
The EU Referendum
Are you registered to vote in the upcoming EU referendum? If you aren’t registered or don’t know if you are, you can register here. If you don’t register than you can’t vote and with those <55 years old much more likely to vote In on June 23rd, the Remain campaign needs you to vote. This video from channel 4 […]
Conference funding
Last week I found out I’d had two abstracts accepted for oral presentations at the Microbiology Society (formerly SGM) Annual conference in March. I submitted two abstracts, hoping I’d be accepted for two posters so two talks is a little daunting! My accepted abstracts got me thinking about conference funding and where you can find […]

Athena Swan Debate
I’ve written before about how I’ve been lucky enough to have never felt held back by my gender at work, however the more I read, learn and understand about the leaky pipeline and the challenges women face in the higher ranks of science the more I know this may not always be the case. As […]

Online communities for PhD students
Being a PhD student can sometimes feel a little isolating, although those of us based in the lab are lucky enough to have an built in community, that doesn’t mean we can’t also look outside of the lab, our departments and our institutions for people to talk to and discuss PhD life with. For humanities and […]
PhD admin
With the new academic year just around the corner I thought I’d write a little about what’s expected of PhD students as we transition from one year to the next. Obviously for us this is a very different process to Undergraduate students. We don’t sit exams (although we are assessed) and we don’t receive marks […]
The elusive work/life balance
I’ve spoken about work life balance before and how I have to work hard to maintain it. Recently the issue of overworking in research science (and by all researchers, STEM or otherwise) has been brought up due to a recently published article on the Science website called “Getting noticed is half the battle”, it was […]

Festival of Post Graduate Research
This week I took part in the university’s 11th Annual Festival of Post Graduate Research. This is an event when 50 PhD students present their work to the public by producing posters. We’re judged by a wide range of invited judges and each student has about 4 judges attend their poster. I have to say it […]
Sports membership update
Great news everyone, following on from my blog a few weeks back about the lack of gym membership options for PhD students (and other post-grads) I’ve got an update. Sports and Rec have agreed to introduce a membership that runs from 1st Jan-31st Aug each year, as it runs for 2/3’s of the time of a […]

He for She
Have you heard for the Gender Equality movement from the UN called HeforShe? It was originally kicked off by Emma Watson and just in case you haven’t heard about it I’ll provide a little background. It’s a campaign to promote and celebrate men (as well as women) supporting gender equality and involves a simple pledge […]
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