life is obvious, however, and if we want to make our voices heard we need to engage, and to do so in the best way possible for our integrity, our disciplines and our beliefs. I often use mnemonics for myself and with my children and this helps me in respect of why I choose to engage with the popular press and other media. A mnemonic used to help me understand why to engage with the media:

‘growing strawberries with rhubarb entirely (without) manure’

Gaining voice

Sharing your knowledge widely

Widely known for particular thoughts, views and areas of knowledge

Representing and enhancing your discipline

Enhancing reputation – university, to peers, students and prospective students, your own – think REF and impact!

Moral imperatives:

By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest – will remain.

The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the themes of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. Aldous Huxley (1958) Brave New World Revisited, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gJANBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT69&lpg=PT69&dq=by+means+of+ever+more+effective+methods+of+mind-manipulation&source=bl&ots=B84w-jQAip&sig=Zyd-qWCWFpDsY_KQxt6Txct2dmE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W6gFVMlR8NnRBdCQgPgE&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=by%20means%20of%20ever%20more%20effective%20methods%20of%20mind-manipulation&f=false.

Aldous Huxley’s depressing but somewhat prescient commentary on his book Brave New World presents a moral imperative demanding that we speak truth to power, that we unveil and unmask mendacity in social life and that we preserve our right and obligation to pursue truths as we see them from our informed perspectives.

Being able to contribute to debate is a privilege but also a responsibility, I believe, of academic office. This moral drive has been important to my engagement with media and popular outlets.

When to do it?

Academics are thinking, or ought to be, all the time – it is the basis of what we do. Those thoughts may well be valuable in and of themselves but it is more likely that they have something to contribute to the worlds which we inhabit and to the knowledge base of our disciplinary areas. Not sharing our thoughts and comments does not help us to extend the debate or to test our ideas.

Any time we are excited or exercised about an issue or topic provides an opportunity to comment, to blog in the newspapers, in disciplinary and higher education media

When we cannot keep quiet and there are moral imperatives to speak out or we discover something that is worth, in our eyes, talking about!

I tend to assume the role of ‘bombastic of Bournemouth’ at times, firing off letters and emails when driven by events, pronouncements and so forth. This is helpful in getting across your views, especially if you learn to sit back and, usually, write a second or third draft before you press the ‘send’ button and talk about pies!

How to do it?

Pragmatism and disciplinary perspectives underpin how you might engage – whatever medium you can use to get your message heard and whatever works best for you in getting your message across.

Given that we are researching, writing and teaching all the time as part of our academic roles there are many opportunities we can take from our academic work that can be simply and quickly made into blog pieces, letters for the popular and professional press.

What to do and what not to do?

Sometimes it is hard not to bash off an email in anger to the editor of a newspaper, the THE or a professional journal, to blog or respond to a blog but it is useful to spend a little time thinking about what you want to say first and WASH:

Write about what you know about (normally!)

Always be prepared

Say it simply

Have a core message to get across and break it down into two or three things you want to say about whatever it is you are commenting on

Do not be concerned that you have to follow a zeitgeist – this is not the case and as an expert in your field you can create the importance and interest; it can also be important to be controversial and play ‘the left field’. However, it is sometimes the case that you would wish to respond to something topical. The comms team are very good at identifying the latter and can help in placing your thoughts.

In terms of a few tips let’s get back to acronyms and mnemonics: be BAD

Beware of journalists – print interviews can be manipulated. Journalists will edit pieces and, unless you ask to see copy before publication, are unlikely to share their work with you – even if you do make a request this may not happen. Sometimes an editor will change what you are trying to say. I was working with a professional body on standards and regulation and whilst more a fan of a light touch was not against regulation. The journalist writing a piece about this only included what he wanted from my comments which suggested to the professional body regulator that I was taking a stand against them. Whilst this created some difficulties it did highlight the work that was being done, my position in it and acted as a catalyst for further discussion http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2010/05/11/social-work-courses-may-face-axe-as-inspections-go-public/.

Radio and TV can also be edited if recorded, doing it live allows you to say what you want but it’s not for everyone. You need to choose the medium that works best for you. Some of the training offered by staff development and marcomms has been very valuable in practicing in a safe environment and sharing stories of encounters with the media.

Adopt a thick skin – people will criticize, insult and sneer, if you are sure of what you are saying, even if you do change your mind later, say it and be damned!

