Picture this: you pick up a hair shampoo’s trial pack at the supermarket and towards the end of using it, you love the effect it has on your hair health and quality. You find a customized QR code on it that allows you to re-order a 500ml bottle of the hair shampoo from their e-stores. […] … learn more→

Research engagement is a government priority in many countries. While the requirements differ, there is a growing body of research and practice that can help inform how we respond. In June 2019, I visited eight universities in Canada and the USA and met with 65 managers and academics to find out what  how research engagement was […] … learn more→

Writing a draft. Mmm. The word ‘writing’ suggests that all you have to do is sit down and type or scribble away. And lo and behold a text is born. But there are different pathways to writing a draft. Some are less freeform than others. As Helen Sword suggests, academic writers are generally either planners or […] … learn more→

It’s too late to protect them from it, so how do teachers tell children about climate change without scaring them? The good news is that young people are already engaged – the students taking part in climate strikes show that young people want action and are willing to skip school to show how serious they are. But […] … learn more→

Rat brains to understand Parkinson’s disease. Drones to detect plastic landmines. Social media to predict acts of terrorism. These are just a few potentially lifesaving research projects that students have undertaken in recent years at universities in New York and Maryland. While each project is interesting by itself, there’s something different about these particular research […] … learn more→

The “Admissions Scandal,” where parents were paying great sums of money to “sneak” their kids into top schools has finally made its way into the court system, and to judge by what has happened to the first to make it to sentencing, it does not look good for those who’ll come next: Felicity Huffman Gets […] … learn more→

Over the past four decades the child protection system in England has increasingly concentrated on preventing the abuse and neglect of young children in their homes. In response to multiple government inquiries, such as those following the killing of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié and 17-month-old, Peter Connelly (known as “Baby P”), the focus has been to reduce risk and prevent the abuse […] … learn more→

Internet infrastructures have provided support for an already long-standing dream of disseminating knowledge to as many people as possible. But the ambition of open science is not limited to issues of access that new technical and legal means facilitate a little more each day. If they aim to circulate research results much more fluidly, it is also a […] … learn more→

If, 10 years ago, I had declared to my line manager that I wanted to manage a summer-long creative arts project across England and Wales, she would have told me to get back to my monograph. Professors of 17th-century literature needed to know their place back then. But the impact agenda has changed all that. […] … learn more→

In a 2009 speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed that by 2020, the United States will “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” As we near 2020, it is worth asking how close are we to reaching that lofty goal and what have been the results of focusing so intently on college graduation […] … learn more→