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The Conversation UK features BU academics on travelling to Egypt

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Bournemouth University’s Senior Lecturer in Tourism, Dr Yeganeh Morakabati and Director of the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality at Bournemouth University, Professor John Fletcher had their article “Egypt still on the holiday map, but is it risky and is it right?” published on The Conversation UK website.

The article discusses the risk and morality on travelling to Egypt for a holiday during the major civil unrest.

“People tend to avoid destinations that offer a greater level of risk than they get back in return for the benefits they get from going there”, the article added.

They collected 394 questionnaires before and during the Arab Spring, when Libya, Egypt and Tunisia were all fighting for political change asking “how much risk do you feel is involved when travelling to a list of Middle East countries?”

The results showed that Egypt was considered a low risk destination and grouped with countries with no civil war (at the time).

However things seem to have changed.

“Egypt is now subject to travel warnings from the UK government, highlighting areas advising where not to travel and where only essential travel should be undertaken. The major tour operators are getting nervous and companies such as TUI have cancelled all holidays to Egypt for its German customers following travel warnings.”

“But equally, if tourism in Egypt were to collapse, the suffering of ordinary people across the country would be greater because the detrimental effect on the economy. After the 2004 tsunami in south-east Asia, many people asked themselves if it would be OK to holiday in a region where there was still so much suffering. The answer from the area was unequivocal: “Yes – because we need the money.””

Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

BU’s Ken Brown speaks on changing age of jurors

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Bournemouth University’s Lecturer in Law, Ken Brown, featured on BBC Radio Solent, talking about the UK government’s decision to increase the age that jurors can be called up from 70 to 75.

Ken gave his opinion on two occasions to BBC Radio Solent, saying, “When someone reaches 70 when and does not feel able to sit in a jury it would be possible for that person to opt out if someone does not feel as if they can do their job as a juror to the professional standard”

However would the age rise really be a good idea? Brown explained that older people have lots of experience in the profession and rich experience in what life is all about and that should be utilised.

He expresses how older people can still contribute to society, with Brown being 81 and still lecturing law at BU.

“The present eighty is the previous sixty and people at the age of sixty are still think of themselves in the forty bracket nowadays”, Brown added. “I don’t feel 81 years of age, I have wonderful students and they give an awful lot to me, they’re young, they’re vibrant and they have a future.”

Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

Major success with Swash Channel Wreck coverage

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The rudder from the Swash Channel Wreck was finally recovered from the sea bed after residing in Poole Harbour for four hundred years, provoking a wide range of media coverage.

What the ship was and how it came to be on the seabed in Poole Harbour remains a mystery and the 27 foot rudder that was uncovered yesterday could uncover the mysteries of the Swash Channel Wreck. Some say the ship was part of the Spanish Armada, but on closer inspection, the timber frame, found by a dredger in 1990, dates back to the 1600’s; after the Spanish Armada. The ship is most likely of Dutch or German origin.

Bournemouth University received sixty one pieces of coverage, ranging all across print and broadcast media. The list included:

  • South Today
  • BBC TV South
  • BBC Somerset, Solent, Stoke, Surry, Ulster, Shropshire, Scotland, Nottingham, Newcastle, Merseyside, Manchester, Leicester, Leeds, Kent, Humberside, Gloucestershire, Devon, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, Bristol, Oxford, Lincolnshire and Jersey
  • BBC Radio 5 Live
  • The Times
  • This is Dorset
  • Daily Express
  • Scottish Daily Express
  • The Independent
  • The Independent Online
  • The Guardian
  • The Daily Echo
  • Bournemouth Daily Echo

Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and Project Leader of the Swash Channel Wreck Project, Dave Parham, featured in a number of the papers, giving quotes and information with the on-going project.

“The wreck is important because so much of it survives. It is the ship itself that is significant – there are only a few wrecks like this in the world, and it tells is more about the beginnings of large scale international trade”, Parham said to The Independent.

