External engagement

Last week saw the success of the CuttingGardens2023 conference. This was a globally distributed and hybrid conference on cutting-edge EEG/MEG methods, with 800+ attending 21 gardens which were globally coordinated by the CuttingEEG Association. At the Bournemouth Garden led by Dr Xun He, attendees enjoyed a thought-provoking, interactive and friendly programme. We also contributed to the global plenary talk series by hosting a plenary speaker (Hubert Banville from Meta) on deep neural networks. Following BU’s research expertise, the attendees got a chance to visit the MINE Research Cluster and the EEG-eye tracking co-registration labs, and greatly advanced their knowledge and skills in these research fields through talks and tutorials. The great success could not be possible without the very enthusiastic and dedicated work of the organising committee over 15 months (Xun He, Ellen Seiss, Andrew Hanson, Marina Kilintari, Ruijie Wang, Federica Degno, and visiting fellow Biao Zeng from USW). Special thanks should also go to our speakers (Federica Degno, Andrew Hanson, Otto Loberg, Géza Gergely Ambrus, Xun He) and lab hosts. We would also like to thank our two sponsors, ANT Neuro UK (EEG equipment producer) and TG0 (tactile sensing devices producer), for their support and excellent demonstrations.

Professor John McAlaney attended the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Chief Scientific Adviser’s session on Areas of Research Interest at the Science Museum on the 20th of September, where he represented the Gambling Research Group and discussed the next steps in gambling legislation following the release of the recent white paper.

Bournemouth Free Pride (July 7th & 8th):
Members of the Gambling Research Group at BU manned an information and merchandise stand at the Bournemouth LGBTQ+ Pride Festival (7th & 8th July). During this event, members of the group shared ongoing research conducted at BU looking at LGBTQ+ and gambling with the public and attendees. This research was previously shared at a Parliamentary Reception in April 2023. BU were also joined by representatives from national gambling charities (YGAM and Gordon Moody Association). The event was attended by approximately 10,000 attendees across both days.
 
Attendees: Reece Bush-Evans; John McAlaney; Emily Arden-Close; Ruijie Wang; Alex Caton-Bradley (1st year psychology student); Abigail Hamson-Ford (L7 psychology student); and Elvira Bolat (Business School)
 
Manchester Pride (August 26th):
Members of the Gambling Research Group at BU were invited to share an information and merchandise stand with a national gambling charity (Gordon Moody Association) at Manchester Pride (26th August 2023). During this event, ongoing research conducted at BU focused on LGBTQ+ and gambling was shared with the public and attendees. The event was attended by approximately 130,000 attendees.

Dr Laura Renshaw-Vuillier shares thoughts with the BBC on fat shaming and exercise 

See full article here.

Professor John McAlaney, Sarah Hodge, Emily Arden-Close, Reece Bush-Evans, Ruijie Wang, Elvira Bolat and two student RAs (Abi Hamson-Ford and Alex Caton-Bradley) delivered an event called Enabling Safer Gambling at the House of Commons

Hosted by Carolyn Harris MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Related Harm, and the Gambling Research Group at Bournemouth University, the event brought together MPs, peers, academics and industry representatives to talk about the challenges of modern gambling and how technology can be used to enable safer gambling and reduce gambling harm.
 
Attendees included representatives from GambleAware, Citizen’s Advice, the Gambling Lived Experience Network (GLEN), and gambling companies. 24 MPs and peers from across Parliament, representing each of the major political parties, also joined the event to hear more about the research evidence gathered by the BU team.
 
Opening the event Carolyn Harris MP said: “I know the university is doing some fantastic work into online gambling and how the industry has managed to use it [online technology] in order to attract, entice and retain people who, through no fault of their own, become addicted. This is not about self-responsibility, this is about becoming addicted to the product, just like you would alcohol or drugs. It’s a public health and a mental health issue and we have to recognise that.”

