passim in passing

Here follows a repost from the excellent MSU Capblog - check them out here ! Hello MSU! And hello followers of this blog. Since I fall into the former category, it's very cool to be asked to share a little bit about what has become a fairly all-consuming obsession  project: TrowelBlazers . If you don't know us, please come be our friend . Or not, you know, it's cool. The TrowelBlazers project is a born-on-twitter idea that took off from a handful of early career academics (post docs all) who joined in the general academic-internet wide horror at the type of 'inspirational' material produced by major research funders to encourage women to participate in science. If for some reason you missed the utterly patronising travesty that was the European Commision produced 'Science: It's a Girl Thing', please do feel free to watch it now. I'll wait. Squirm inducing, right? I think what as a group we shared was the feeling that there was something...

Ok! Got distracted by other academic commitments, so fell off the #blogarch wagon for a bit, but back on for March and Doug's final question :   where are you/we going with blogging or would you it like to go?  "Where do we go from here? Is it down to the lake I fear.   Ay ay ay ay ay ay..."   - Haircut 100, sometime in the 80s.   Or, as several of my colleagues would put it, why am I wasting my time writing non-peer reviewed anything? Why would I share anything about my work when people could find out and use it themselves, without giving me credit? I've encountered time and again the repetitive mantra that blogging is at best a waste of time, and at worst an ego-stroking, publicity-seeking exercise carried out by those who just can't hack 'real' academic research. Owwww. This does rather beg the question - why bother? Well, one answer is, I increasingly don't. My personal blog languishes as research projects that really ca...

As it's #MuseumWeek in the world defined by the extent of hashtags this week, I thought I could follow up on @HenryRothwell 's suggestion that I, ahem, explain myself. Or rather, I explain this photo: I've managed to bring home my very own permanent installation, formerly a statue in the Natural History Museum Earth Gallery. It used to live amongst its fellows, God/Babbage, Atlas, Spaceman, Cyclops, and another one I've forgotten. Poseidon maybe. I'm not saying it was easy. The statue clocked in at 2.65 meters, which necessitated a large van- And several brave folk to lift it (this is why it comes in handy to know a lot of archaeologists. They don't shirk manual labour!) But with a few hacksaw-and-hammer based modifications, we managed it. And while the exhibition space may be changing, at least I will always have a permanent and terrifying memory of my life at the museum :)