“It would have been a very big vessel for its day and the whole vessel would have been a spectacular work if art. It was making a statement, showing how great and wonderful the owners were. They would have needed a large Dutch conglomerate, similar to the East India Company”, he said in The Times.

“To see it in daylight in all its glory is quite spectacular, it is very large and impressive so you can imagine how spectacular this merchant vessel would have looked. It is an extremely find and has led to one of the largest ship wreck investigations in Britain. We this it was a Dutch trading ship and would have taken high quality European goods such as tweed to the Far East and traded them for things like exotic spices” explained Parham in the Daily Express.

“What would be nice would be to have a historical reference papers saying it was sailing from here to there. You don’t need that; from an archaeological perspective the really interesting thing is the study of the whole…” Dave added in the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

By Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

Future BU student in The Guardian on clearing experience

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Future BU student Rohan Advani spoke to The Guardian about his experiences with applying to university through Clearing.

When Rohan Advani didn’t get the top grades he needed to get into medical school and follow in his grandmother’s footsteps to become a doctor, he was initially a little troubled. “On results day, I was devastated,” he said, ” I didn’t get my first choice or my insurance offer. It seemed that being a doctor was out of the question”.

After reconsidering, Advani called Bournemouth University and applied to study through Clearing and is now happy to start an engineering degree in September.

“I love my course, its brilliant. I have been given a second chance to move into a good career with decent prospects and I can still study medicine if I want to through a postgraduate medical degree”, he added

Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

Swash Channel Wreck and BU featured in The Telegraph

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Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and Project Leader of the Swash Channel Wreck Project, Dave Parham, featured in the Telegraph, talking about what the wreck is in build up to the surfacing.

The 130ft ship, bigger than the Mary Rose, will have its 27ft, 2.4 tonne rudder surfaced today and is considered a “highly anticipated event”.

So far there are several clues to what the ship was and why it sank and with over 1000 artefacts recovered, people are starting to piece together the true identity of the Swash Channel Wreck. Some believe that the ship was a Spanish Armada vessel (San Salvador), which was lost in 1588. But on further inspection the vessel’s timber frame was felled in 1628 from forests in the coastal region of the Netherlands-Germany Border.

From this, the ship is most likely a Dutch owned artefact.

“I’m surprised we haven’t found any reference to a sinking.” Parham added.  “There is usually some sort of argument or claim that gives you your starting point. It doesn’t appear to have survived in the popular memory, as others have. We have been working on names, but there is no smoking gun, which is surprising, because it is a big ship and its sinking would have been a big event.”

Dave Parham goes on to explain that the facial carving that appears on the uncovered rudder could “provide a breakthrough” and that the carving is similar to one found on a Swedish ship wreck.

“It is an artistic object, which may give information about its origins”.

The Swash Channel Wreck is a project funded by Bournemouth University, English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Poole Harbour Commissioners.

Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

BU student saving money in the Mail on Sunday

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By Dean Eastmond

Students take note, being careful with your money really does pay off!

Fourth Year Advertising and Marketing Communications student, Garry Hendry, featured in The Mail on Sunday talking about how, by budgeting and performing a few sneaky tips and tricks, issues with finance are few and far between.

One of his tricks was moving £1,000 from his fee-free overdraft account into a tax-free ISA account; saving himself £19 just for moving his money around.

“It’s only £19 extra a year”, he added. “But in perspective that is a week’s food. It’s a trick for only the financially disciplined student”.

Another one of his tips was using cashback deals through TopCashBack, by using big brand online shops, he earns cashback on his purchase.

Hendry explains how he’s saved £500 over three years at Bournemouth University.

“Some of my cash back I use to offset the cost of monthly bills but most goes into a rainy-days saving account for the future”, Garry explains after receiving £80 and £120 pay-outs for switching his broadband and making the most of promotional offers such as Orange’s “Orange Wednesdays”.