Dr Ellen Seiss led a “Neurokids” event at St. James Primary School to 6/7 year olds (year 2) on March 17th 
 
This was a collaboration with “Neurokids” public engagement project at Southampton University who are interested in extending it to Bournemouth University. 

Dr Xun He awarded £741k BBSRC grant

Dr Xun He has been awarded a £741k BBSRC grant (£32k to BU) entitled “ElectroTools: Powering the future of EEG research”. The project is with collaborators from the University of Leeds, University of Sheffield, and Manchester Metropolitan University, and will start in June 2023 and run for three years.

On 19th January 2023, Dr Helen Bolderston and Mr Kevin Turner (consultant urological surgeon and visiting professor in the BU psychology department) delivered a half-day's training to consultant surgeons based at hospitals in Sussex including Worthing, Brighton, and Chichester. The training was based at Worthing Hospital. There were 8 surgeons at the event, which was focussed on training them to be First Responders, which is a peer support role where surgeons offer support to colleagues who have been involved in serious adverse surgical events. The training was in line with recommendations from a set of good practice guidelines on supporting surgeons after adverse events - the guidelines were the result of a collaboration between the BU Surgeons Wellbeing Research Team and the Royal College of Surgeons, England.

On the 23rd  of January Dr Fay Sweeting presented to 100 senior police officers at Greater Manchester Police about abuse of position for a sexual purpose and internal sexual misconduct in the police.  This was to launch a series of new initiatives developed by GMP to assist in the early identification of police perpetrators. This event was also attended by the Police Federation and IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct). 

The abstract reads:

“Society tells us that we should always try to be happy. But life isn't perfect and expecting constant happiness can actually be unhealthy. Negative emotions, like sadness or anger, are a normal part of life - we all experience these. The problem arises when we try to suppress them in order to only feel 'happy' emotions. In doing so, negative emotions paradoxically become more overwhelming and we might turn to harmful behaviours to make us feel better. In this talk I explored practical tips, based on research, to help us better understand, accept and manage our emotions.”

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Dr Andrew Mayers recently featured in Men’s Health Magazine, focusing on fathers’ experiences of witnessing birth trauma. This popular publication has a very wide reach globally, so will bring this important subject very much to the forefront  https://www.menshealth.com/uk/mental-strength/a41557427/birth-trauma-ptsd-men/
 
In Andrew’s role as Patron for Dorset Mind, Andrew will be opening the “Courageous Conversations” event at Lighthouse Poole on November 18th. The event will interactive explore methods to get more people talking about mental health, especially men. It helps mark International Men’s Day and falls within Men’s Mental Health Month https://dorsetmind.uk/press-releases/press-release-courageous-conversations-conference/

Dr Reece Bush-Evans and Professor John McAlaney attended the ICRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction in Las Vegas between the 9th and 10th of October, where they presented results from the EROGamb2 project and the Gaminnovate project, funded by GambleAware and the ICRG respectively. These projects focus on the role of transparency , participatory design and behaviour change principles in promoting responsible gambling.

On the 13th October Dr Helen Bolderston and Mr Kevin Turner (consultant urological surgeon and visiting professor in the BU psychology department) and I delivered a half-day's training to consultant surgeons at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London. There were ten surgeons at the training event, which was focussed on training them to be First Responders, which is a peer support role where surgeons offer support to colleagues who have been involved in serious adverse surgical events. The training was in line with recommendations from a set of good practice guidelines on supporting surgeons after adverse events - the guidelines were the result of a collaboration between the BU Surgeons Wellbeing Research Team and the Royal College of Surgeons, England.

Laura delivered an emotion regulation workshop to Whitehall for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the 19th October, where over 170 people attended.  In that presentation, Laura talked about the danger of seeking happiness at all costs, and I offered help on what to do with unpleasant emotions. This is what the organiser said "I thought it was a fantastic presentation – reminding us why being mentally healthy is definitely not about being happy all the time, how understanding our full emotional spectrum can support our wellbeing, how we can be more granular with identifying our emotions and techniques to help manage difficult emotions, which although can be really hard to apply theory in the moment when experiencing these emotions, can get easier with practice over time."

