Running the press office for a university like Bedfordshire
is an amazing job; and I have a feeling I may find anywhere else after this
dull.
The adage ‘no day is ever the same’ really comes into play
here – in fact no hour is ever the same!
Where else can you one minute be arranging an interview with a student
on international placements, to the next sorting out filming for documentary
for Ch4
on cyberstalking, to the next be pitching out case studies about our
amazing female academics for International
Women’s Day.
The University of Bedfordshire’s Press Office really is an inspiring
place to work.
We’ve had particular success in highlighting our reputation
around applied research. Over the past year we’ve covered everything from a
new way to teach PE, England’s
teenage pregnancy strategy, alcohol
abuse in the over 50s, care
robots, and 3D
printing new limbs (a hand for an 8 year old boy – and it works).
The University’s applied research is easily relatable and
the media understand its impact on people’s lives. Our recent press coverage has included the
Today programme, the Times, BBC Online, Newsnight, BBC Breakfast and 5Live.
However the press coverage for our latest piece of applied
research on care robots exceeded even my wildest dreams.
It’s a great story – we’re helping to develop culturally
aware robots that can improve the care of the elderly. It’s an
international collaboration funded through the EU and the Japanese Government and
has multiple international partners. Our role is evaluating the project - does
it work?
The research was covered everywhere from the Today
programme, to 5Live to the Times to BBC online; it was also picked up the Press
Association. This was the same day that Trump put his Muslim travel ban into
place but we still made it on to the BBC homepage for about four hours which
was very exciting.
The return on investment for this piece of work was
incredible.
We had over 300 individual pieces of coverage. The print coverage alone gave circulation
figures of 12.5m and it generated around 6bn unique page views.
If you want to find out more about this story take a look at
this footage of Dr Chris Papadopoulos who leads on this
research for the University, being interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme.
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