The world has gone mad for robots with articles talking almost every day about the coming of the robot revolution. But is all the hype, excitement and sometimes fear justified? Is the robot revolution really coming? The answer is probably that in some areas of our lives we will see more robots soon. But realistically, […] … learn more→

Currently making the news is a report on a reconstruction of what is being called Jesus’s face. The reconstruction, by British anatomical artist Richard Neave, is actually more than a decade old, but it recently has started doing the rounds again – fitting given the time of year. Rather than intending to show precisely what […] … learn more→

The terrorist attack in Paris brought a strange memory back to me. Yes, there were similarities between the Paris attack and the 9-11 attack, but it wasn’t a sense of déjà vu, although plenty of that was justified. There was just something…familiar. No, it wasn’t the weird suicidal assault on a pointless target (commercial buildings, […] … learn more→

The books we remember strongly as adults are often the ones we read as children. Not only do we remember particular books, but the emotions we experienced. Children’s books are reread and remembered over a lifetime, and many authors believe their best writing is for children. Rereading favourites is a good thing. With each rereading, […] … learn more→

One of the advantages of starting an academic career late in life is the understanding of the workplace and of people one brings into the new activities. One of the advantages, also, is that one is unlikely to have grandiose visions of a life in the ivied towers of a research institution. Unless one is […] … learn more→

I read many news releases on higher education, and I often feel like a glutton for punishment by doing so. It seems that every article details how things are only getting worse, with campus atmospheres getting ever more toxic while the Poo Bahs look down from their palaces and laugh, laugh, laugh, knowing that they’ll […] … learn more→

At the start of December a rumour swirled around the internet and physics lab coffee rooms that researchers at the Large Hadron Collider had spotted a new particle. After a three-year drought that followed the discovery of the Higgs boson, could this be the first sign of new physics that particle physicists have all been […] … learn more→

esis babies It’s Friday morning and I should be wearing a party hat and letting off party poppers. The day before, I passed my viva (pending corrections) and got to have lunch with three of the finest minds in my field. Not bad for a day’s work. Yet why did I find myself spending most […] … learn more→

Unless you are C3-PO, fluent in more than six million forms of communication, you may not understand every Star Wars language. I’m not talking about the languages spoken in the saga such as Shyriiwook, Huttese, Bocce or even Binary (beep beep doop!), but the languages into which the Star Wars films have been translated. Take […] … learn more→

Our writing partnership in philosophy began in 2007, when Anjum arrived at Nottingham as a postdoctoral fellow. Since then, we have written three books and about 40 papers together, which seems rare, especially in philosophy. We think it’s time to issue a statement about our writing partnership, for at least four reasons. First, we want […] … learn more→