“Every penny counts when you’re a student,” said Garry, showing that being careful with your money can help to make your time at university more manageable.

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

Dr Bronwen Thomas posts on The Conversation UK website

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By Dean Eastmond

Bournemouth University’s Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Literature, Dr Bronwen Thomas, has recently had her article featured on news website The Conversation.

Dr Thomas expressed her views giving the facts and figures about e-reader charts. The Bookseller has, for the first time, created and published a sales chart for eBooks costing over £2, revealing the top fifty books for June this year.

The report, authored by Dr Thomas, continued by explaining how erotic books (following after the “fifty shades hype”) topped the charts with “Entwined with you” coming out number one “by miles”.

“The release of the digital ranking is significant because it allows us to compare print and e-book sales directly for the first time,” Dr Bronwen Thomas explained. “It also confirms that e-books are here to stay and are likely to have a huge impact on publishing, writing and reading.”

However Dr Thomas explained how it may not show what the nation reads the most, with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece “The Great Gatsby” not being seen in the charts.

“This is probably because the Bookseller chart only looks at sales of £2 and over, and Gatsby can be yours in digital form for as little as 77p.”

The article then carries on and Bronwen continues; “E-readers do undoubtedly afford more privacy, because no one can see that you are reading 50 shades of Grey on your commute”

The report is finished, explaining the importance of this chart for future reader trends.

“Publishing houses and marketing teams can obviously still influence these charts, so it will be interesting to see how this changes as self- published titles and books published cheaply via amazon become more popular”

The Conversation is a new, non-profit, independent source of information and news from the Higher Education sector. The website is new to the UK after starting in Australia. By getting academics and experts to give their opinions, knowledge and research, the website is an extremely unique way of delivering news and information to the public.

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

BU Research wins Best Paper at CCT13

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Research by Bournemouth University student Rebecca Watkins has won the Best Competitive Paper at the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Conference 2013.

At this year’s conference in Tucson, Arizona, Bournemouth University PhD student Rebecca Watkins and senior lecturer Dr. Mike Molesworth were awarded Best Competitive Paper for their contribution entitled ‘The Biographies of Digital Virtual Goods’.

Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is an interdisciplinary field that comprises macro, interpretive, and critical perspectives of consumer behaviour, and the CCT conference has become the premier international venue for consumer culture researchers spanning a broad spectrum of academic disciplines to come together to share their ideas, empirical insights, and theoretical interests in an engaging, cutting edge, collegial forum.

The conference invited original contributions in the form of full papers that undergo a rigorous peer review process with three double blind reviewers, and as a result research presented at the conference is consistently of an exceptionally high standard.

The paper communicated empirical findings from Rebecca’s PhD research which explores ownership and possession in the context of digital goods, from magical swords, luxury cars and avatars within virtual worlds, to mp3s, ebooks, and social networking profiles.

Building on award winning research by Dr Denegri-Knott and Dr Molesworth from BU’s Media School, Rebecca and Mike highlight the ways in which the nature of digital goods encourages the delaying of classification decisions, resulting in vast digital hoards, and in doing so contribute to existing understanding of digital goods as possessions by providing insight into their biographies, including the significant ways in which they diverge from the typical biographies of material goods.

A key contribution of the paper, and of Rebecca’s research more broadly, is to illustrate that our understanding of material culture and consumption, so understandably rooted in the materiality of goods, is problematised by the emergence of digital possessions, often leading to tense and turbulent relationships between consumers and the providers of these digital goods that are yet to be adequately addressed by policy makers.

Rebecca’s attendance at the conference was partially funded by the Graduate School’s PGR Development Fund

BU student aims to run 52 marathons in 52 weeks for charity

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A Bournemouth University student hopes to raise £100,000 for charity by completing 52 marathons in 52 weeks.

Second year BSc (Hons) Sports Development and Coaching Sciences student Ben Godbold will start the challenge in April with the London Marathon.