In 2011, following the riots in London, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post. This was inspired by the ‘problem’ of non-judgemental approaches in social work, and a need to adopt a nuanced rather than normative perspective to social issues. It was a deliberately controversial blog and attracted a range of comment from the engaged and questioning, if disagreeing, through to trolling and abuse as a ‘rich boy sadist’ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/professor-jonathan-parker/the-riots-the-pms-speech-_b_927613.html.

It is not only the controversial pieces that can engender passionate comment. A piece that Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and I wrote recently for the Guardian Online concerning the development of social work services in Myanmar attracted a sneering comment that we were seeking to replace one oppressive regime by another http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/aug/19/social-work-myanmar-burma-model.

It is possible to take the comments personally, and few people like to be abused anonymously or otherwise, however, all comment is recognition of your ideas, your name in certain areas and can assist in developing your thoughts further.

Don’t miss an opportunity to comment if you can, but don’t worry if you do miss one. There are ample opportunities. As academics we keep up with our particular niche areas whilst changes in the social and political world have impacts on those areas of work or are affected by them. In this context it is in our interests to comment.

Back to the pies and making your own!

[1] Cheryl Pass “‘Thought Leaders’: Orwell’s 1984 Moves To The 21st Century”, Freedom Outpost, October 11, 2012 http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/10/thought-leaders-orwells-1984-moves-to-the-21st-century/

September 5, 2014

BU research is ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Journal of Consumer Culture

BU research, Publishing, Research news rjenkins

An article by researchers in the Emerging Consumer Cultures Group (ECCG), Media School, has been selected as one of the ‘Editor’s Choice Collection’ in the Journal of Consumer Culture – a top ranked journal in Cultural Studies and Sociology. The article is highlighted as one of eleven ‘most noteworthy manuscripts’ since the journal launched in 2001 and has been selected alongside the work of internationally esteemed scholars including Daniel Miller, Richard Wilk and Alan Warde.

Dr Rebecca (Becky) Jenkins (Corporate and Marketing Communications, Media School) and ex-Bournemouth colleagues Elizabeth Nixon and Mike Molesworth first presented the paper at the 2010 Consumer Culture Theory Conference in Wisconsin, where it was selected to be published in a special edition of the journal. Several revisions later and the article was published in 2011.

‘“Just normal and homely”: the presence, absence and othering of consumer culture in everyday imagining’ is based on an aspect of Becky’s PhD thesis, which was a larger study of consumption in the everyday imagination. It focuses on the different ways in which consumption features in positive imagined futures. By broadening the methodological framing of existing studies, the study seeks to contextualise consumption in the imagination – exploring how and where consumption may be seen in everyday imagining – a departure from previous research which tends to make consumption the starting point. Focusing on the lived experience of imagining (using phenomenological interviews) the findings reveal that material goods take a back seat to common cultural desires (for instance, successful relationships, happiness and love) with goods often assumed, simply as part of the background. Although goods may take a back seat, consumer culture is shown to be the only real choice when it comes to constructing social relationships and cultural ideals – that is, whilst one may desire and imagine a happy family life, that life takes place in a certain kind of house, with particular goods and consumer based activities. So whilst not always focusing on it directly, the imagination may be restricted by our consumer culture such that we cannot imagine outside it.

The full paper – and others in the Editor’s Collection – can be downloaded here: http://joc.sagepub.com/cgi/collection/editors_choice_collection

August 12, 2014

Reflections on an Oasis

BU research, Fusion, Research news, Women's Academic Network Jonathan Parker

Our final blog concerning our Fusion Investment Funded study leave, ENABLE: Establishing Sustainable Research Networks and Building Learning Environments, is written with very mixed feelings in mind.

For seven months we have worked across Southeast Asia to develop and establish links and research collaborations, teaching and education partnerships and to rediscover our passion for social action as ‘professional practice’ associated with our disciplines. The work has been intense, tiring, sometimes frustrating, but always illuminating and productive. It was a wrench to leave.

The return journey began with raised anxieties, heightened a couple of weeks earlier by the awful shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines aeroplane following the same route (although by then re-routed), and exacerbated when we were separated into two distinct travelling units, Jonathan with one child and Sara with the other, because the previous university travel firm booked tickets as two separate families! To make matters worse only Jonathan and Isabel’s tickets showed up and we had to wait to secure the other tickets. We were then given seats at opposite ends of the aeroplane and had to wait again for re-seating. The flight began well enough and was fairly smooth, only briefly punctuated by a somewhat antisocial ‘ramming’ of chair in front into one of our legs with particular force by someone who thought ‘turn off your electronics’ meant send texts to your friends!

