Fusion

Bournemouth-Birmingham-Brasilia: Consortium Building and Joint Work (BBB)

Dr Raian Ali, a Senior Lecturer in Computing, is the Principal Investigator of the BBB project which creates a community of interest involving the computing groups of the University of Brasilia, University of Birmingham, and Bournemouth University.

The three groups are focused on Software Engineering research and this timely research project focuses on adaptive software systems, particularly, cloud and service computing. Exchange visits as part of this project have encouraged partnership development and international collaborative working.

Archaeology Professional Practice Forum: Bridging the Gap

The 'Bridging the Gap' project has been a highly successful networking and information gathering exercise, which will inform and drive actions to better prepare students for careers within archaeology, to better meet the needs of the profession and to enhance both subject-specific employability and transferable skills. An Archaeological Professional Practice Forum event was held to gather information from archaeology practitioners, employers, recent graduates and current students on the nature and extent of the skills gap between graduation and entry-level employment within archaeology. It explored ways to improve the industry-readiness of our students in order to give our new graduates a competitive edge when seeking employment, and to service the needs of the profession. The next stage was to visit practitioners in curatorial roles (Dorset County Council Archaeologists and HER), field units (AC Archaeology), and industry bodies (Institute for Archaeology) to further explore some of the key issues raised by the forum.

Student participation in this project has been highly informative of student experience, attitudes and activities relevant to enhancing employability and career development within the archaeological profession.

"I found it useful to hear that students who have made the most of their university experience by spending extra time volunteering, are far more likely to find work within their field after graduation. I believe that it is very important for students to fully understand this, and also the wide variety of opportunities for volunteering available to them."

Amy LoGalbo, Level I Archaeology student

There has been positive engagement by academic and support staff, external practitioners and the students themselves. The information gathered has enabled the development of an evidence-based action plan that identifies areas and mechanisms for improving extra-curricular engagement and 'industry readiness' of archaeology graduates.