He aims to complete 52 marathons over the next year – in places including New York, Paris and Madrid – before doing the London Marathon again in 2014.

Ben, 20, was inspired to take up the challenge after carrying the Olympic Torch through his hometown of Gosport in July.

Ben, who was nominated for the honour for voluntary cricket coaching, said: “Carrying the torch in front of 100,000 people was pretty crazy.

“All the people who came along that day and said thank you for what you doing really inspired me.

“With things that had happened in my life, I wanted to give a bit more. I thought I’d do one marathon and it just went from there.”

Ben, who lives in the Meyrick Park area while studying, hopes to raise around £100,000, which he will split between four charities close to his heart.

He is fundraising for the Alzheimer’s Society, a disease which his grandmother battled, alongside Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research and children’s cancer charity CLIC Sergeant in memory of his cousin David – who fought leukaemia aged 8, 13 and 18 and later died.

“Before he died, he said he wanted to me to go out in his name and inspire people,” said Ben.

“The whole theme of it is to be an inspiration and to go and inspire young people to do whatever they want in life.

“I just want to show that if you have a bit of determination and time you can do it.”

Ben is also fundraising for the Alicia Pannell Fund, which raises money for nine-year-old Alicia, who Ben has known for the past five years.

He said: “Alicia was born prematurely and had water on her brain, so needs 24-hour care.

“Her family treats her like a princess so we want to raise £20,000 for her and her family to go to Disneyland in Florida and be a princess.”

Ben is training five times a week in preparation for the challenge but is currently battling a knee injury.

He is also fundraising to allow him to travel the world to complete the marathons, organising events and abseiling down Battersea Power Station.

“I want to go all around the world but I can’t really fund it personally,” said Ben, who also wants to set up and complete his own marathon in Gosport as part of the challenge.

“It is all dependent on sponsorship.”

Ben will be on placement for most of the year’s challenge, but says friends, family, businesses and Bournemouth University have all been supportive.

“The university has been supporting me quite a lot, which is good, and SportBU has given me free gym membership.

“I have never run a marathon in my life, so to do 52 in a row is probably a bit stupid, but it will be fun.”

You can find out more about the challenge, or sponsor Ben here

SportBU manager swapping lbs for £s for Comic Relief

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A manager at Bournemouth University’s on-campus gym will raise money for Comic Relief by completing a gruelling number of fitness classes.

Charlton Clarke, who is Duty Manager (Intramural and External Facilities) at SportBU, will complete 34 fitness classes over seven days – a total of 27.75 hours of exercise.

Charlton, who also teaches fitness classes at the Talbot Campus gym, hopes to raise at least £500 for his Lbs for £s Challenge through an online donation site and collection buckets.

He will be taking part in up to seven classes a day – including spinning, pilates and Legs, Bums and Tums – from Monday 4th March until Sunday 10th March.

Charlton, 25, said: “I have always wanted to do something for Red Nose Day – I see all the celebrities doing the massive challenges and get a bit jealous.

“I am here on a daily basis, so I thought it would be interesting just to see how many classes I could do in a week. Then I thought I may as well combine it with raising money.”

The challenge will see Charlton complete some of the half hour and hour long classes consecutively – doing them throughout the day while working normal hours in between.

Charlton, of Westbourne, will also be taking part in classes that he normally teaches and will attempt his first ever Zumba class.

He said: “The Zumba class will be interesting. I like doing classes which are pretty stationary, as anything that involves lots of movement or dancing, I’m usually rubbish.

“I’m looking forward to taking part in the Boxercise class – I have taught that for about three years and I have always been on the other side, shouting at people.

“My colleague is going to run the class for me and she says she’s quite looking forward to putting me through my paces.”

He added: “The people who come to my classes regularly, are going to see me and want me to push myself.

“Thursday is quite a tough day – if I’m not tried and struggling by that point anyway, I will be by the end of it.

“I’m just throwing myself into it and hoping for the best.”

You can sponsor Charlton here