However, we landed in one piece and breathed a sigh of relief, or possibly resignation, until, as in our usual practice of each taking one of the children through immigration the UKBA officer asked Jonathan rather sternly ‘where is the child’s mother?’ and when indicating where Sara was the officer proceeded to say that children have to be seen with their mother because mother’s are in general the carers of children and if present they have to be with the child. ‘Red rags and bulls’ often appear to Jonathan in unjust situations and he, as usual, took issue with this, but whilst we all got through immigration clearance more quickly, the officer insisted that his rather warped and myopic view of British law and custom was now right. Oh dear! We wondered what had happened in the seven months we had been away and whether we were entering Gormenghast!

But, back to the project itself! Our four key objectives have been met throughout the project, with varying degrees of success and changing morphologies:

1. Establish a sustainable research network promoting social sciences and interdisciplinary research at BU:

We have made contacts with individual academics, departments and universities across Southeast Asia, notably Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Utara Malaysia, alongside contacts with Massey University in New Zealand, Hong Kong University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Myanmar Institute of Theology.

We have given names and contacts to people abroad and within BU to follow up. Research projects are being developed, publications are in train or planned for the future.

2. Develop research streams of locally specific or cross-cultural relevance:

Our research, completed with the Orang Asli as part of the Tasik Chini Research Centre, has culminated in numerous publications being submitted, developed and developing, wide dissemination across many fora, and establishing on-going research links.

3. Engage and promote educational initiatives via guest lectures/research seminars, developing joint postgraduate research supervision and educational initiatives promoting student mobility:

We have presented lectures and seminars, provided postgraduate supervision and contributed to curriculum planning and development discussions, as well as negotiated an important credit transfer scheme (although uptake has been delayed until we can find students both able and willing to go on this exciting opportunity!). Professional papers have been written and submitted.

4. Engage in discipline-specific activities in relation to social work:

a number of discipline specific activities concerning social action and development have been undertaken, including curriculum planning, assisting in education developments in Myanmar and in Malaysia in reference to the new (to be implemented) standardised Malaysian Diploma Social Work, alongside contributing to NGO development work.

Overall, during the study leave period, there has been 57 outputs, also including on-going work and connections to be completed over time. The 57 outputs included:

6 books (3 published)
14 book chapters (11 published or in press)
12 peer reviewed papers (9 published or in press)
3 professional papers
1 book review
16 conference presentations/open lectures etc.
10 blogs
6 media presentations

During our time away we have worked across five countries: Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR, Australia, Myanmar and Cambodia in order to carry out our research or present it, along with capacity-building missions for professional, social work training. We have undertaken respectively between 24 to 28 flights (trying, when one of us dislikes flying) and stayed in some extraordinarily interesting as well as very grim places during our fieldwork, resulting in abuse from miscellaneous assortments of blood-sucking insects (outsized mosquitoes, the usual bed bugs and fever-inducing leeches) bedding down with us or boisterously noisy lizards, both small and decidedly large, showering us with ordure from above.

One of us was joyfully returning ‘home’ to pioneering fieldwork in Southeast Asia and the other was equally rapturous to be introduced to it. We have developed a new appreciation of the diversity of international driving styles when finding it not unusual to be driven by taxi in the wrong direction through chaotic Yangon in the middle of two long lines of equally erratic cars heading in the right direction – towards us. Above all, we remember the various wonderfully funny, kind, clever, intriguing and endlessly good-natured people we me: all our participants, our various helpers, interpreters, drivers, guides and advisors, the academic staff and students who welcomed us so warmly, the inspiring NGO workers and service users; not forgetting the local café owner in Penang, who wept when we left before running to get her camera for group photos to remember us by.

Also, we will always remember just how much our children, Isabel and Milly grew and developed in stature (in all ways possible): learning the research process, engaging with children amongst the village communities, and themselves collecting valuable data and compiling magnificent school projects on their adventures and experiences. The children put up with a good deal with great fortitude, willingness and humour (or when the going got tough – heavy irony), easily comprehending the importance of the work undertaken; albeit, as 10 year-old Milly gravely commented in her write-up later, ‘fieldwork has its dark side’! Indeed, so impressed were we with them that they will be contributing their experiences and acting as co-authors to the forthcoming book on the Tasik Chini area.

