Professional titles are not used equally in academia, specifically women and other minoritized academics are often stripped of their titles on purpose or by accident. This is an equity issue, as it devalues the hard work, tenacity and creativity of our colleagues and does not foster a equal culture of…

If you are fortunate enough to be offered a faculty job, you might want to consider what you can negotiate. I can’t offer an exhaustive list, but hopefully I can share a few ideas of things you might want to consider. This is part of my “pass it forward” philosophy…

Many areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) are hyper masculine and reward people for bad behaviour. Many of the environments we work in are, at present, hostile and unforgiving of difference. I can share that there are islands of hope and people are making strides to fix things…

It’s that time of year again, well, with a few more days added on for good measure, that I celebrate getting that bit older. This year has been a rollercoaster through the mist, with the underpinning oppression of the global pandemic on all our lives. The world has slowed down…

Today is my last day. Not my last last, of course, but my last day at Imperial College London. Which in some ways does risk making it my last day. This prompts some personal reflection. As an academic, we wed a huge amount of our identity to our professional life…

Here is a letter that I have recently written to co-signatories of a letter to address, and contest, the introduction of MSc and MRes application fees at Imperial College London. In the letter, I share that the College is still very keen on getting prospective students to pay £80 to…

Bullying and harassment is hugely problematic in any place of work or learning. It causes actual and immediate harm, it creates trauma, and it sustains a culture where a limited few are allowed to survive, let alone thrive. We know that bullying and harassment happens in University settings. This can…

A cluster of discussions recently have highlighted how quantitative assessment in academia risks systematically creating toxic hyper competitive environments, undermining our credibility in making decisions, and fundamentally undervaluing individuals. Let us take a couple of ideas to explore this theme — cheating & academic misconduct; and academic metrics. Cheating & Academic Misconduct There are…