Jess is on a break: the first 30 days
[Career Break] The First 30 Days Yet another posting from one of the best new blogs I’ve come across. Jess’ descriptions of her slow and often painful departure from academia are honest,...
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Last Day at University Another honest, moving, and powerful posting from Jess on her last day in academia. For all those also toying with #LeavingAcademia, this is one of the best blogs you can read...
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Mr Smee finds a home (a riff on preprints, peer review, and undergraduate...
I don’t usually blog about my actual research, but this week one of my last papers was published, a characterisation of the protein TbSmee1 in the unicellular eukaryotic parasite Trypanosoma brucei...
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A riposte to the Red Queens
Good mentoring offers a rebuke to the cynicism of the Red Queens. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” says the Red Queen to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s...
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Scientific supply chains
Attracting international scientists should be used to complement a domestic science base, not compensate for its deficiencies. It was the coronavirus pandemic that first showed the importance of...
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Great scientists, great moustaches VII (a Movember posting)
The latest in TIR’s annual celebration of some great minds and the great moustaches that went (just) before them. Links to instalments I-VI can be found at the end for real moustache aficionados. For...
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2023: TIR’s year in review
A look back at a very dramatic year. 2023 started with my resignation from all the positions I held at my university: group leader, coordinator of a research focus programme, and designated successor...
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Only in the abstract
Mondrian, Composition with yellow, red, black, blue and grey (1920). I do miss academia, but only in the abstract. I miss benchwork, but that was coming to an end regardless of whether I stayed in...
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In and out of love (with academia)
Academia can be amazing, except when it isn’t. Academia sometimes seems like the best of all possible careers, and for some, it is. Their research is fun, exciting, and well-regarded, their teaching...
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Apotheosis (a riff on permanent positions in science)
It’s taken the private sector only six months to give me something that 20+ years in academia didn’t provide: a permanent position. It’s something that seemingly every other walk of life takes for...
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