Dr Rachel Moseley teamed up with Dr Max Gee (Media and Communication) for an ESRC public engagement event on the 22nd of October. Spicing up autism acceptance with a science-fiction twist, the team asked members of the public to identify which of our colleagues from the 22nd century was human and which was a robot. We broke down their decision processes to examine biases in the way the media portrays certain ways of communicating and expressing emotion as more 'human', a bias which disadvantages neurodivergent minorities who socialise differently. The event was really positively received, with the team running sessions back to back all day.

Rachel has also been busy promoting and creating impact around mental health and menopause in autistic people, the latter which is a collaboration with Professor Julie Turner-Cobb. Rachel contributed to the development of training videos for GPs on the topics of ageing, menopause and suicidality in autistic people, and delivered a training session for social workers on the same topics. Rachel and Julie also gave a webinar for the Scottish Women's Autism Network (SWAN), which focused on their previous work on menopause and their ongoing collaboration with Canadian researchers, 'Bridging the silos' . With 175 sign-ups, the topic really appealed to the audience, leading to a great discussion of their questions. 

Dr Changhong Liu gave online public lecture at University of Tokyo on 1st Aug., with the title ’The Psychology of Face Perception’. The lecture was given in Japanese. See: https://hmc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/open-seminar/2022/75-psychology-of-face-perception/

The team will explore whether likelihood ratios can be used to demonstrate whether certain behaviour is more likely to co-occur in linked offences (behavioural consistency) compared to unlinked offences (behavioural coincidence). This will be useful in terms of demonstrating, at a theoretical level, the use of likelihood ratios compared to other approaches to calculating behavioural consistency in linked compared to unlinked offences. The project will involve creating a tool for the Behavioural Investigative Advisers at the National Crime Agency to use as part of their case linkage analysis practice. This study is being conducted with Professor Jessica Woodhams (University of Birmingham), Dr Matthew Tonkin (University of Leicester), Dr Matthew Brett, and Lee Rainbow from the National Crime Agency.

Dr Reece Bush was awarded a research grant by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling to carry out a longitudinal study on narcissism and online gambling. The research title is: Gambling, Personality and Wellbeing, £3000.

Dr Martin Vasilev was awarded a £9,990 grant from the Experimental Psychology Society on a project entitled "Inhibition of eye-movement control by unexpected sounds". This project will investigate how unexpected sounds in our environment affect the way people move their eyes during complex everyday tasks such as reading and scene viewing. The project is done in collaboration with Dr. Julie Kirkby (BU), Prof. Fabrice Parmentier (University of Balearic Islands, Spain), and Prof. Antje Nuthmann (Kiel University, Germany).

Dr Constantina Panourgia, as a part of her research collaboration with UCLy (Lyon, France), was invited to the International Research Day organised by the Department of Psychology at UCLy on 20th January.

Constantina and her MSc student, Miss Tara Walker, presented their research work on the challenges of implementing inclusive practices in education; they also focussed on the personal resources that educational professionals employ to cope and how these experiences could be utilised for the development of teachers’ training.

This project was conducted in 2019/20 within the Department of Psychology in collaboration with Dr Emily Arden-Close.

Walker, T., Arden-Close, E., & Panourgia, C. (2022). Coping strategies and the challenges of inclusion in education professionals. In: International Research Day, UCLy-Lyon, France, 20 January 2022.

