Imagine, for a second, that the slice of delectable cake melting in your mouth was made with flour ground from insects not grains. Or that your most alluring perfume – a special gift, perhaps – contained reclaimed ingredients once excreted audibly from someone else’s bowels. The visceral, gut reaction you might experience in these scenarios […] … learn more→

I’m what you might call a career contract researcher. This wasn’t what I always envisaged from my academic career, but at the same time, it is the product of active choices on my part, where, at least some of the time, alternative options did and do still exist. I’ve been a jobbing researcher since I […] … learn more→

Peter Piot was a young researcher training in virology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in 1976 when some unusual samples from Central Africa arrived at the Belgian lab. They had been taken from a Catholic missionary who had died from an unknown disease in a remote village in the Democratic Republic of the […] … learn more→

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, he surely didn’t anticipate that children would end up becoming some of its main users. Most start using the internet at the average age of three – and as recent research shows, children now spend more time playing and socialising online than watching television programmes. Given this […] … learn more→

By 2025, absolute water scarcity will be a daily reality for an estimated 1.8 billion people. In a world where vital resources are increasingly scarce, nations cannot afford to flush them down the drain. But that is exactly what we do. After we use water in our homes and businesses, it is washed away, and […] … learn more→

“Are you on drugs?” –common response to an individual exhibiting strange behavior. It seems a fair question to ask most students on campus today. Every day we get to see another example of insanity on campus, and while I usually blame it on the student loan scam, another explanation comes to mind: More than 25 […] … learn more→

Higher education is misunderstood and struggling financially, but the majority of college and university presidents are increasingly confident that their institutions are financially stable. These seemingly contradictions were found in Inside Higher Education’s annual survey of 706 campus leaders. Let’s set aside the obvious political concerns among presidents about the Trump Administration or the selection […] … learn more→

Few subjects generate as much controversy in England as grammar schools do. Advocates uphold them as “a driver of social mobility” with the belief they can provide a ladder of opportunity for poor but able children. Critics on the other hand, see them as socially divisive; the remnants of an outdated system that disproportionately benefits […] … learn more→

The American poet William Stafford was often asked by friends, readers, students and colleagues: When did you become a poet? The response he regularly offered was: “The question isn’t when I became a poet; the question is when other people stopped.” Stafford was articulating what many poets believe: that the roots of poetry (rhythm, form, […] … learn more→

Over a year ago, I began preparing to launch a podcast called “Research in Action” as part of my full-time job as the research director for Oregon State University Ecampus (it’s available in iTunes and on SoundCloud if you want to check it out). I had never hosted a podcast before, but I was, and […] … learn more→