Alongside the outputs, the work is now to capitalise on the study leave by the development and submission of funded research projects. Currently, these include gendered rituals in professional working, problematizing research ethics and learning disabilities, understanding religion as resistance, and gender in higher education.

The study leave represented a life-giving oasis, somewhere to wash and attend to our own sacred cattle as in the photo from Cambodia, and we gratefully acknowledge the help and supported afforded us by Bournemouth University and our two main host universities in Malaysia (UKM and USM). We would encourage other academic staff to apply for study leave and we think that the productivity of our period of study leave indicates how important this can be to both individual academics but also to the greater good of Bournemouth University.

Jonathan Parker & Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

July 30, 2014

NIHR funds research into community hospitals in England and internationally

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Research news, Uncategorized Edwin van Teijlingen

A research team comprising RAND Europe and Bournemouth University have been awarded a research grant from NIHR to study Community Hospitals. Community Hospitals form an integral part of the NHS in the UK, this study looks at their distinct contribution to patient care. Community Hospitals come in all sorts of shapes, and can be located in rural parts of the country as well as in inner-city areas. In the UK community hospitals differ in the nature and scope of services on offer; some provide maternity care, others (also) A&E services or day-surgery or care for the elderly. There are a range of different models of ownership and management or the level of integration with other services.

The study will also explore what comparable models of community hospitals exist in other countries high-income countries, and what the NHS can learn from it. Community hospitals may offer advantages for selected patients over larger hospitals, but unless we produce the research evidence we would not be able to tell which types of patients would particularly benefit. Community hospitals have a long tradition of providing more integrated care, perhaps something we can learn from to improve other hospital services and hospitals.

This new study builds on the systematic review of community hospitals Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (HSC) undertook with his colleagues in Scotland about a decade ago.¹

For further details: http://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/community-hospitals.html

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health

Reference:

Heaney D, Black C, O’Donnell CA, Stark C, van Teijlingen E (2006) Community Hospitals – The place of local service provision in a Modernising NHS: An Integrative Thematic Literature Review BMC Public Health, 6(309). Web address: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/6/309

July 17, 2014

BU presenters at Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development, Melbourne, Australia

BU research, Fusion, Women's Academic Network Jonathan Parker

Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Professor Jonathan Parker presented their research at the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development, in Melbourne, Australia, 9^th-12^th July 2014.

In a well-received paper concerning the importance of student social workers learning about the causes, impacts and ways of working with the consequences of terrorism, and the problems of rigidity in the current English curriculum, conference delegates were introduced to a two-year study which revealed that student participants felt that a more extensive and sensitive range of intervention tools needed to be taught and deployed via a coherent and nuanced understanding of the geo-political dimensions surrounding the construction of ‘global terrorism’, together with its potential impact on local populations and vulnerable communities. Research findings highlighted the importance of earlier generic community-based and therapeutic approaches, which were favoured above contemporary neoliberal emphases in English social work education concerning assessment, safeguarding and social policing. Addressing these findings would demand a much needed rebalancing of the curriculum to reinstate essential practitioner skills transferrable to a range of situations and crises – skills that have long been viewed as integral to the social work role by the international community. This research was published earlier in 2014 in the journal Social Policy & Social Work in Transition, DOI: 10.1921/4704030201, http://essential.metapress.com/content/26170w57262444gp/ and was reported in the Guardian on 25^th June 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/jun/24/how-can-social-work-education-address-terrorism?CMP=new_1194.

The second presentation reported aspects of the highly successful UK-Malaysian study of reactions to and cross-cultural learning from international placements, research that has challenged preconceived notions of anti-oppressive practices and demonstrates the need to move beyond post-colonial analyses of Western social work towards a post-post-colonial dialectic of shared and cultural appropriate practices. This research, funded by a British Council PMI2 grant, took place over three-years, with three separate cohorts of students supported by two Malaysian universities, Universiti Sains Malaysia on the peninsular and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in Borneo. The success of this study which combined research rigour focusing on pedagogy with student mobility opportunities has been affirmed by the British Council as one of their most successful funded projects. This study has to-date produced a raft of publications: 2 book chapters, 5 peer-reviewed papers and 5 international conference presentations, including one keynote lecture. The latest research paper has just been published in the prestigious European Jounral of Social Work, Jonathan Parker, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Azlinda Azman, Dolly Paul Carlo & Clare Cutler (2014): Problematising international placements as a site of intercultural learning, European Journal of Social Work, DOI: 10.1080/13691457.2014.925849.

Jonathan Parker and Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

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