The Cultural Psychology (CUPS) unit recently (in August 2021) won BU’s Excellence in Education in Sustainable Development (EESD) Award. On 14 December 2021, EAUC (The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education, which is the sustainability champion for universities and colleges in the UK) organised an event to showcase BU’s excellence in embedding sustainability into curricula. The unit leader of CUPS, Dr Xun He, delivered a presentation on behalf of the CUPS team, sharing the vision and practice in the unit. The unit CUPS was envisioned and designed by Xun (running from the 2018-2019 academic year), and became awarding-winning and visible at a national level thanks to the excellence of the team, including Dr Ching-Yu Huang (currently at Keele University), Dr Laura Renshaw-Vuillier, Dr Emma Portch, Prof John McAlaney, Dr Rachel Skinner, Dr Bernhard Angele, Dr Eleonora Vagnoni, Dr Jacqui Taylor, Dr Sarah Hodge, and Dr Chloe Skipper. Without all their great contribution, the unit would not have been possible.

Dr Rachel Moseley is presenting her research on suicide in autistic people at the Australasian Society for Autism Research's 2021 conference

Following on from her talk in the ESRC Festival, 'The Science of Suicide', Dr Rachel Moseley is presenting her research on suicide in autistic people at the Australasian Society for Autism Research's 2021 conference, titled "Mental Wellbeing and Suicide Prevention in Autism". Rachel will also be sitting on a post-conference round-table discussion, consisting of researchers and autistic people with lived experiences. This is aimed to generate a roundtable paper, a report, as well as policy documents that will be used to inform and advocate for improved mental health services for autistic people.

Dr Shanti Shanker helps lead Mental Health Awareness Camp in Chiplun, Maharashtra India

During the Mental Health Awareness day (October 2021) in India – Dr Shanti Shanker and colleagues tailored a camp that addressed some of the core issues the community face.

Shanti said “Chiplun, a city in the Ratnagiri district in the state of Maharashtra. This is the hub for our collaboration and a key to providing more mental health support and well-being in the rural area within the region.

This week during the Mental Health Awareness day in India - we tailored a camp that addressed some of the core issues the community face.

Severe flooding is a key issue in this region, we trained over 70 Mind Buddies (or Manas Mitra - in Hindi) integrated first-aid training and mental health and well-being aspects.

We hope to create support for these people and provide them with more skills training and build the capacity of community volunteers across the region.”

Dr Catherine Talbot spoke on The Ageing Scientist podcast

The podcast is hosted by Dr Clarissa Giebel and discusses everything around ageing and science. Catherine appeared on Season 2 Episode 1 which focuses on inequalities in dementia. Catherine spoke about digital inequalities in dementia and ageing, and shared her latest research into how COVID-19 has affected digital technology usage in dementia.

You can listen to the podcast for free on Spotify.

Dr Xun He and Dr Ellen Seiss just had success with their proposal to the SIA Game-Changing Research Concepts call

This funding call is part of BU’s SIA scheme, which stands for Strategic Investment Area. The purpose of this call was to put forward the concepts for which BU will be known in the years to come. Our proposal is one of three winning concepts, which will be prioritised for strategic development and be tailored institutional support to turn the research idea into a reality. The research concept being proposed is “Multimodal Immersive NEuro-sensing (MINE) for natural neuro-behavioural measurement ”, which aims at developing a pioneering multimodal and immersive system for the measurement of human behaviour and neural activities in realistic and controlled environments. The team is led by Dr Xun He, and comprises Dr Fred Charles (Department of Creative Technology), Dr Ellen Seiss (Department of Psychology), and Dr Emili Balaguer-Ballester (Department of Computing and Informatics). There are nine collaborating team members from Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, BU Clinical Research Unit, Faculty of Media & Communication, Institute of Medical Imaging & Visualisation, and Ageing & Dementia Research Centre. Enthusiastic supports also came from multiple faculties.

Dr Xun He secures new funding

Dr Xun He was successful in getting an Innovate UK Smart Grant as a co-investigator. This project is led by Dr Fred Charles (Department of Creative Technology) on the topic “Believable agent behaviour (BAB) for data-driven real-time VR”. The project will run for 15 months (funding value: £117k).

Dr Catherine Talbot has been voted in as the early-career rep for the BPS Research Board. Catherine will be representing early career researchers on the board in discussions of science, research policy, funding, and the promotion and advancement of psychological science.