Author Archives: Athene Donald

An Education in Education (and Policy)

For the last three and a half years I have been chairing the Royal Society’s Education Committee. Under Secretary of State Michael Gove, education in England has been going through a tumultuous time (other parts of the UK have been … Continue reading

Posted in Education, Science Policy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Embedding the Gender Agenda

I feel as if I have been involved with gender issues forever, but this is just the bad habit one has of reimagining personal history. Probably acting wisely, in fact for most of my professional career I just got on … Continue reading

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Student Satisfaction Good, Student Learning Better

Reading the responses from students to one’s teaching is all too often painful. Even for a course that has gone reasonably well you will probably get as many panning you for making it too simple as complaining it was impossibly … Continue reading

Posted in Education | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Mood Music

‘Are you dead or just revising?’ was a telling question I remember seeing as graffiti on a wall in Cambridge many years ago. This is the time of year when that question seems particularly pertinent. Signs abound in college courts … Continue reading

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Past Women in Science, Present Digital Age

Following on from my last post I’d like to discuss experiences of a very different interdisciplinary meeting which I went to after immediately after the STS one I described there (I suspect I will return to that theme another time). … Continue reading

Posted in History of Science, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment