RESEARCHER PROFILES Dr Fiona Willans

Lecturer in Linguistics

David Mapuru

PhD Candidate

Faculty of Business & Economics

USP RESEARCH

FEATURES

VOLUME 1 APRIL – JUNE ISSUE 2

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

"USP has recorded 74 A/A* pub-lications in 2016, the highest ever in the history of the University"

2 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

Professor Jito Vanualailai DIRECTOR'S NOTE The second quarter of the year has been a particularly successful one for the Research Office. Earlier in the quarter, two vacant positions were filled ensuring that the team was once again at full throttle. During this time the Research Office also advertised for a new position (Innovation and Research Development Coordinator) created to lead the university-wide research efforts in identifying new research opportunities with potential partners located both locally and internationally. This position is hoped to be filled by August this year. In June this year, the Research Office had organized the Research Writing Workshop for postgraduate research students facilitated by renowned Fijian scholar, Professor Steven Ratuva from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The writing residency/workshop has been a regular feature of the Research Office PGRS training programme and has received encouraging feedback from students as well as supervisors. Additionally, the Pacific Peoples’ Research Skills symposium hosted by the Research Office also proved a great success, bringing participants and presenters from six different institutions and setting the pathway for future collaborations in the area of research skills development. Lastly, as alluded to in the previous newsletter, The University of the South Pacific (USP) has recorded 74 A/A* publications in 2016, the highest ever in the history of the University. The previous high was recorded in 2014 at 61. This achievement of course is a testament to the fact that USP’s Strategic Plan initiatives are certainly bearing fruits. As has been our strategy for the past six years, the University through the Research Rewards Incentive scheme will reward staff during the Annual Research Excellence and Innovation Awards evening in November.

3 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

New tamtam unveiled for USP Research Office Ana Tamani

A new landmark in the form of a wooden tamtam now stands in front of the Research Office at The University of the South Pacific’s (USP) Laucala Campus in Fiji. The tamtam was unveiled on 15 May, 2017 in a ceremony officiated by staff of the Research Office led by Professor Derrick Armstrong, representatives from the Vanuatu High Commission and students of Vanuatu.

In a brief address, Professor Armstrong said he was deeply honoured by the work of the carvers and their “contribution to this place of learning”. “This is the hub of the

organisation of research across the entire University and 12 member states of USP, so we have the honour of having this tamtam and we do value it very much,” he remarked.

Professor Jito Vanualailai said when he joined the Research Office in 2011, the old tamtam was the first thing that grabbed his attention. “The tamtam gives the Research Office a very special feature and it is a significant landmark which symbolises the culture of one of our very own member countries of the Pacific, which is Vanuatu. It is a real privilege to host the continuity of the tamtam culture here,” he added.

Mr Emmanuel Blessing, Chargé d’Affairrés of the Vanuatu High Commission in Suva, said the significance of having the tamtam at the Research office is very important. “Back in Vanuatu the tamtam is usually put up at meeting places, where communities come together to talk about issues and solve problems. “It is indeed a great privilege on our part having to be here today. It signifies that USP places high importance on the value of culture and Vanuatu being a member of USP, is grateful and we consider this a privilege,” he mentioned. “It is a proud day for us because we know that whenever people from Vanuatu go past this office, it gives them a sense of ownership and belonging,” he stated further. Mr Blessing thanked the Research Office and USP for their support.

Mr Martin David, President of the USP Student Association (USPSA) Laucala, thanked Professor Amrstrong and Professor Jito Vanualailai, Director Research for agreeing to host the ceremony and allowing the tamtam to be placed in front of the Research Office. The tamtam was carved by Vanuatu student George Koran, originally from North Ambrym, Vanuatu who merely passed by the Research Office one day and noticed the wear and tear on the old one. The tamtam was carved from a breadfruit tree branch which fell at the Laucala Campus during Cyclone Winston.

From L-R: Student George Koran, Mr Emmanuel Blessing, Chargé d’Affairrés of the Vanuatu High Commission, Professor Derrick Armstrong and Professor Jito Vanualailai standing beside the new tamtam in front of the Research office at the Laucala Campus.

4 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

USP Rewards Incentive Scheme The Annual Research Excellence and Innovation Awards Fulori Nainoca-Waqairagata and Shalni Sanjana

Every year the University recognizes the efforts and contributions of staff and students in research through

monetary rewards for scholarly outputs produced and published from the previous year. Since the first

award ceremony held in 2011, the University has seen a positive increase in the number of publications

rewarded each year through the Rewards Incentive scheme.

Last year’s event which was held on November 11th at the Japan-Pacific Multipurpose theatre witnessed

more than 100 staff and students being awarded from over 140 publication titles in Journals and Book

Chapters ranked A*, A and B. In addition to publications, the event also introduced a special reward for

Patents to acknowledge USP’s strong focus on innovation and invention where academic patents are the

pinnacle of research outcome and impact. Two teams, including students from the School of Engineering

and Physics, FSTE were rewarded for receiving patent certification from the Australian Government and

registered under the Australian Patents Act:

1) A Mobile Cane for the Blind and Visually Impaired – Dr Utkal Mehta, Mohammed Alim and Shivneel Kumar

2) Portable Wave-Solar Energy Harvesting Device by Dr F M Rabiul Islam, Dr Kabir Mamun, and Shaneel Prakash

Receiving their Patent Rewards from the

Chief Guest, the Permanent Secretary for

the Ministry of Employment,

Productivity and Industrial Relations,

Mrs Salaseini Daunabuna.

Above: Dr F M Rabiul Islam, Dr Kabir

Mamun (middle) and Shaneel Prakash

(far right)

Left: Dr Utkal Mehta

5 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

The highlight of these events are the Vice-Chancellor’s Prizes for Research in which special recognition awards are presented to those staff and students who have demonstrated outstanding research performance through high-ranked publications, creative works, innovation; and development and societal impacts over time.

Group photo of the rewardees and prize winners

The Research Office has embarked on its preparation for this year’s November event which will reward outputs from the year 2016. The Call for Applications for the 2016 Vice-Chancellors Prizes for Research has been issued and the deadline for all applications is on the 1st of September, 2017. For more information about the Rewards scheme please visit the Research Office website on the link www.research.usp.ac.fj/rewards and the Vice-Chancellor’s Prizes for Research Criteria and Application process on www.research.usp.ac.fj/vcs-research-prizes.

USP Ranking System

In addition to USP2015 Journal listing, ABDC Journal Listing and Book and Book Chapter Rankings, this year

the Research Office has introduced the inclusion of SENSE2016 publishers listing and ABDC2016 journal to

rank USP publications.

The new list and rankings ensures that the University is recognizing USP outputs with internationally

equivalent rankings, thus maintaining and enhancing the quality of research.

SENSE2016 contains a peer-reviewed list of quality publishers used to rank Books and Book Chapters. The

ABDC2016 is an updated list (with new journal inclusions) used to rank journal articles mostly specific to

Business, Economics, Accounting and Public Administration.

The lists are available on the Research Office website on: https://research.usp.ac.fj/rewards.

6 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

The Postgraduate Research Writing Workshop

organsied by the Research Office was held at the

Tanoa Plaza over a period of three days (12th –

14th June, 2017). The workshop was facilitated by

Professor Steven Ratuva from the University of

Canterbury, New Zealand.

This workshop aimed to help fine tune, develop,

and enrich the research skills of participants, not

only for their thesis but also for their future

research endeavors.

A total of 16 students attended the workshop, with

5 being PhD students and the remaining 11 were

Master’s students. The workshop consisted of a

number of interrelated activities which ranged

from presentations on context and conceptual

framework to group presentations on hypothetical

research projects which was evaluated by the

other participants. The workshop was well

received and the participants recommended

having more workshops centered on research

writing in the year.

Postgraduate Research Writing Workshop Anushka Maharaj

Postgraduate research students with the workshop facilitator Professor Steven Ratuva (centre)

7 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

The Pacific Peoples’ Research Skills [PPRS]

Symposium was held at the Lower Campus, The

University of the South Pacific on the 14th and 15th

of June, 2017. The symposium, co-funded by the

University of Adelaide was aimed at providing a

forum for USP academics and invited guests to

learn about:

institution-wide outcomes for this initiative;

case studies of practice using the

Research Skills Development (RSD)

framework; and

other universities approaches to building research capacity of students.

The two day symposium was attended by 55

participants from USP, Fiji National University, Fiji Police, Royal University of Phnom Penh, and

Hanoi University.

In his keynote address during the symposium, the

Deputy Vice-Chancellor [Research, Innovation, and

International] Professor Derrick Armstrong stated

that the explicit development of research skills will:

• educate the Pacific region’s next generation

of well educated, flexible, ethical, high-

performing leaders and thinkers;

• enable students to be skilled and adaptable

employees in a fast-changing, highly

competitive global workplace;

• earn greater peer and international

recognition for the strength and relevance

of our degrees and our research in priority

areas; and

• promote students’ capacity to succeed in a

globalising, knowledge society and develop

member countries’ human resources.

Adela

Pacific Peoples’ Research Skills

Shaiza Janif

Participants of the PPRS Symposium

8 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

There were presentations by the USP academic

community on both discipline specific and

university wide implementation of the Research

Skills Development [RSD] framework. Thematic

groups of presentations were followed by

Talanoa Sessions on the following topics:

Has the University-wide approach to RSD implementation been appropriate

for USP?

Pacific specific or discipline specific

research skills?

The development of research skills-

consistency or variety?

The two day symposium provided an

opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the

explicit research skill development and to

further develop evaluative strategies. A number

of key recommendations rooted out of the two

day symposium; these will be incorporated in

the RSD project plan for the coming year.

Members of the UU204 Italitali team with the DVC [RII] Professor Armstrong

The Pacific Peoples’ Research Skills symposium

also provided a full scholarship for the best

presentation to participate in the International

conference on Models of Engaged Learning & Teaching Conference [I-MELT] in Adelaide from

the 11th – 13th December, 2017. The “UU204 – I

Talitali” team was voted the best presentation by

the participants and a member of their team will

be presenting during the I-MELT later this year.

The team is composed of the UU204 - Pacific

Worlds course teaching staff who presented on

“RSD, the Pacific Way”. Their presentation was

about the groups’ initiative to capture RSD as a

weaving metaphor. This metaphor situated itself

as a basis out of which knowledge, skills and

research values are built. It outlined the various

steps, methods and analysis of how to set

parameters for a Pacific Research Framework.

UU204 Team Wins the Best

Presentation Award at the PPRS

9 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

The University of the South Pacific (USP) has

recorded 74 A/A* publications in 2016, the

highest ever in the history of the University.

Professor Jito Vanualailai, Director Research

confirmed this saying the previous high was

recorded in 2014 at 61.

“This is great news and testament to the fact that

USP’s Strategic Plan initiatives are certainly

bearing fruits,” he noted.

Professor Vanualailai acknowledged Professor

Rajesh Chandra, Vice-Chancellor and President of

USP and Professor Derrick Armstrong, Deputy

Vice-Chancellor Research and International for

their support, guidance and vision.

Professor Chandra congratulated Professor

Vanualailai for this “fantastic outcome”.

“It does indicate our strategy is working. I wish to

thank you, Professor Armstrong, the Deans and

the Research Office team in particular for this

outcome,” Professor Chandra noted.

Professor Vanualailai explained that an

individual’s research outputs could be assessed

based on three key measures: quantity, quality

and impact (how much research is carried out,

how good is it and what difference does it make).

USP monitors its research outputs through the institutional online and open-access repository which collects ‘standard’ research outputs such as journal articles and book publications; it monitors quality by adopting a journal ranking system that is a combination of three international ranking systems namely, the ERA2010 (Excellence for Research in Australia 2010), the Scientific Journal Rankings (Scopus) and the Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters); and it uses student supervision as a measure of societal impact (regional capacity building), as well as being a measure of activity (quantity) of research. Through the Quality of Research (QoR) policy, USP establishes thresholds for research activity and a framework for its evaluation. It provides the University with a means to measure its research productivity, identify staff who need support in their research, as well as those staff who excel in research. This information enables the University to initiate appropriate intervention and to free up human and financial resources to support both research and teaching. Overall, it allows the University to measure and maximise its research productivity. The University recognises and rewards research

active staff in a number of ways including a

publications rewards scheme to reward high-

quality research publications.

USP Research Publications at All-time High Ana Tamani

10 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

Dr Fiona Willans

Lecturer in Linguistics

Faculty of Arts, Law, and Education

RESEARCHER PROFILE

on the brand new postgraduate

diploma in Applied Linguistics

and English Language Teaching.

Dr Willans sees the postgraduate

diploma level as the key to

building up research capacity in

Pacific linguistics and language

teaching, and strongly believes

that the institution needs to do

more to help students transition

from undergraduate level to

postgraduate studies to

independent research.

Dr Willans sees motivation to be

a key factor in graduate student

success. Her advice to her

prospective research students is

“you have to be really passionate

about the issue that you plan to

research”.

She has also recently analysed

the way people construct

complex arguments in multiple

languages on social media about

the fact that only one language

(English of course) is capable of

being used for complex purposes.

While reflecting on her time at

USP, Dr Willans revealed that she

particularly enjoys being a

research supervisor. “It’s fun to

work with a student who is

rethinking everything she

thought she knew about English

proficiency, and it’s also great for

me to be reading and talking

around this area in a lot more

depth than I’ve done for a while”.

She also enjoys working with

other postgraduate students in

the School of Language, Arts, and

Media [SLAM], including the 34

students registered this semester

“I’ve never really

separated

teaching from

thinking and

reflecting on

practice, and I

suppose I have

just formalised

my curiosity

over the years

and can now call

it research”

Interview and write-up:

Shaiza Janif

Dr Fiona Willans joined the

University as Lecturer in

Linguistics in 2015. Prior to this,

she was a lecturer at King’s

College London. She has also

taught at schools in Vanuatu and

Solomon Islands. It was in fact

during her time as an English

teacher in Vanuatu that she

started thinking more about

why English was being taught in

the Pacific in the first place and

why other languages were

banned at her school. During this

time she undertook a degree in

Pacific Language Studies at USP,

and did some classroom-based

research as part of that

qualification.

While reflecting on her research

journey she stated that “I’ve

never really separated teaching

from thinking and reflecting on

practice, and I suppose I have

just formalised my curiosity

over the years and can now call

it research”.

Dr Willans’ research broadly

focuses on the mismatch

between the vibrant multi-

lingualism of the Pacific region

and the stilted monolingualism

that tends to be promoted by

institutional structures. Hence,

she has investigated classrooms

in which the teacher does all the

talking in order to maintain the

English-only rule, while turning

a blind eye to whispers of other

languages to ensure that the

learning outcomes are met.

11 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

David Mapuru PhD: Management

Faculty of Business and Economics

particularly in the fisheries area” when

talking about his research. He is also

aiming to get the research outcomes to

be factored into policies on fisheries

management in the region that would

effectively strengthen existing

management approach; and to predict

the feasibility of WCPFC in the future.

According to Mapuru one of the benefits

of undertaking research is the ability to

effectively contribute towards the

solving the regions challenges. He also

reflects that undertaking research work

requires intellect, but more than that, it

requires consistent hard work and

determination. “The entire research

process leaves you equipped, enriched,

and empowered to do more”. It is all

about the passion for your work and

finding ways to contribute to your

society.

David Mapuru commenced on his

Master’s thesis at The University of the

South Pacific in 2012 under the

Graduate Assistant Scholarship

[GAship]. He went on to successfully

complete his thesis within the minimum

timeframe and was awarded another

GAship by the Research Office to pursue

his doctoral studies, which he again

complete within the minimum

timeframe despite numerous

challenges. Mapurus’ research interests

are in collaborative management

(public, private partnership) or what is

commonly known as governance

involving countries in the Pacific region

and stakeholders solving a common

problem and issues.

For this doctoral dissertation Mapuru is

using the Western and Central Pacific

Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), a

Regional Fisheries Management

Organization (RFMO) based in Pohnpei responsible for the management of tuna

fisheries in western and central Pacific

Ocean as case study. His study seeks to

find a suitable collaborative

management model that suits the

management of tuna fisheries in the

western and central Pacific Ocean

(WCPO) region. The WCPO supplies

around 40% to 60% of the world’s tuna

resources for canning and

sushi/sashimi in the global market and

provides up to 40% of PICs GDP. It is a

source of food security as well as job

security for most PICs. Mapuru stated, “I

hope to contribute towards the

extension of knowledge on collaborative

management of natural resources

particu

“I hope to

contribute

towards the

extension of

knowledge

on

collaborative

management

of natural

resources”

The entire

research

process

leaves you

equipped,

enriched,

and

empowered

to do

more”

RESEARCHER PROFILE

Interview and write-up:

Shaiza Janif

12 | RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

NEXT QUARTER Launch of the Postgraduate Research Portal

The Postgraduate Research Portal (PGRP) is an online application created in a joint venture between

USP and The Software Factory Limited and will be officially launch on the 13th of September at Laucala

Campus, Suva, Fiji. The application is designed to streamline administrative processes and record real-

time data on student research progress leading to data-backed decision making and driving student

success.

Research Newsletter Research Newsletter is published by the USP Research Office, The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji

Managing Editor & Designer Shaiza Janif

Ph: (679) 323 2397 Email: research@usp.ac.fj