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 :)

Welcome to round two of the #blogarch adventure, orchestrated by Dougsarchaeology . This month, the question posed to those of us who still do this blogging thing is more reflective: what's been good about blogging? Bad? And what's been downright ugly? Well geez. The Good Friends! Contacts, networks, people to talk to. But I think more importantly, blogging offers a longform elaboration of the casual conversations and offhand interests that the 140 character world doesn't really give you a chance to get into. For instance, I am pretty good at working up a #twitterstorm rage. I've had lots of social media chats with friends and strangers about things that seriously, epically get my metaphorical goat ( looking at you , #aquaticape! also, druid in-fighting ). But here's the thing about an insta-rage: you sound like a total jerk. Seriously. That rage needs context . And maybe pictures of the Judean People's Front (splitters!). literally, any excuse to use...

...in which your correspondent participates, not for the first time (those were the good ole' days, eh Colleen ?) , in the digital round robin that is a blogging carnival, with the hopes of someday seeing it at the SAAs . Follow along with the carnival through the #blogarch tag or Doug's blog here . November's question: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? I'm guessing that like many of my blogging compatriots, I started my personal blog for a combination of reasons, starting with interest in a new bright and shiny thing (blogging! whatever next-- hoverboards? Hey, it was a different time), and running the gamut of self-publicising social media instincts, including the desire to join a conversation of peers, the chance to talk loosely and informally about things I was interested in, and the chance to share my devastating wit with the world at large.*  The world is a lonely place at the end of a PhD or in the dreaded gap bet...

Hello! This is a crosspost from our TrowelBlazers guest spot over on the British Geological Society's blog . Mary Anning, trowelblazer Thinking geology? Thinking science? Thinking crinolines, bonnets, and muddy skirts? Probably not! However, if you discount the damsels in the discipline, you actually lose quite a bit of history-and that's what our project 'TrowelBlazers' is all about. We're a small collective of researchers who got a bit bored with the hoary old pictures of the great and good in science, and started looking around for some of the unsung (or just amazing) heroines  of the digging fields - archaeology, palaeontology, and, of course, geology . We started the TrowelBlazers site and put out the call for people to nominate  trowelblazing women. After just a few months, we've had 50 posts, many of which were submitted by guest posters who have direct links to the women they are writing about. Official Wikimedian sticker and pin With the ...

For those of you who have somehow found this blog without either being personally shown it with my hand on the mouse, or through my highly serious and infromative twitter feed ( @brennawalks  -- or even @trowelblazers , which is my identity 1/4 of the time), welcome. I always enjoy meeting new spambots. For the rest of you, I'll assume you have an interest in either a) museums b) outreach or c) the life and times of our Human Origins research group. In which case, hurrah! Because that's what I'd like to talk about. Prof Stringer lays down some knowledge Every year, under auspices of the EU 's Framework Programme 7  , museums across europe recieve funds in order to hold a giant Open house. And it is giant, especially for us at the Natural History Museum London - we have hundreds of researchers here, normally safely hidden behind locked doors in the labryinth of cabinetry and slightly past sell-by-date skeletal models of obscure animals that is the 'working...